The Main Features of a Nokia Firewall
September 24, 2011 | 
Author Most of us know Nokia for its leadership in the mobile phone market, but a very few of us know that it has also successfully demonstrated its knowledge in the internet security appliance market, and has fulfilled the individual and enterprise requirements of the customers.
Nokia Firewall/VPN appliances, commonly known as IP Security Platforms, are not new in the market. Nokia appliances are advanced, can be easily managed, and offer enterprise-grade firewall and VPN network security.
Nokia security appliances use a secure operating system. In addition, technologies like Check Point VPN-1 UTM and Check Point VPN-1 Power are combined with the operating system to make it fulfil the requirements of medium and large enterprise data centres, service providers, carriers and large ecommerce websites.
According to a research from IDC, Nokia holds 3rd position in the market-share of Firewall/VPN appliances, after Cisco and Juniper/NetScreen. Nokia has mid-size to large enterprise customers, who need site-to-site and remote access connectivity through enterprise-deployed mobile devices. The simplest devices are cheaper than those of the large enterprise and service-provider class devices. The price range can be from $1000 to $600,000.
As we talk about different firewall/VPN devices from Nokia and their extended prices according to mid-size and large enterprise products, it will be interesting to know about the main features of some of the devices Nokia is offering in the current market.
The Nokia IP60 is known to be the simplest of firewall devices from Nokia. This is an integrated product and it provides prevention, intrusion, firewall, VPN and antivirus technologies. The device is designed for wide range of small and medium-sized applications. It can be used by home workers, branch and remote offices, and businesses. The main features of this device include; wired or wireless connectivity, centralised management, Nokia first call support, pre-licensed for easy out-of-the-box deployment, enterprise-class firewall/VPN, web filtering and Anti Virus.
For mid to large sized companies, who require robust performance and leading technology solutions, Nokia has developed IP1220, which is a purpose built IP Security Platform. This device contains latest version of Nokia IPSO secure operating system in addition to the Check Point Firewall/VPN Secure XL 2.x and the Nokia Secure Access System software. The main features of this firewall/VPN device include; Nokia Encryption Accelerator IV and up to 2GB RAM, 4 x Integrated 10/100 Ethernet ports, 2 x 6U CPCI slots for 4 PMC NICs, optional 2-Port 10/100 Mbps Ethernet, 2-Port 1000BaseF Multi-mode fibre (MMF) and 2-Port 1000 BaseT (10/100/1000 Mbps).
For large organizations and internal network segments, Nokia designed IP1280, which is famous for superior performance, coupled with high availability and flexibility. The main features of this device include; IP clustering, IPSO operating system, Check Point VPN-1 Power, VRRP, 24 Gigabit Ethernet Interfaces, HDD based storage, 4 GB RAM expandable, quad-core CPU, multi-thread technology etc.
Perhaps, one of the most sophisticated security appliances for enterprise network is IP2255, which is high-performance, high-reliability firewall with advanced Check Point VPN-1 power, firewall forwarding (8.9 Gbps), 1GB flash memory, VPN forwarding, 1000 BASE-SX (1000 Mbps Ethernet), auxiliary DB-9 port for modem access, DB-9 console for CLI access and FW connections etc.
The Top Ten of Audit and Event Log Monitoring
Event Log, Audit Log and Syslog messages have always been a good source of troubleshooting and diagnostic information, but the need to back up audit trail files to a centralized log server is now a mandatory component of many governance standards. Contemporary, SIEM solutions need to be
• flexible enough to cater for all devices, operating systems, platforms, databases and application
• sufficiently scalable to cope with thousands of devices generating millions of events
• intelligent, correlating events and identifying true security incidents only so resources can focus on genuine threats and attacks.
This is an introductory ‘Top Ten of Audit Trail and Event Log Monitoring’.
1. Security Standards and Corporate Governance Compliance Policies such as PCI DSS and GCSx CoCo require logging mechanisms and the ability to track user activities as they are critical in preventing, detecting, or minimizing the impact of a data compromise. Other policies such as FISMA, Sarbanes Oxley, NERC CIP, ISO 27000 and HIPAA all benefit from a means of centralizing audit log events to identify security incidents.
2. The state of the art in Audit Log Correlation technology provides automated configuration assessment, proactively testing and assessing a server environment against preconfigured, out-of-the-box policies, helping to enable a minimal deployment window. The best solutions leverage industry standards, specifically benchmarks from the Center for Internet Security (CIS), the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA). These benchmarks include thousands of configuration assessments enabling automatic sustainable policy compliance testing for FISMA.
3. Security standards such as PCI DSS and GCSx CoCo mandate the need to track and monitor all access to network resources and cardholder data Logging mechanisms and the ability to track user activities. The presence of logs in all environments allows thorough tracking and analysis if something does go wrong. Determining the cause of a compromise is very difficult without system activity logs. A central event log analyzer is the best option to use.
4. It is vital that your system for centralizing audit log trails is robust and comprehensive. PCI DSS requires your audit trail history is retained for at least one year with at least 3 months history available for immediate access. The best audit-log tracking software solutions provide real-time indexing of logs with instant keyword search and correlation facilities.
5. While Unix and Linux hosts can forward audit trail and system events using syslog, Windows servers do not have an in-built mechanism for forwarding Windows Events and it is necessary to use an agent to convert Windows Event Logs to syslog. The Windows Events can then be collected centrally using your audit log server. Similarly, applications using Oracle or SQL Server or bespoke or non-standard applications do not use syslog to forward events and it is necessary to use an agent to forward events from these applications. Finally, if you are using an IBM z/OS mainframe or AS/400 system you will need further agent technology to centralize event and audit log messages.
6. Audit trail history must be securely stored in order to prevent retrospective editing or any tampering. The PCI DSS requires that audit trails are promptly backed up to a centralized log server or media that is difficult to alter. The best centralized log server solutions employ file-integrity monitoring for the log backup files so that any modifications can be detected and alerted.
7. Firewalls (Checkpoint, McAfee Sidewinder, Juniper, Netscreen, Cisco ASA, Nokia, Intrusion Protection System (IPS), Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS), routers and RADIUS accounting and authorization services, vulnerability scanning solutions such as Retine eEye, Nessus and other Pen Testing solutions, wireless routers, switches all natively generate syslog messages to report a range of events from the low-level informational logs through to critical events.
8. Syslog messages are defined in RFC 3164 and is officially known as the BSD Syslog Protocol. Syslog messages are sent using UDP on port 514 by default although different ports can be used. Syslog messages use a range of Facility Codes and Severity Codes. The Facility Codes range from 0 to 23 and determine the message type. The Severity Codes range from 0 to 7 as follows:
0 Emergency: system is unusable
1 Alert: action must be taken immediately
2 Critical: critical conditions
3 Error: error conditions
4 Warning: warning conditions
5 Notice: normal but significant condition
6 Informational: informational messages
7 Debug: debug-level messages
9. The Security Information and Event Management or SIEM market as defined by Gartner covers the advanced generation of solutions that not only harvest audit logs and provide centralized log server functions but parse event log messages and analyze event logs as they are stored. This allows event logs to be correlated to identify hacker activity and attack patterns and notify IT security teams. The best SIEM systems employ a range of artificial intelligence capabilities to recognize threat signatures by cross-referencing events from IPS, IDS and RADIUS systems, Anti-Virus, Host Integrity Monitoring systems, File Integrity Monitoring software, Firewalls, Active Directory and watching for classic hacker activity such as deletion of log files and “brute force” hacks where repeated/sequential logon failures or bad password events will be generated.
10. The goal for any SIEM solution is to provide comprehensive log harvesting, automatically filter out all ‘information only’ or ‘normal operation’ events while placing a spotlight on a manageable list of genuine, serious attack patterns or security incidents. Even a medium sized enterprise can have thousands or hundreds of thousands of events generated by devices in their infrastructure so a properly implemented SIEM system is invaluable.
Computer Tips that Help Small Businesses Operate Profitably
When working properly, computers enable small businesses to make big business profits; however, get booted off your computer and you’re suddenly starving. In most instances, computers usually act up due to lack of care by its owners. Here are four computer tips that’ll keep you up and running smoothly.
Tip #1 — Back up your computer’s data no less than once a month.
Too often a small business is thrust back to infancy because it didn’t take time to back up precious data; information that took hours upon hours to create. Information that’s irreplaceable, such as customer databases or employment contracts. Keep in mind you’ll want to back up your written data as well as check books such as Quicken and email address books. If your computer has a CD writer, it’s simple and quick to back up your data. Simply select the files and folders you want to back up and copy them to the writer.
Or if you have an older computer, copy your most important files to a floppy disk. Either way, don’t stop there; now take the CD or disk and store it in a fire-safe box! To expedite the process, organize your files within folders so you can quickly grab and copy one or two folders.
Tip #2 – Don’t turn off your computer every evening.
Too frequently computer users turn their computers off every evening. This is unnecessary and not recommended. A computer’s components are at their most vulnerable when turned on and off. When a computer has to heat up [turn on] or cool down [turn off] it’s at this precise moment components fail. It’s recommended you turn your computer off once or twice a week or only when necessary, such as from a power outage. However, don’t do the opposite and never turn your computer off, since many anti-virus programs require a computer reboot be performed before new virus patches take effect.
Tip #3 — Automate anti-virus software so it updates automatically no less than once a week.
Depending on your software, you may need to prompt it to update. Unfortunately, there are people with too much time on their hands who desire to attack and make your computer unusable. A computer user is not ultimately protected from viruses and spyware [pop-ups, cookies, etc.] unless you’re using a combination of anti-virus and anti-spyware software and a firewall, a piece of hardware that protects computers from being hacked. You must have all three pieces in order to ward off viruses, lurkers and attacks. What’s more, most of the attacks are very quiet. You don’t know someone is on your computer. Instead, they secretly store information, such as child pornography or music MP3s on your computer, since it’s illegal, and redirect child-porno or MP3 seekers to your computer instead of theirs.
Tip #4 — Install a firewall if you keep your computer constantly on.
Using a broadband or DSL connection dramatically increases your exposure to being hacked. It only takes an average of 15 minutes being online before a home-based computer is attacked. The only true way to protect a computer from a hacker is to install a hardware firewall. It’s a misconception that software-based firewalls ultimately defend computers. This is simply not true. Computers must have a hardware firewall for ultimate protection, such as a SonicWall or Netscreen firewall, a component installed between a home user’s cable or DSL connection and their computer.
Posted in Netscreen Firewalls Articles | 
Tags: Businesses, Computer, Operate, Profitably | 
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