'Net Features : firewall

Firewall Management and PCI Compliance for Small Businesses

Michael Garrity — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 13:30:00 GMT

For online merchants, especially those that run small businesses, the practice of optimizing your site to be Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliant can be headache-inducing.

So, it only adds to the problem with a site owner trys to configure and manage his or her firewall in-house, a practice in which the simplest mistake can result in misconfigured security systems, unnecessary data exposure and increases the risk of your site not meating PCI Data Security Standards (DSS).

But like everything on the Web, there's a solution for that, if you know where to look. In this case, it's ControlScan, the Web's "leading provider of PCI compliance and security solutions designed for small merchants." The company recently added ProTect Network Firewall to its ProTect Managed Security Services suite of solutions.

ProTect Network Firewall will help website owners by managing the installation, administration and monitoring of network firewalls. Best of all, the new offering was built specifically with Level 4 merchants in mind. (For the record, Level 4 merchants are those that have fewer than 20,000 Visa e-commerce transactions a year, all the way up to one million. In other words, the smallest of small businesses.)

Using ProTect Network Firewall from ControlScan will let small business owners rest easily knowing their receiving 24/7 continuous network monitoring and protection from outside threats, and all at an affordable price. The offering will improve a business' overall security posture, ensure that all updates/upgrades are made in a timely manner in accordacne with PCI standards and report on how and by whom a network is used, thus increasing Internet productivity.

Plus, it will help simplify network segmentation, enabling a single network segment to communicate with the payment processor. This act that helps smaller merchants by reducing the scope of PCI compliance and allows merchants to offer customer benefits without potentially exposing cardholder data to theft.

Astaro Offers Free Firewall

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 04:00:00 GMT

Network security vendor Astaro released the Essential Firewall edition of its security solution Astaro Security Gateway for free.

Features included in the Essential Firewall edition:

• Networking: Internet Router, Bridging, DNS server & proxy, DynDNS, DHCP server & relay, NTP support, automatic QoS
• Network Security: Stateful Packet Inspection Firewall & Network Address translation (DNAT/SNAT/Masquerading)
• Remote Access: PPTP and L2TP over IPSec support (including iPhone support)
• Logging/Reporting: Full logging on local hard drive, searching, real-time reports for hardware, network usage and network security, daily executive reports
• Management: Web-based GUI in local languages, setup wizard, configuration backup & restore, administrator notifications, SNMP support, centralized management via Astaro Command Center (also free of charge)

Many SMBs do not have the resources necessary to purchase enterprise level security products, so this solution might be worth exploring this alternative.

“Small and medium sized businesses are the backbone of the world economy. They act more cautious, they maintain a stable business and they are not subject to the high demands of investors”, says Jan Hichert, CEO at Astaro. “But nevertheless, SMBs are affected by the current economic climate even more so than larger businesses. This is why we see more and more businesses fall back to consumer products to secure their IT environment – in order to reduce costs, they lower their level of security. This is a dangerous compromise. By launching the Essential Firewall edition we aim to provide those companies a professional alternative.”

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WordPress Firewall Plugin

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 03:10:00 GMT

SEO egghead Jamie Sirovich just posted about his new WordPress Firewall Plugin. Getting hacked creates a lot of work, so using a firewall (any firewall) is going to save you a lot of headaches down the road - especially if you're working with multiple blogs or managing WP installs for others. The plugin "investigates web requests with simple WordPress specific hueristics to identify and stop most obvious attacks."

While it may not stop the more sophisticated hackers from gaining access, something is most certainly better than nothing.

In addition to blocking common attacks, other features let you set up an automatic email to notify that a potential attack has been detected and blocked (with the offending IP and parameters) and let you whitelist your IP (as well as a page, a variable in a page or a variable on every page).

The WordPress Firewall plugin can be downloaded here.

Sample of the email sent when an attack occurs and is blocked: