Edu-firewall device: An advanced firewall hardware device for information security education

Abstract

Firewalls are security devices used to apply an organization's security policy. However, commercial firewalls, such as Juniper Networks and Cisco ASA firewall devices, are mainly designed to be used by networking and security professionals, are not very appropriate for the academia environment, and lack simplicity. In addition, commercial firewalls are usually considered high-cost hardware devices. However, academic institutions usually have tight budget and few financial resources for purchasing networking and security devices for their laboratories. To overcome the aforementioned limitation of commercial firewalls, an educational firewall hardware device, called Edu-Firewall, is discussed and demonstrated. Edu-Firewall main objectives are to offer advanced educational security functions that are not commonly available in current commercial firewalls, and an easy-to-use friendly graphical interface to configure the firewall and manipulate the filtering rules. In addition, Edu-Firewall's objective is to offer an affordable educational device, compared to the available commercial firewall devices. Edu-Firewall allows students to implement hands-on lab exercises on firewalls and better anatomize network traffic filtering concepts and firewall configuration, and contributes to enhance students' hands-on security skills.