I in no way want to trash any magazine or organization which has striven to
bring some sanity to the firewall market and make sense of all the marketing
hype that venders spew like volcanoes, but I have a hard time directing
someone to an article written probably several versions ago, and in no way
can their comparison come close to matching your local business
requirements.
It is downright scary how many times I have seen boardroom decisions going
like this. "say... I think we need to protect our network. I read an
article the other day that says that hackers are running wild these days and
I think we should buy a firewall to protect our system." The conversation
shifts gears right away to " yea the article says that super wizbang one is
the best and, well... I think we should go get a super wizbang one too".
Sad... very sad...
At no time did they discuss how the business uses networks and the Internet
in the way it conducts it's business. At no time did they look at risks,
assess the threats to their enterprise, look at how increased services could
be exploited in order to expand their operation, no user policy was
discussed, no evaluation was performed to see if they had the expertise to
run this in house etc. You see, they didn't do their homework.
This is the reason I hate to see someone wanting to read about comparing
firewalls, because they really do not tell you anything useful. You might
have a high thru-put requirement that may steer you towards a packet filter,
you may have special needs for dial in users, VPNs etc, that should figure
into your decision, but these functions are not addressed in a so called
"Comparison".
In short, we do ourselves and others that are searching for answers a big
dis -service by allowing the myth of the printed comparison to base choices
on.
Do your homework, know how the business operates using the networks, know
how you can expand your operation by adding features, know your threats and
the rewards, know exactly what you want a firewall to do, then start calling
venders and have them demonstrate each and every feature that applies to
your enterprise, and cut off all the fluff marketing hype. If a vendor says
their product does something, make them demonstrate it. Lastly, make darn
sure you can get service after the sale. Get it in writing, and be prepared
to enforce it.
Only then can you decide what is "Right" for you. These things can get real
expensive quite fast, and the initial cost of hardware is only a portion of
what will be required. So choose wisely, but do your research first!!!
Buyer beware!
-----Original Message-----
From: Carric Dooley [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Thursday, May 20, 1999 3:42 PM
To: Farchado Moncef
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Firewalls comparison
go to networkcomputing.com. The article is not new, but it compares 7
different firewalls (I think it's a Nov 1998 issue).
Carric Dooley
COM2:Interactive Media
http://www.com2usa.com
On Thu, 20 May 1999, Farchado Moncef wrote:
> Hi,
> I want to find a comparison of firewalls, if someone have any document,
> please help me
> Regards
>
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