| 1. |
- Iwaya, Leonardo H., et al.
(författare)
-
Firewall Usability and Visualization : A Systematic Literature Review
- 2016
-
Rapport (refereegranskat)abstract
- Firewalls are network security components that allow administrators to handle incoming and outgoing traffic based on a set of rules. Such security appliances are typically the first line of defense, creating a barrier between organization’s internal network and the outside network (e.g., Internet). The process of correctly configuring a firewall is complex and error prone, and it only gets worse as the complexity of the network grows. A vulnerable firewall configuration will very likely result in major threats to the organization’s security. In this report we aim to investigate how to make administrator task of planning and implementing firewall solutions easier, from the stand points of usability and visualization. Our scientific investigation starts with the understanding of the state-of-the-art on this specific field. To do so, we conducted a Systematic Literature Review (SLR), a strict methodology to plan a literature review, to gather relevant information, to synthesize and compare approaches, and to report findings. During the initial search process thousands of papers were screened, leading us to 125 papers carefully selected for further readings. In the secondary study, ten relevant works were identified and assessed, in which authors tackled the issues of usability and visualization for Firewalls and Personal Firewalls. Among the main findings, we perceive that there is a lack (or even absence) of user studies to validate the proposed models. This leads us to a series of unwarranted solutions, that need to be prototyped and tested with real users. We also see an huge opportunity for integrative approaches, that could combine firewall research areas, such as automatic anomaly detection, advisory systems, and varying visualization schemes.
|
|
| 2. |
- Voronkov, Artem, 1990-, et al.
(författare)
-
Challenges in Managing Firewalls
- 2015
-
Ingår i: Secure IT Systems. - Cham : Springer. - 9783319265018 ; , s. 191-196
-
Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Firewalls are essential security devices that can provide protection against network attacks. To be effective, a firewall must be properly configured to ensure consistency with the security policy. However, configuring is a complex and error-prone process. This work tries to identify the reasons behind firewall misconfigurations. To achieve our goal, we conducted a series of semi-structured interviews with system administrators that manage access control lists in networks of different sizes. The paper discusses our interview results and describes future work.
|
|
| 3. |
- Voronkov, Artem, 1990-, et al.
(författare)
-
Measuring the Usability of Firewall Rule Sets
- 2020
-
Ingår i: IEEE Access. - : IEEE. - 2169-3536. ; 8, s. 27106-27121
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Firewalls are computer systems that assess the network traffic using an ideally coherentand manageable set of rules. This study aims to provide means to measure the usability of firewall rulesets in terms of how easily IT professionals can understand and manage them. First, we conductedsemi-structured interviews with system administrators wherein we obtained the usability challenges relatedto the management of firewall rule sets. This was followed by the analysis of related work. The interviewresults were combined with the findings from the related work. Accordingly, we acquired four usabilityattributes related to the manageability of firewalls; these were formally defined. We tested and measured thecognitive aspects related to the structure and ordering of the rules through a user study. A third user studywith system administrators validated our metrics. It exhibited a very strong correlation between the metricsand how the administrators characterized usability.
|
|
| 4. |
- Voronkov, Artem, 1990-, et al.
(författare)
-
Natural vs. Technical Language Preference and its Impact on Firewall Configuration
- 2020
-
Ingår i: HCII 2020: HCI for Cybersecurity, Privacy and Trust. - Cham : Springer. ; , s. 261-270
-
Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Firewalls are network security components designed to regulate incoming and outgoing traffic to protect computers and networks. The behavior of firewalls is dictated by its configuration file, which is a written sequence of rules expressed by a set of keys and parameters. In this paper, we investigate whether certain representations of firewall rule sets can affect understandability. To collect data for our investigation, we designed an online survey for an audience who are familiar with firewalls, in which we aimed to compare two different rule set representations: iptables and English. We collected data from 56 participants. Our results show that participants’ perception of a certain rule set representation depends on their firewall expertise. Participants with basic or intermediate knowledge of firewalls consider rule sets expressed in English to be 40% easier to understand, whereas advanced or expert firewall users deemed it to be 27% more difficult. We will discuss the reasons for these results and describe their possible implications.
|
|
| 5. |
- Voronkov, Artem, 1990-, et al.
(författare)
-
System Administrators Prefer Command Line Interfaces, Don’t They? : An Exploratory Study of Firewall Interfaces
- 2019
-
Ingår i: Proceedings of the fifteenth symposium on usable privacy and security (Soups 2019). - Berkeley, USA : USENIX - The Advanced Computing Systems Association. - 9781939133052 ; , s. 259-271
-
Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- A graphical user interface (GUI) represents the most common option for interacting with computer systems. However, according to the literature system administrators often favor command line interfaces (CLIs). The goal of our work is to investigate which interfaces system administrators prefer, and which they actually utilize in their daily tasks. We collected experiences and opinions from 300 system administrators with the help of an online survey. All our respondents are system administrators, who work or have worked with firewalls. Our results show that only 32% of the respondents prefer CLIs for managing firewalls, while the corresponding figure is 60%for GUIs. We report the mentioned strengths and limitations of each interface and the tasks for which they are utilized by the system administrators. Based on these results, we provide design recommendations for firewall interfaces.
|
|
| 6. |
- Voronkov, Artem, 1990-, et al.
(författare)
-
Systematic Literature Review on Usability of Firewall Configuration
- 2018
-
Ingår i: ACM Computing Surveys. - New York, NY, USA : Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). - 0360-0300 .- 1557-7341. ; 50:6
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Firewalls are network security components that handle incoming and outgoing network traffic based on a set of rules. The process of correctly configuring a firewall is complicated and prone to error, and it worsens as the network complexity grows. A poorly configured firewall may result in major security threats; in the case of a network firewall, an organization’s security could be endangered, and in the case of a personal firewall, an individual computer’s security is threatened. A major reason for poorly configured firewalls, as pointed out in the literature, is usability issues. Our aim is to identify existing solutions that help professional and non-professional users to create and manage firewall configuration files, and to analyze the proposals in respect of usability. A systematic literature review with a focus on the usability of firewall configuration is presented in the article. Its main goal is to explore what has already been done in this field. In the primary selection procedure, 1,202 articles were retrieved and then screened. The secondary selection led us to 35 articles carefully chosen for further investigation, of which 14 articles were selected and summarized. As main contributions, we propose a taxonomy of existing solutions as well as a synthesis and in-depth discussion about the state of the art in firewall usability. Among the main findings, we perceived that there is a lack (or even an absence) of usability evaluation or user studies to validate the proposed models. Although all articles are related to the topic of usability, none of them clearly defines it, and only a few actually employ usability design principles and/or guidelines.
|
|
| 7. |
- Voronkov, Artem, 1990-
(författare)
-
Usability of Firewall Configuration : Making the Life of System Administrators Easier
- 2020
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Firewalls are an important component of network security that serve to protect networks by regulating incoming and outgoing traffic. However, setting up firewalls correctly is a challenging task, which becomes more difficult with the growth of the network's size. Firewall configuration files consist of rule sets that might be hard to understand even for professionals who deal with them regularly. The main reason for this is that most firewall rule sets have a certain structure: the higher the position of a rule in the rule set, the higher priority it has. Challenging problems arise when a new rule is added to the set and a proper position for it needs to be found or the existing rules are removed due to a security policy change. This brings us to the usability problem associated with the configuration of firewalls.The overall aim of this thesis is to help system administrators better manage firewalls. We explore three different aspects of firewall configuration: 1) the syntax of rules, 2) the organization of rules in a rule set, and 3) the way rule sets are presented to a user. Using this acquired knowledge, we offer system administrators more usable firewall solutions and approaches to the configuration process that can help facilitate their daily work.
|
|
| 8. |
- Voronkov, Artem, 1990-
(författare)
-
Usable Firewall Rule Sets
- 2017
-
Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Correct functioning is the most important requirement for any system. Nowadays there are a lot of threats to computer systems that undermine confidence in them and, as a result, force a user to abandon their use. Hence, a system cannot be trusted if there is no proper security provided. Firewalls are an essential component of network security and there is an obvious need for their use.The level of security provided by a firewall depends on how well it is configured. Thus, to ensure the proper level of network security, it is necessary to have properly configured firewalls. However, setting up the firewall correctly is a very challenging task. These configuration files might be hard to understand even for system administrators. This is due to the fact that these configuration files have a certain structure: the higher the position of a rule in the rule set, the higher priority it has. Challenging problems arise when a new rule is being added to the set, and a proper position, where to place it, needs to be found. Misconfiguration might sooner or later be made and that will lead to an inappropriate system's security. This brings us to the usability problem associated with the configuration of firewalls.The overall aim of this thesis is to identify existing firewall usability gaps and to mitigate them. To achieve the first part of the objective, we conducted a series of interviews with system administrators. In the interviews, system administrators were asked about the problems they face when dealing with firewalls. After having ascertained that the usability problems exist, we turned to literature to get an understanding on the state-of-the-art of the field and therefore conducted a systematic literature review. This review presents a classification of available solutions and identifies open challenges in this area. To achieve the second part of the objective, we started working on one identified challenge. A set of usability metrics was proposed and mathematically formalized. A strong correlation between our metrics and how system administrators describe usability was identified.
|
|
