Work

Atomizing Firewall Policies for Anomaly Analysis and Resolution

Year: 2024

Type: article

Abstract: Nowadays, the security management of packet filtering firewall policies got complicated due to the evolution of modern computer networks, characterized by growing size and heterogeneity of communications. The traditional manual approaches for configuring firewalls have become error-prone, unoptimized and time-consuming, leading to an increasing number of policy anomalies, including both sub-optimizations and conflicts. In literature, the techniques proposed for anomaly management have several shortcomings, as their anomaly analysis is usually excessively complex, while their anomaly resolution cannot solve all anomalies. In order to overcome these shortcomings, this article proposes a comprehensive approach for firewall policy anomaly analysis and resolution, based on the formal concept of atomic predicates. This approach has the aim to simplify the anomaly management operations, make them efficient and solve all configuration anomalies. The achievement of these objectives has been experimentally proved through the validation of a framework which implements the proposed approach, and whose time performance and anomaly management efficiency have been compared with the relevant alternative approaches.

Source: IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing

DOI: 10.1109/tdsc.2024.3495230

Authors: Daniele Bringhenti, Simone Bussa, Riccardo Sisto, Fulvio Valenza

Institution: Politecnico di Torino

Language: English

Topic: Network Packet Processing and Optimization

Subfield: Hardware and Architecture

Field: Computer Science

Domain: Physical Sciences

Open Access status: hybrid

Estimated APC paid: $2,495

Funders: European Commission, NextGenerationEU