Hosing Down Firewall Hype

Network administrators who place all their trust in firewalls copped stern words this week from a high-ranking engineer at one of the world's largest networking equipment vendors. "The idea behind firewalls doesn't work anymore," 3Com's global vice-president Pat Rudolph, said in an interview with your writer. "The idea behind firewalls is that people inside the network are trusted and that people outside the network are potentially malicious," he continued. "The problem is, if I take my laptop home and get infected on my home network because my kid's doing something he shouldn't be, I can then walk my laptop right past my firewall, and plug it into the corporate network. I can then infect the network." Rudolph also pointed out firewalls worked by leaving network ports open.

Source - ZDNet Australia