Migrating Services Between Firewall Technologies

This paper describes the considerations that are essential to address when a corporate firewall infrastructure is replaced with new technology. The focus is on a business environment where services pass through high availability firewalls and any loss of service can immediately result in significant financial loss or worse. This paper has deliberately been written independent of specific firewall products. This is not a step-by-step guide. It is an aid to assist firewall administrators with project management issues and technical issues that could result in unplanned outages. Fundamental to successful firewall service migrations is a sound knowledge of current security principles as they relate to the company security policy, technical understanding of the security technologies involved, understanding of the business dependency on the firewall infrastructure, and close management of all changes including potential impact.