Firewall Policy Reengineering

Abstract

Firewalls play a critical role in network security, acting as the first line of defense, filtering incoming and outgoing traffic based on a set of predefined rules. The sequential addition of rules over time leads to inconsistencies, redundancies, and performance degradation. This paper presents a methodology for firewall policy reengineering, seeking to achieve three fundamental properties: consistency, completeness, and compactness. By utilizing Firewall Decision Diagrams (FDDs), a structured approach is provided for optimizing rule sets, minimizing conflicts and improving maintainability.