Hi Coder!
Why not make your thesis about using open source security technologies,
and developing management devices to enable small companies to utilize
open source technologies without a full time admin? Someone else
suggested IPTABLES, which I love. Core Force is an open personal
firewall. SNORT is an open IPS with lots of community support. OpenVPN
is an open SSL VPN technology. The open source community is chock-full
of useful technologies for security, albeit sometimes difficult for
small companies to implement.
A set of management tools that eases this implementation, or that allows
small integrators to fully manage a number of SMB clients, in my
opinion, would be a substantial contribution to the open source
community. I've been thinking about getting into this market myself
(from a system engineering and support standpoint), because I agree that
the SMB market lacks the resources to implement many of these
technologies.
Whatever you decide to do, let us know and share your insight!
Jason A. Barrett
________________________________
From: coder [mailto:elite.coder@ntlworld.com]
Sent: Thursday, December 29, 2005 4:01 PM
To: firewalls@securityfocus.com
Subject: RE: Firewall technology
Ok, so there are solutions that already exist, but how good are they
fore small companies with limited financial resources?
I myself am a network admin, the company I work for has about 20 PCs and
4 servers. The company really only has just enough to pay the wages each
month so an expensive firewall system is out of the question (I assume
symantec, checkpoint and zonealarm are all very expensive), also I do a
lot of application developement for them and sometimes write my own
protocol for client-server software.
Also I am called out to build networks for other small companies with
limited financial resources. One thing I have noticed with the company I
work for and the other smaller companies is that they dont have a full
time net admin (and in some cases they dont have one at all), and as
they dont have Active Directory (the company I work for does, but the
ones I build networks for do not) or equivelent, there is a 100%
possibility of them getting some malware on their desktops.
Im thinking for the thesis, I can say the current firewall technology is
time consuming to setup, expensive and requires a full-time network
admin to maintain the system. And I can then say that I shall develope a
new firewall system that is cheaper and does not require a full time
admin to maintain.
Does this sound reasonable?
Thanks
~Davie Elliott
-------- Original Message --------
Hello everyone,
I wanted to get the opinions of experts before I carry on with my
project. I
am curently writting a thesis on the limitations of firewall
technology,
for now it seems that firewall technology for the gateway is pretty much
covered. However, noone seems to have focused on firewall technology for
clients (on big networks), home firewalls such as ZoneAlarm are useless
for
a network with many PCs because it cant be managed centrally and it asks
the
user if they want to create a new rule when somthing tries to get out.
In my thesis I was going to say that these are the problems and the
solutions was to write a firewall system that can be managed centrally
(via
web interface), also for technical universities where students maybe
writting network software and using their own protocols, I was going to
see
if I could create some kind of "protocol creator" for admins. Originally
my
thesis was going to be about security corporation sized networks, but in
my
research I have come across a few other things.
IEEE802.1x and IPSec can apparently replace client-side firewalls, I
dont
really know much about those two technologies, but I am still
researching.
If these two techologies are better than client-side firewalls and or
cost
less, I shall focus my thesis on small company networks (who cant afford
good network technology or a full-time net admin).
My thesis was going to be centered around the fact that machines within
huge
networks get infected by malware and such, either by websites or via
removable media, I am hoping that my firewall I idea would: stop sending
keylogger and spyware details back to the "hacker" and stop
viruses/worms
spreading from the infected client.
So, what client-side technologies do corporations use (if any)?
Are there any limitations for IPSec and 802.1X?
What are your opinions on what I was saying about client-side firewalls?
Thank you for your answers,
Davie Elliott.
