Technical Reports

The report FIMU-RS-2004-02

Application-Level Firewall Protection Profile for High Robustness Environments-Initial Considerations

by Mark Kelly, Václav Matyá¹, Ahmed Patel, April 2004, 43 pages.

FIMU-RS-2004-02. Available as Postscript, PDF.

Abstract:

Firewalls act as access control policy mediators between networks. They either permit or block the exchange of data between networks. The ability to permit or block the transfer of data means firewalls can be used to selectively allow access to the resources it protects. Firewalls of varying security levels have been created to provide security that is adequate to the sensitivity of the data being protected. Firewalls are often formally evaluated to certify what level of security they are suitable for. They are evaluated against so-called security evaluation criteria -- standardised descriptions of security measures. Common Criteria (CC) is the current global standard for evaluations. Firewall security attributes are described in a Protection Profile (PP) that defines an implementation-independent set of security requirements and objectives for a category of products or systems that meet similar consumers needs for IT security. Our project set out to produce a summary of security issues for an Application-Level Firewall Protection Profile (PP) for a High Robustness Environment. We started our work with the Basic-Level Firewall PP, the Medium-Level Firewall PP and the High-Level Mail Guard PP. The two firewall PPs and the Mail Guard PP are compared to give an insight into what the issues concerning the High-Level Firewall PP are. This High-Level Firewall PP is then discussed in terms of its major principles.