FIEP: An initial design of a firewall information exchange protocol

Abstract

FIEP, which stands for Firewall Information Exchange Protocol, is a mechanism that enables firewalls to communicate with each other and to form firewall groups in a network. Currently, there is no protocol that allows firewalls to communicate with each other and to exchange information. Until recently, not much thought was given to the need for firewalls to talk to each other. A firewalled network is isolated from the rest of the networks and is considered to be secure. But a firewalled network is not totally secure as it is still prone to distributed attacks. The objective of developing FIEP is to further strengthen the network security through firewalls sharing information with each other and keeping each other informed of any status changes. Like the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) that enables routers to exchange routing information and keeps them updated, FIEP allows the firewalls to update each other on changes of access control rules, to form groups and notify members in a group of new and removed firewalls, and to alert each other in the network about attacks. FIEP is a TCP/IP based protocol that provides a communication mechanism for two or more firewalls to communicate with each other, and sanctions both static and dynamic configurations of firewalls. The initial design of FIEP includes three modes of communication among firewalls and has a set of seven states. The initial simulation results are promising.