Electrical Connection Summer 2016

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56 E L EC TR I C AL CONNEC T I ON SUMME R 20 1 6
A NETWORK’S GUARDIAN ANGEL
It’s funny but when someone with 27
years’ experience as an IT warrant
officer in the US Armed Forces talks to
you about network security, you
can’t help but listen... and get just a
little scared.
Dave Putman (pictured) is the vice
president and CTO of FireFX. He, along
with the company’s founder, Larry
Allhands, are current serving member of
Texas Army National Guard.
Most recently, the company launched
a new product called the Network
Guardian, which combines all of Larry and
Dave’s military IT experience into one box
that makes the average firewall look, well,
pretty poor.
“There is currently a severe lack of what
we would consider ‘true security’ in home
networking,” Dave says.
“Our idea of true security is based upon
our experience in the military securing
networks in Afghanistan and Iraq.
“Six years ago we started building
media systems as a hobby and having
fun with it. Five years ago we started
building them to sell.
“Recently, people started to ask us to
consult on jobs as far as network security
was concerned. One of our integrators
actually said they wished they could put
us in a box because the AV world doesn’t
have our level of security training. So we
decided to build a system that would, out
of the box, allow integrators to benefit
from our education and experience.”
Dave explains that Network Guardian
comes preconfigured so integrators can
“secure a house more correctly”.
“Security of home networks is as
important to me as the security of
national secrets,” Dave says.
“Of course, it just has to be more
affordable because a $5,000 firewall from
Cisco at home isn’t practical.”
The majority of firewalls on the market
‘do firewall’ really well, he says.
“They feature stateful packet inspection
(SPI), which is the current industry
standard; they do ‘natting’ really well; and
some do VLAN management. That’s it.
“It’s like having a security guard at the
gate but all he’s doing is looking outside
to make sure nothing bad comes in
without being invited.
“That’s the problem with SPI. A lot of
people think that all they need is an SPI
firewall but there’s so much more to true
security than that.”
Dave explains that in military
applications, what’s inside the network is
just as important as what’s on the outside.
“Generally speaking, every request
that originates from inside a network
goes through a firewall to get out. When
that request returns, an SPI firewall sees
that it started inside the network so it
lets it back in, even if it’s a malware
packet or virus.
“With military networks, we monitor
both sides of the firewall. We watch the
outside for known threats as well as
what’s happening inside the network.
So, if you’re on a website and click a link
that we know is questionable, we stop it
before it ever leaves the firewall.
“Further, if you click a legitimate link but
somewhere on the outside of your firewall
your connection gets hijacked, when
that traffic comes back our active packet
inspection will filter out the problems.”
The FireFX Network Guardian also
features anti-spam, anti-virus and anti-
malware filtering.
> Wavetrain
AS NETWORKS BECOME
INCREASINGLY PREVALENT,
SECURITY IS GROWING IN
IMPORTANCE. PAUL SKELTON
LOOKS AT A NEW PRODUCT THAT
COULD TRUMP THEM ALL.
FIREWALL