Beyond selecting topologies and system placement, consultants charged with managing their customer's firewalls should keep a close eye on the audit logs, as they're a veritable goldmine of network security intelligence. This tip outlines four areas where basic log analysis can provide valuable firewall management data.
Auditing firewall activity
Once you've made it through the challenging phases of firewall selection and architecture design, you're finished setting up a DMZ, right? Your rulebase should remain stable and you'll never have a need to make configuration changes. We can only dream!
Here are some ways to leverage the logging capabilities of your customer's real world firewall to help keep things in order.
- Monitor rule activity
- Traffic flows
- Rule violations
- Denied probes
Get an expanded list of these four areas to concentrate on when auditing firewall activity on your customer's network.
Get more tips on building a firewall architecture.
