McAfee White Paper Sample

What's apparent from the survey is that firewall management is a key challenge facing organizations today. These management challenges are not only driving firewall operational costs but also negatively impacting the effectiveness of the firewall against vulnerabilities. The more rules are included in the firewall, the harder it is to manage and the less effective it can become. IDC believes that more firewall rules doesn't make an organization more secure, but better, more efficient rules and improved firewall technology does. The most significant finding of the survey is the divide between the perspectives of those people who have firewalls with less than 5,000 firewall rules and those that have more. There was a significant difference between these two groups with the starkest contrast related to firewall lifecycle management. Few organizations with less than 5,000 firewall rules rated the different activities as difficult to perform while many organizations with more than 5,000 firewall rules rate the activities as difficult to perform. In addition, the survey found another great divide related to the number of firewall rules and the success rate of network attacks" More firewall rules do not mean more security.