The Right Firewall for the Job

The Big Picture

The Right Firewall for the Job

As security threats multiply and proliferate, so seemingly do the number and style of firewalls designed to thwart them. At Network Computing, we most recently took a closer look at Web Application Firewalls, which pick up where classic network firewalls leave off. While a network firewall keeps out intruders, a Web application firewalls protects the application layr from attacks, using deep-packet inspection to guard against SQL injection, session hijacking, cross-site scripting, buffer overflows and other threats.

What kinds of threats are we talking about? Consider:

- An attacker could enter an extremely long URL to try and create a buffer overflow.

- A cross-site scripting attack could attempt to capture legitimate user session information. - Another style of attack involves modifying session cookie values to try and impersonate a user, thus gaining access to personal information.

- Database-driven sites are vulnerable to SQL injection attacks, where an attacker tries to guess how the application works internally, then enters SQL code into a form field to gain access to the underlying database.

Web application firewalls are designed to thwart such attacks. As more enterprise applications get exposed to users via the Internet, and as the level and complexity of attacks increase, IT must consider a more primary role for Web application firewalls.

Read our market analysis of this security area and check out our hands-on test and review of four Web application firewall appliances.

Then, go deeper into the firewall market by reviewing our deep coverage of this market across the past few years: