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Date:      Thu, 29 Jul 2010 22:09:46 +0100
From:      Peter Maxwell <peter@allicient.co.uk>
To:        Greg Hennessy <Greg.Hennessy@nviz.net>
Cc:        "freebsd-pf@freebsd.org" <freebsd-pf@freebsd.org>
Subject:   Re: For better security: always "block all" or "block in all" is  enough?
Message-ID:  <AANLkTinimMg2HiRqF9rhAJn7GJosH_Ww5TsM3uzpbi8T@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <9E8D76EC267C9444AC737F649CBBAD902769C51EE9@PEMEXMBXVS02.jellyfishnet.co.uk.local>
References:  <20290C577F743240B5256C89EFA753810C46894B92@HIKAWSEX01.ad.harman.com> <9E8D76EC267C9444AC737F649CBBAD902769BF6F5B@PEMEXMBXVS02.jellyfishnet.co.uk.local> <AANLkTiknzx6-MgHMgpiARNZ43j00Wy_gORt%2BM9AXV6FZ@mail.gmail.com> <9E8D76EC267C9444AC737F649CBBAD902767E3BF75@PEMEXMBXVS02.jellyfishnet.co.uk.local> <AANLkTim%2Ba0aHy2eDKeiU0cGr1gzOvbwyWLTXo_N34Q3d@mail.gmail.com> <9E8D76EC267C9444AC737F649CBBAD902769C51EE9@PEMEXMBXVS02.jellyfishnet.co.uk.local>

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On 29 July 2010 20:08, Greg Hennessy <Greg.Hennessy@nviz.net> wrote:

>
>
> > If, as you say, there are "Governance, Risk, and Compliance reasons",
> > perhaps you'd like to specify one or two for each category?
>
> Start with an ISMS derived from 27k, add a soupcon of PCI DSS requirement
> 10, Basel II, throw in SOX 404 or an SAS 70 type II audit, you get the
> picture.
>


An ISMS, is a company defined document so will likely have different entrie=
s
or even none at all for that matter depending on the company.  In a previou=
s
company I worked for, you would have just supported my point.

And nice try, what documents & sections in PCI DSS, Basel II, and SOX are
you referring to?



> > Logging a default deny on an internal firewall, yes - ok - I agree with
> you, that's probably reasonable.
>
> Only probably? How much 'commercial' firewall work have you done again,
> seriously ?
>

Again?  I didn't tell you to begin with.  As it happens, more than ten
years, a significant proportion of which was in a major ISP.  Since we're
playing who's willy is bigger, what about yourself?



>
> >  However, logging every blocked packet on an internet facing firewall i=
s
> plain daft.
>
> Saying it doesn=E2=80=99t make it so.
>

The converse applies to your position.



>
> > Even the storage requirements would be somewhat onerous,
>
> Storage is cheap. Damage to reputation caused by being in breach of
> regulatory requirements w.r.t log retention is not.
>

Not that cheap.  And at the current point in time, in the UK at least, I
know of no statutory requirement to keep such logs.

I'd asked before what sort of bandwidth & connections per second the
firewalls you/you've worked on tend to handle?




>
> > and that's before trying to process the data into something meaningful.
> > And all to confirm that there's a lot of noise and port scanning going
> on.
>
> Or it's part of a much larger picture which is fed into an SIEM system fo=
r
> event correlation and consequent alerting.
>

So, you're also exposing a node in you SEM to a shed load of unnecessary
noise.



>
> Firewalls are not the only security control points
>

Nope, they're not.  They're also are a fairly blunt instrument but must be
extremely reliable.



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