Book Image

Configuring IPCop Firewalls: Closing Borders with Open Source

Book Image

Configuring IPCop Firewalls: Closing Borders with Open Source

Overview of this book

IPCop is a powerful, open source, Linux based firewall distribution for primarily Small Office Or Home (SOHO) networks, although it can be used in larger networks. It provides most of the features that you would expect a modern firewall to have, and what is most important is that it sets this all up for you in a highly automated and simplified way. This book is an easy introduction to this popular application. After introducing and explaining the foundations of firewalling and networking and why they're important, the book moves on to cover using IPCop, from installing it, through configuring it, to more advanced features, such as configuring IPCop to work as an IDS, VPN and using it for bandwidth management. While providing necessary theoretical background, the book takes a practical approach, presenting sample configurations for home users, small businesses, and large businesses. The book contains plenty of illustrative examples.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
Configuring IPCop Firewalls
Credits
About the Authors
About the Reviewers
Preface
7
Virtual Private Networks
11
IPCop Support

Summary


In this chapter we have covered the basics of what an IDS is, how it works, how to use Snort with IPCop, and additional tools for use with Snort.

At this point we have knowledge of network protection, network monitoring, and at least a basic idea of what we would do if an attack attempt occurs. This puts us in a good situation on our network and ensures we are fully aware of what is going on. As mentioned in the introduction to this chapter, an IDS is supposed to give us a basic overview of the security status of the network—are we being attacked, where is it coming from, and what are the targets.

Armed with this information we can effectively increase the security of our network. Using an automated tool such as this means it is much easier for us to monitor these activities daily and ensure that we are always aware of our surroundings. Knowing how our network functions and what sort of data passes through it daily is an important measure in spotting network intrusions. We cannot be...