F/Wvis: Hierarchical Visual Approach for Effective Optimization of Firewall Policy

Abstract

As an essential system for protecting internal networks and valuable information, the firewall monitors and controls network traffic in terms of access control, authentication, logging, and auditing. In particular, it carries out both allowing and blocking communications between internal and external networks based on proper Access Control List (ACL). However, a complex ACL along with huge network environments lead to exposing vulnerabilities and communication problems, because of anomalies among policies. Even though various techniques and applications combined with visualization approaches have been proposed, there is still a lack of usability caused by not only the limitation of the text-based interface but also the complexity of practical use. In order to solve these problems, this work proposes a 3D-based hierarchical visualization method, namely F/Wvis, for intuitive ACL management and analysis. The F/Wvis, particularly, supports ACL management for a large-scale network as well as analysis of detail anomalies on policies by providing a drill-down user interface through the hierarchical visualization approach. Further, the implemented system is evaluated against popular tools by network security experts to identify the usability and effectiveness in real-world situations a .

HSViz-II: Octet Layered Hierarchy Simplified Visualizations for Distributed Firewall Policy Analysis

“…The visualization offers 360-degree rotation, zoom in/out, rule selection, and 3D representation. TAEYONG KIM et al [12] proposed a 3D-based hierarchical visualization tool named F/Wvis. Notably, F/Wvis offers a drill-down user interface through a hierarchical visualization approach, supporting ACL management for large-scale networks and detailed anomaly analysis of policies.…”

Application of Visual Communication Technology in Image Enhancement and Optimization of Human Machine Interaction Interface

“…Local contrast enhancement methods need to be used to enhance the contrast of highfrequency areas in laser imaging images. Select 3 * 3 pixels from the original laser X-ray imaging image to enhance local contrast [6]. The method used in this process is local statistical method, and the expression is shown in equation ( 1):…”

An Optimized Approach for Assisted Firewall Anomaly Resolution

“…Another relevant classes of related work about the topic of firewall anomaly analysis is composed of studies ( [27], [28], [29], [30], [31], [32], [33], [34]) that propose platforms based on Graphic User Interfaces (GUIs), which provide functionalities such as zooming and manual adjustment of the firewall filtering effect areas to help human administrators to identify firewall policy anomalies. Specifically, Tran et al [27] propose PolicyVis, a 2D graphic interface that allows a thorough visualization of all possible firewall behaviors by considering all rules fields, actions and orders.…”

“…Among them, the most useful ones are the hierarchy view, which visualizes firewall policy ranges based on destination IP octets at the user's choice, and the anomaly and distributed views, which represent the policy in parallel coordinate charts, easing anomaly detection. Kim et al [34] introduces a system, named F/Wvis, that allows to visualizes both firewall policies and anomalies on the layout of an user interface with a 3D representation. From that, the user can almost immediately identify how many rules composed the firewall policy and which rule has anomalies with other rules from the same policy.…”