At 08:35 AM 12/27/98 -0600, Chris Michael wrote:
>To understand why firewall reviews are mostly useless, look at the weights
>giving to firewall factors in this review:
>http://www.lantimes.com/testing/98aug/808b038b.html
>
>Security: 350
>Ease of use/installation: 300 (almost as high as security!)
>Features: 250
>Performance: 100
>
>The score for security is about 1/3 of the total score. I submit that
>someone hasn't thought through the function of a firewall.
Agreed...our Raptor Division has long scratched their heads over trade
publication FW review weighting. Confounding that security isn't weighted
at something like 75%...considering we're talking about firewalls.
To (in the past) find your firewall product reviewing behind less secure
products on the basis of throughput, ease of use, and price is a
confounding experience: we prefer crafting the most powerful and secure
application proxy-level firewall possible to grabbing high scores in the
other trade publication catagories like "ease of use/GUI/etc."...meanwhile,
second-threading our R&D efforts toward making the Raptor firewal gradually
more highly efficient in throughput (which has been a successful
development project), GUI, ease of use, and price.
Security has always been paramount in our development cycle...with
functionality, features, and ease of use a strong second R&D cycle evolution.
However, there does now seems to be a gradual shift towards giving a
greater weight to security in FW reviews...perhaps a result of the
increased feature-sets offered in the secondary-feature catagories of many
of the offerings (throughput is basically comparable due to processor
speed, GUIs are improving, feature sets are expanding, etc.)...which the
trades have questionably long put so much store in...along with the fact
that as the marketplace customer base matures, the average readership of
the trades may be more familiar with firewall configuration and
installation, finding they no longer require extremely elementary
interfaces before undertaking a FW project.
--Leia Amidon
--Sr. Security Consultant/Analyst
--AXENT Technologies/SNCi
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