How to overcome firewall management challenges

Overview

Network complexity has evolved rapidly over the last 10 years. Today's networks consist of many different network devices (firewalls, routers, switches, etc...) from many different vendors, with many access mechanisms into the network (wireless, mobile devices, email, portals for partners and customers, FTP servers, and peer-to-peer applications and communications) all introducing security risk to the enterprise. To effectively manage and protect the enterprise network assets being controlled by firewall devices, it is essential that administrators have access to the latest configurations and understand what they contain.