Firewall & Network Security Advice

This category covers firewalls, VPNs, SD-WAN equipment and remote access gateways: the devices that sit between your business and the internet and decide what traffic gets in and out. Because these devices face the internet directly, a serious flaw in one can expose the whole network behind it, which is why attackers often look for them first.
The articles are written for Australian small and medium businesses and home users who want to know whether a security alert affects them without having to read through every vendor bulletin. Recent posts cover critical, actively exploited vulnerabilities in Cisco SD-WAN Manager and in Citrix NetScaler ADC and Gateway. Each article explains which products are affected, how serious the issue is and what to patch or check first.
Whatever brand of firewall or VPN you use, a few habits go a long way:
Keep firmware and software up to date, and apply security updates promptly when a vendor rates a flaw as critical or says it is being actively exploited.
Limit administrative access. Avoid exposing the management interface to the internet where you can, use strong unique passwords and multi-factor authentication for admin accounts, and remove accounts that are no longer needed.
Subscribe to your vendor’s security advisories and keep an eye on alerts from the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC), so you hear about urgent issues early.
Review firewall and VPN rules from time to time and remove any that no longer serve a purpose.
Keep a current backup of each device’s configuration, so it can be restored after a failure or reset.
If a device has reached end of life and no longer receives security updates, plan to replace it, because newly discovered flaws will not be fixed.