Once the firewall is in place, you need to decide how much information the end user should receive. Should he or she receive alerts on all possible attacks--and be inundated with information--or should he or she be left in the dark?
Some firewalls send out alerts simply to show they're functioning. For example, a ZoneLabs ZoneAlarm firewall I once used told me my router was trying to ping my machine. Well, hot damn, glad that security breach was averted! On college campuses, copious alerts can lead to equally copious phone calls from students making accusations like "Your SNMP-based network-management software just hacked my AOL account!" A good rule of thumb is to limit user notifications to serious threats.
Two other considerations: Most enterprise-class firewalls require a database for log files. Do you have licenses and experts in MS SQL or Oracle? Will you need a separate database server, or can you run the database on the policy server?
Also, pricing varies widely. Most vendors charge on a sliding scale and offer discounts for bulk buys. You may have to pay extra for a management server, too. And you'll need to budget resources for maintenance, user training and support.
Application Control
To realize the benefits of cloud-native software, an application must actually be cloud-native—designed to run in the cloud, interacting with disaggregated cloud services, fully manageable as code—to deliver the expected benefits.
By combining resources and expertise, the AI-Enabled ICT Workforce Consortium will offer a blueprint for how industries can adapt to an AI-dominated future.
IT leaders should heed the guidance of cybersecurity insurance providers who think businesses should prioritize security education, incident preparedness, regular internal audits, and ongoing vulnerability scanning and patching.
