Setting Up a New Device

In this chapter, we will cover how you can gain access to the console and web interface of a fresh-out-of-the-box firewall appliance or a cleanly staged Virtual Machine (VM). You will learn how to license, update, and upgrade the firewall so that the latest features are available when you start building your security policy, and the latest signatures are always loaded onto the device to protect your users and infrastructure from malware and vulnerability exploits.

We are going to harden your management configuration to ensure a rigid security stance, and we will also look at the different types of network interface modes—aggregated interfaces and routing.

In this chapter, we’re going to cover the following main topics:

• Gaining access to the user interface
• Adding licenses and setting up dynamic updates
• Upgrading the firewall
• Hardening the management interface
• Understanding the interface types

By the end of this chapter you’ll be able to quickly set up a fresh firewall, register it, and upgrade it to a desirable level in a short amount of time. You’ll be able to apply best practices and leverage strong authentication for your administrative access, and you will be able to quickly identify which interface configuration will suit any given network topology that the firewall needs to be placed in.