Firewall Usability and Visualization : A Systematic Literature Review

Firewalls are network security components that allow administrators to handle incoming and outgoing traffic based on a set of rules. Such security appliances are typically the first line of defense, creating a barrier between organization’s internal network and the outside network (e.g., Internet). The process of correctly configuring a firewall is complex and error prone, and it only gets worse as the complexity of the network grows. A vulnerable firewall configuration will very likely result in major threats to the organization’s security. In this report we aim to investigate how to make administrator task of planning and implementing firewall solutions easier, from the stand points of usability and visualization. Our scientific investigation starts with the understanding of the state-of-the-art on this specific field. To do so, we conducted a Systematic Literature Review (SLR), a strict methodology to plan a literature review, to gather relevant information, to synthesize and compare approaches, and to report findings. During the initial search process thousands of papers were screened, leading us to 125 papers carefully selected for further readings. In the secondary study, ten relevant works were identified and assessed, in which authors tackled the issues of usability and visualization for Firewalls and Personal Firewalls. Among the main findings, we perceive that there is a lack (or even absence) of user studies to validate the proposed models. This leads us to a series of unwarranted solutions, that need to be prototyped and tested with real users. We also see an huge opportunity for integrative approaches, that could combine firewall research areas, such as automatic anomaly detection, advisory systems, and varying visualization schemes.High Quality Networked Services in a Mobile World (HITS