Network Security, Firewalls, and VPNs, 3rd Edition

Best Practices for Firewall Management

Firewall management best practices are recommendations, guidelines, or standard operating procedures for obtaining reliable firewall security on a real-world budget. Best practices are usually not specific recommendations for products or tools. Rather, these are recommendations for philosophies, stances, or concepts on how to proceed. The following items are suggested best practices, some of which also apply to network security in general. These might not apply to every environment, although you should consider each, and adapt or adopt when appropriate.

Have a written firewall policy. A written policy dictates which firewall features to enable or disable. It also describes how a firewall should handle ...