If you just want a quick-n-dirty stateful inspection engine to keep the script kiddies out, any firewall package with reasonable defaults will do the job. There are about twenty packages on http://www.distrowatch.com aiming to provide just that, including Mandrake's own MNF. If you want a platform you can learn from or build on, I would suggest a third choice: http://leaf.sourceforge.net, grab a Bering ISO and load that up.
Security is a process not a product. "My organization is small and therefore unnoticed on the Internet" is no excuse for shoddy security. There are a million reasons why, but in the interests of time I'll just provide one: you may not be protecting data that is of much interest to anyone except your students and their parents: but you still represent a pool of computing resources with a network connection. The bad guys who don't care about your data will be much more interested in using your resources as a spam blaster or a launching pad for attacks against other sites. Having decent security on the Internet is not like putting a lock on your house, it's more like putting locks on your car. Jack On Tue, 2003-07-15 at 09:13, Gavin wrote: > Experts, > Most of my friends have suggested using IPCOP or SMOOTHWALL for my f/w. > question, is there a noticeable difference between the two? I ran both and > they seem almost the same.. I'm new to this firewall stuff. All I would like > is a simple safe F/W to protect my small private school network.. in short I > don't need to kill ants with lighting bolts!! any suggestions are welcomed! > > TIA -- Jack Coates Monkeynoodle: A Scientific Venture... http://www.monkeynoodle.org/resume.html
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