A firewall is a network security component deployed to filter packets between networks of different trust levels. You can also deploy firewalls within trusted networks to implement access control between different subnets.You may wish for example, to limit which subnets within your organisation have access to financial data or customer records according to departments.
Packet filtering plays a critical role in any networked environment and has become even more complex with impovements in network speeds, protocols and transmission technologies. Optimisation of packet filtering rule sets is important in bringing about the increase in throughput and improved traffic management.
The continuous growth of networks, the desire to collaborate on business transactions has moved most business functions to computerised Information Systems. These advancements have brought challenges with regard to trust, confidentiality, integrity and safety of data and the systems that host it - Information Security.
This research looks at possible approaches and algorithms for optimising firewall rule sets to achieve the desired performance. This takes into account security considerations tor make sure optimizing does not open the network to illegal traffic or lock it out from legitimate traffic.
The approaches used will be used to design a tool, OptAid, that will aid network administrators in firewall rule-set optimisation.
