McAfee, one of the world leaders in computer security solutions, has sponsored a survey by IDC multimedia white paper which concludes organisations are receiving poor returns on their investments into firewalls.

McAfee sponsored the survey, entitled ‘The State of Today’s Firewall Management Challenges’ to investigate the state of firewall protection. The IDC surveyed 206 firewall managers and IT executives across the United States and Europe, and came up with some damning insights into the effectiveness of firewalls and the affect of their vulnerability on the businesses.

The survey comes to a number of conclusions, including:

• On average, the enterprises questioned in the survey suffered an estimated 300 network attacks a year
• This grew to 1200 attacks per year for 10% of the organisations
• Losses from data breaches suffered by the enterprises was equivalent to more than 75% of their costs for operating firewalls
• Gaps in the protection were common as the firewall rules grew extensively; the larger the rule set, the harder it is to keep the system safe
• These rules can number in the thousands or tens of thousands
• In managing these firewall rules, recipients of the survey reported that business responsiveness was reduced

Charles Kolodgy, research director at IDC, said: “What’s apparent from the survey is that firewall management is a key challenge facing organizations today. The more rules included in the firewall, the harder it is to manage and less effective it can become. Firewall rules don’t make an organization more secure, but better rule management and improved firewall technology does.”

Greg Brown, Senior Director of Network Security Product Marketing at McAfee, added: “There’s a huge disconnect between the traditional firewall and the level of protection required for most enterprise environments. Firewalls must offer comprehensive security features without increasing complexity. Additionally, rules management must be simplified and should enforce the actual business security policy in order for organizations to receive the maximum benefit.”

McAfee has responded to these issues by creating firewall protection that can keep away the volume of threats that are encountered today. Their next generation firewall will use behaviour analysis and rule management.

Guest Article by Neil Camp

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