Firewalls and then some

With firewalls no longer able to be a solitary guardian against all potential threats, network executives "need to look at different ways to take the load off the firewall," says Don Hoffman, director of IT security at The Mony Group, an insurance and financial services firm in New York. (See main story.)

Hoffman says Mony is using technology such as intrusion-detection systems at the front and back ends of its firewall to help control access to internal networks and data. He says most firewall vendors will soon begin building intrusion-detection capabilities into their products, if they're not already (see story, "The promise of all-in-one security").

Firewall vendors must work with other security product developers to integrate their products, says Tom Warfield, a systems administrator who's in charge of networking at government contractor AST in Lawton, Okla. Warfield likes that his firewall supplier, Check Point Software, does so. "Check Point has allowed other vendors to integrate their products into the firewall, and it ensures that these products meet industry standards and certification," Warfield says. He cites one such partnership, which integrates Symantec's Norton AntiVirus products with Check Point's Firewall-1.

"The Norton software works well with our firewall," Warfield says. "In the past we had a lot of problems with people downloading viruses that spread through the company." The firewall/antivirus combination has been an effective solution, he says.