SolarWinds, an Austin, Texas-based software maker known for its cost effective IT management solutions, today launched SolarWinds Firewall Security Manager (FSM), a multi-vendor firewall management solution.
The company says its new firewall management offering provides easy-to-use, integrated firewall analytics and change management, with a functionality set that addresses the key issues in managing firewalls and router security and management, including:
• Ensuring that existing rules are effective and do not overlap
• Alerting users to changes in rules that break security policy
• Enabling users to test rule changes offline prior to rolling them out
• Ensuring that changes to rules don’t break policies
• Generating security audit reports
SolarWinds FSM also integrates with SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager, enabling the import of firewalls and routers managed in SolarWinds NCM directly into SolarWinds FSM.
Additional features of SolarWinds Firewall Security Manager include:
• Automation of security audits using over 120 customizable, out-of the-box checks based on standards from NSA, NIST, SANS and more
• Ability to analyze firewall and router configurations and logs to isolate redundant, covered and unused security rules and objects
• Model how a new rule, or change to an existing one, will impact your firewall policy or break end-to-end connectivity without touching production devices
• Simplifies firewall troubleshooting and change management for your multi-vendor, Layer 3 network devices
While firewalls are a critical component of any IT security infrastructure, the rules governing firewalls can be complex and difficult to manage.
According to a recent SolarWinds survey, of the 155 IT professionals who completed the survey, over 150 respondents listed the following problems as the primary drivers of anxiety around the security of their firewalls:
• 79 percent are concerned about firewall rules that are retained beyond their useful period
• 67 percent struggle with the lack of documentation of the rules and their business purpose (i.e. Why do we have this rule?)
• 54 percent say that conflict between rules causes significant issues, compounded by the fact that those conflicts are hard to find and fix
• 54 percent struggle with rules that nobody understands but are maintained out of worry or fear
Of those respondents who do not currently do firewall audits, the number one reason behind this decision was a lack of time or resources.
Available immediately, SolarWinds FSM starts at $1,295, with the first year of maintenance included.
