Usable Firewall Rule Sets

Abstract: Correct functioning is the most important requirement for any system. Nowadays there are a lot of threats to computer systems that undermine confidence in them and, as a result, force a user to abandon their use. Hence, a system cannot be trusted if there is no proper security provided. Firewalls are an essential component of network security and there is an obvious need for their use.The level of security provided by a firewall depends on how well it is configured. Thus, to ensure the proper level of network security, it is necessary to have properly configured firewalls. However, setting up the firewall correctly is a very challenging task. These configuration files might be hard to understand even for system administrators. This is due to the fact that these configuration files have a certain structure: the higher the position of a rule in the rule set, the higher priority it has. Challenging problems arise when a new rule is being added to the set, and a proper position, where to place it, needs to be found. Misconfiguration might sooner or later be made and that will lead to an inappropriate system's security. This brings us to the usability problem associated with the configuration of firewalls.The overall aim of this thesis is to identify existing firewall usability gaps and to mitigate them. To achieve the first part of the objective, we conducted a series of interviews with system administrators. In the interviews, system administrators were asked about the problems they face when dealing with firewalls. After having ascertained that the usability problems exist, we turned to literature to get an understanding on the state-of-the-art of the field and therefore conducted a systematic literature review. This review presents a classification of available solutions and identifies open challenges in this area. To achieve the second part of the objective, we started working on one identified challenge. A set of usability metrics was proposed and mathematically formalized. A strong correlation between our metrics and how system administrators describe usability was identified.