Methods and apparatus for a computer network firewall with multiple domain support
DCFirst Claim
1. A method for validating a packet in a computer network, comprising the steps of:
- deriving a session key for said packet;
selecting at least one of a plurality of security policies as a function of the session key, wherein a security policy comprises multiple rules; and
using the selected at least one of the security policies in validating said packet.
3 Assignments
Litigations
0 Petitions
Accused Products
Abstract
The invention provides improved computer network firewalls which include one or more features for increased processing efficiency. A firewall in accordance with the invention can support multiple security policies, multiple users or both, by applying any one of several distinct sets of access rules. The firewall can also be configured to utilize “stateful” packet filtering which involves caching rule processing results for one or more packets, and then utilizing the cached results to bypass rule processing for subsequent similar packets. To facilitate passage to a user, by a firewall, of a separate later transmission which is properly in response to an original transmission, a dependency mask can be set based on session data items such as source host address, destination host address, and type of service. The mask can be used to query a cache of active sessions being processed by the firewall, such that a rule can be selected based on the number of sessions that satisfy the query. Dynamic rules may be used in addition to pre-loaded access rules in order to simplify rule processing. To unburden the firewall of application proxies, the firewall can be enabled to redirect a network session to a separate server for processing.
-
Citations
26 Claims
-
1. A method for validating a packet in a computer network, comprising the steps of:
-
deriving a session key for said packet; selecting at least one of a plurality of security policies as a function of the session key, wherein a security policy comprises multiple rules; and using the selected at least one of the security policies in validating said packet. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7)
-
-
8. A method for validating a packet in a computer network,
comprising the steps of: -
designating a plurality of independent security policies, wherein a security policy comprises multiple rules; determining which security policy is appropriate for the packet; and validating the packet using at least a portion of the multiple rules of the determined security policy. - View Dependent Claims (9, 10, 11)
-
-
12. An apparatus for use in validating a packet in a firewall of a computer network, the firewall designating a plurality of independent security policies, the apparatus comprising:
a processor associated with the firewall and operative (i) to process the packet to determine which of the security policies is appropriate for the packet, wherein a security policy comprises multiple rules, and (ii) to validate the packet using at least a portion of the multiple rules of the determined security policy. - View Dependent Claims (13, 14, 15)
-
16. A method of providing a firewall in a computer network, comprising the steps of:
-
segmenting a plurality of security policies into a plurality of domains, wherein a domain comprises at least one security policy and a security policy comprises multiple rules, and further wherein a plurality of administrators are associated with the plurality of domains; and administering the multiple rules such that only an administrator for a given domain is permitted to modify rules of a security policy for that domain.
-
-
17. A computer system for packet validation in a computer network, comprising:
-
means for obtaining at least one data item from a request for a session; means for selecting at least one of a plurality of security policies as a function of the data item, wherein a security policy comprises multiple rules; and means for using the selected at least one of the security policies in validating packets of the session. - View Dependent Claims (18, 19, 20, 21)
-
-
22. A method for packet validation in a computer network, comprising the steps of:
-
obtaining at least one data item from a request for a session; selecting at least one of a plurality of security policies as a function of the data item, wherein a security policy comprises multiple rules; and using the selected at least one of the security policies in validating packets of the session. - View Dependent Claims (23, 24, 25, 26)
-
Specification