Research Assistants: F. Dumont, C. Landrain, S. Miller, M. Tripunitara, D. Zamboni
Sponsor: COAST Laboratory sponsors
Networks of heterogeneous systems are difficult to protect. Often, different people with little security training run them. They exist in environments where policies may be poorly formed or understood. And, the systems may have intrinsically weak host security in place. One common method of enhancing the security of such a network is to place a "firewall" at the perimeter to monitor and control network traffic to/from the network from the outside. The purpose of this project is to gain direct experience in the installation, evaluation, configuration and usage of different firewall systems; to investigate new technologies for network perimeter defenses, including next-generation networks such as ATM; and to investigate the integration of host- and network-based security mechanisms with network perimeter defenses.