How Cisco IT Migrated to Stronger Firewall Protection for Large Sites

Overview

Like other companies, Cisco Systems needs to connect its intranets to the public Internet to remain competitive and successful. But while connecting to the Internet is critical to Cisco's survival, it also exposes the network to potential attacks from anywhere in the world. Cisco IT and Cisco Information Security (InfoSec) collaborated to design, deploy, and manage an advanced firewall solution as a critical first line of defense. There are two general types of packet filtering performed by network firewalls : nonstateful inspection performed by Access Control Lists (ACLs), and stateful inspection performed by equipment such as Cisco PIX security appliances and the Cisco Firewall Services Module (FWSM). Firewalls without stateful inspection have significant weaknesses.