A Linux firewall primer
Posted on February 10th, 2008 at 7:37 amOkay this is a older article but it still is a great source of information for those who ask what is a firewall and how does it work. And should I spend money on a firewall or is a open source firewall just as good.
You’ve heard the familiar arguments: commercial firewall products are overpriced; proprietary firewall code leaves you at the mercy of a vendor’s timetable in the event of a security hole; the cost of underlying hardware/software platform for Windows is high and puts you on an escalating upgrade path. As your company’s key IT decision-maker you can’t afford to spend money needlessly nor ignore even temporary security issues, so you’re thinking seriously about deploying a Linux-based firewall solution. What do you need to know?
Network security is a broad topic, and while a good firewall is an essential part of network security, it does not work in isolation. A secure system also requires effective monitoring and intrusion detection, as well as a “respond and restore” plan in the event of a security breach. We’ll be restricting our discussion to firewalls, but keep in mind that your firewall plan must coexist with your other security measures.
In this article we’ll look at some of the decision considerations in selecting a Linux-based firewall, including both considerations specific to firewall technology and general considerations about understanding Linux-based and open source options.
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