Specifications of a high-level conflict-free firewall policy language for multi-domain networks

  • Authors:
  • Bin Zhang;Ehab Al-Shaer;Radha Jagadeesan;James Riely;Corin Pitcher

  • Affiliations:
  • DePaul University;DePaul University;DePaul University;DePaul University;DePaul University

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 12th ACM symposium on Access control models and technologies
  • Year:
  • 2007

Quantified Score

Hi-index 0.00

Visualization

Abstract

Multiple firewalls typically cooperate to provide security properties for a network, despite the fact that these firewalls are often spatially distributed and configured in isolation. Without a global view of the network configuration, such a system is ripe for misconfiguration, causing conflicts and major security vulnerabilities. We propose FLIP, a high-level firewall configuration policy language for traffic access control, to enforce security and ensure seamless configuration management. In FLIP, firewall security policies are defined as high-level service-oriented goals, which can be translated automatically into access control rules to be distributed to appropriate enforcement devices. FLIP guarantees that the rules generated will be conflict-free, both on individual firewall and between firewalls. We prove that the translation algorithm is both sound and complete. FLIP supports policy inheritance and customization features that enable defining a global firewall policy for large-scale enterprise network quickly and accurately. Through a case study, we argue that firewall policy management for large-scale networks is efficient and accurate using FLIP.