“Firewall analyzer” refers to software that manages the configuration of a system used in an organization. It helps network administrators to collect and analyze log messages or data of their security devices. The analyzer produces data required to generate forensic reports. This process uses a firewall log. Firewall log denotes the document that deals with different traffic types. The firewall analyzer monitors the traffic of an environment and detects the type and source of traffic entering a system.
Firewall log
The firewall consists of certain rules and configurations that form a firewall log. This firewall log helps an organization to get information about any suspicious and malicious software that tries to enter a network. This information of logging feature includes IP addresses, port numbers, and protocols. The information gets aggregated on the source address and port, destination address, and port. The firewall tracks this aggregated information. The firewall log serves the following purposes –
- Detects whether new firewall rules working well or needs debugging.
- Helps to find any malicious activity on the network.
- To detach connection with any suspicious IP addresses.
- It helps to know whether anyone using a system, through outgoing connections derived from web servers.
Uses of Firewall Analyzer
Firewall analyzer serves various purposes as explained below –
- To draw information from various devices required in the generation of topology maps of the network.
- It helps to troubleshoot network issues and helps us to understand the impact that network security policies have on traffic.
- It helps us to analyze the policies and rules of the firewall.
- It helps in providing an updated map that demonstrates the connectivity of all the applications on our system. This process involves the identification of applications or services and the detection of connectivity flows.
- It provides us with various recommendations required to optimize a security policy.
- It helps in prioritizing applications based on the intensity of risk.
- It integrates servers and connectivity flows that help to detect which applications are at risk.
- It helps an organization to monitor the internet usage of an employee.
- It gives us information on the current status of the firewall and helps in security checks periodically.
- It helps us to enforce network segmentation and also helps to detect whether the network security policy acting against the strategies of network segmentation.
- It also helps to keep track of any internal threats.
Network segmentation
Network segmentation referred to practice or process, used by a group of a computer to divide a computer network into different subnetworks. It helps an organization to control traffic flow across different parts of a system and helps to resist the movement of harmful traffic from one part to another. It also reduces network congestion and limits the spread of an attack.
Final thoughts
The organizations use the software of the firewall analyzer to analyze the use and effectiveness of firewall rules. It guides us to improve the configuration and performance of firewall rules. It helps us to examine data before designing any policy.