Firewall Builder for PIX

Firewall Builder is a powerful software tool for configuring and managing firewalls on multiple platforms. With both a GUI and policy compilers for various firewall platforms, Firewall Builder provides flexibility and ease of use. The object-oriented approach is particularly helpful, allowing administrators to maintain a database of network objects and edit policies using simple drag-and-drop operations.

Supporting iptables, ipfilter, OpenBSD PF, and Cisco PIX, Firewall Builder offers a technical summary of features supported by the policy compilers for all platforms in the "Modules" section. With its vendor-neutral approach, Firewall Builder can generate configuration files for any supported target firewall platform from the same policy created in its GUI, providing reliable policy management for heterogeneous environments and a possible migration path.

Additionally, with the purchase of Firewall Builder for PIX, administrators can access all functions of PIX, including the latest features added in v6.3. Firewall Builder supports the management of multiple firewalls using the same network object database, ensuring consistent policy implementation across all machines. Changes made to an object are immediately reflected in the policy of all firewalls using the object, and administrators only need to recompile and install policies on actual firewall machines.

Firewall Builder effectively abstracts specific target firewall platforms, allowing administrators to focus on implementing security policies. The software's backend components can deduce many parameters of policy rules using information available through network and service objects. This capability allows Firewall Builder to generate complex code for the target firewall and relieves administrators from the burden of remembering all its details and limitations. Policy compilers can run sanity checks on firewall rules and catch typical errors, ensuring the generated policy is deployed without problems.

Firewall Builder has a minimum requirement of firewallbuilder >= 2.0.2. The latest release of Firewall Builder fixes a bug that created unnecessary "clear acl" commands for the ACLs used in "nat" and "static" commands. Further minor improvements have been made in the fwb_pix_diff utility for PIX 7.x.