topic Re: Firewall Selection Criteria in Network Security

Firewall Selection Criteria

afaqzafar — Fri, 21 Feb 2020 15:39:49 GMT

Hi,

I am currently working in a Pre-sales environment and facing a lot of queries regarding firewalls and security. Recently I got a query in which client told me he has 500 users and he wants a firewall as per their need. So now i need to know which factors should be consider to evaluate the right model and which things we should ask customer to give them right solution for firewall. Looking forward to positive response.

Thanks.

Afaq Ahmad

Re: Firewall Selection Criteria

Dennis Mink — Mon, 23 Apr 2018 12:00:06 GMT

First you will need to decide how much traffic it is going to have to process (throughput).

for this you will need to consider the size of your internet link (mbps).

and you will need to consider the number of physical. with 500 users I d be inclined to go 5508X , 5516X might be a bit over specs,

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/security/asa-5500-series-next-generation-firewalls/datasheet-c78-733916.html

Re: Firewall Selection Criteria

Leo Laohoo — Mon, 23 Apr 2018 12:02:08 GMT

Budget. Don't forget to factor in the Budget. No budget? No toys.

Re: Firewall Selection Criteria

Shubham Bharti — Mon, 23 Apr 2018 12:09:17 GMT

Some of the criteria that will be useful while deciding the appropriate NGFW for the organization :

Maximum Throughput
Maximum Concurrent Connections
Year on Year Growth
IPS Feature enabled/disabled

You can cross-verify once all these data are provided with the datasheet information of ASA 5500-X series:

https://www.cisco.com/c/en_in/products/collateral/security/asa-5500-series-next-generation-firewalls/datasheet-c78-733916.html

Re: Firewall Selection Criteria

Dennis Mink — Mon, 23 Apr 2018 12:13:45 GMT

budget is overrated. LOL

Re: Firewall Selection Criteria

afaqzafar — Mon, 23 Apr 2018 13:20:01 GMT

Thanks for the response. But how can we calculate these two factors?
Maximum Throughput
Maximum Concurrent Connections

Re: Firewall Selection Criteria

afaqzafar — Mon, 23 Apr 2018 13:27:51 GMT

Thanks for the response. But how can we calculate these two factors?
Maximum Throughput
Maximum Concurrent Connections

Re: Firewall Selection Criteria

Shubham Bharti — Mon, 23 Apr 2018 14:29:59 GMT

Netflow should be able to help in finding both the parameters. If you are looking for something much simpler and just an approximate value, any network monitoring tool in the organization should be able to help you with this.

For Maximum connection, if there are 500 users and we assume x connections per user. Total concurrent connection will be 500x. The network team will be much accurate with the value of x as they are familiar with the environment.

PS: Always look for maximum value and not the average value.

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