Meta-firewall: A sixth generation firewall — Part 1

Terminology in the firewall area is still confusing. Proxies, packet filters, ‘stateful’ filters, hybrid approaches, fifth generation firewalls and many more rule the market, and thus rule the user's mind of what is good and what is bad. But few people (1) have thought about the relationships between all those technologies, how they can interact, and how they can be integrated to increase security on a perimeter network to a maximum. Let us call this approach a ‘meta-firewall’, designed to provide maximum security for dedicated purposes. All of the issues involved in planning for a solution for any network cannot be discussed, but it is an approach to a new way of thinking what can be done with firewalls and the like. The first part of this two-part article begins to build the layers of security in a firewall for an imaginary company.