On Sat, 2 Feb 2002, Garland Mac Neill wrote: > Hello Everyone, > > As I am not very versed in all the different firewall solutions I thought I > might pose this question to the experts. What I am looking for is a firewall > solution for a small company that has one main office and 5 satellite > offices. The requirements would be a "cheap" solution with relative low > ownership costs. Any suggestions are very appreciated.
Figure out what you have to protect. Figure out what your most likely threats are. Figure out what you can and can't afford to lose. Figure out what traffic you *have* to allow for business reasons. Formulate your security and usage policies. Look at your current topology and equipment and see if they're effective to help mitigate your risks, and if not configure them thusly. Figure out what holes are left, and what features plug those holes. Add in potential future requirements. Add in training and maintenance cossts. Figure out operational synergies and weaknesses (don't forget that homogonous environments lack natural defenses that hetrogeneous ones have.) Find products that have those features and research them for functionality/support/cost. Present the cost figures to management and have them sign off. Then start figuring out which of the products left meets your needs and price range. There are at least 70 commercial products that look at least something like a firewall product. There are also multiple free solutions. A lot of those products will work, and a lot of them won't work for a given situation, but without you doing the homework necessary, you're just randomly picking a product that may not work or may work poorly for your environment. Paul ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Paul D. Robertson "My statements in this message are personal opinions [EMAIL PROTECTED] which may have no basis whatsoever in fact." _______________________________________________ Firewalls mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.gnac.net/mailman/listinfo/firewalls
