* Dr. Internet columnist Steve Blass offers advice on firewall upgrade for a home office * Help Desk columnist Ron Nutter discusses resolving issues from open access to servers
* Upgrading a home office to a hardware router
By Steve Blass
Q: I’m looking to upgrade to a hardware firewall for my home office that’s running a mix of PCs, Macs and occasionally a virtualized Linux machine or two over a stack of NetGear switches and a LinkSys cable modem. Any suggestions?
A: In my home office, I placed my router between the cable modem and the rest of the network. I have had the same LinkSys broadband Ethernet router for five or six years and have no complaints. I chose it based on my requirements for controlling ports and settings for multiple computers and IP addresses. My wireless access point is inside the router boundary on the Ethernet.
To read Steve’s response in its entirety, please click here.
* Locking down the servers
By Ron Nutter
Q: During a recent IT audit, we got dinged for “too much” open access to the servers. To address the auditor’s concern and satisfy management, we are working on addressing what the auditor’s brought up. Since we are mostly a Cisco shop, there are two schools of thought on how to come up with a good resolution – using ACLs or adding an interior PIX to the network. Do you have any suggestions?
A: Both of the potential solutions you mention will work.
An advantage of ACLs is you could do it right now without incurring any additional costs or having to make server configuration changes. You can use either a basic or extended ACL. A basic ACL would probably keep the auditors happy, but might not be scalable enough.
To read Ron’s response in its entirety, please click here.
