Wednesday, December 3, 2008

So how's that firewall working out for ya?

SonicWall makes firewalls (actually firewall-IDS-antivirus uber boxes) that they sell to businesses. The businesses turn them on, during which the firewall connects back to a SonicWall license server to get enabled.

Seems that the license server took a dirt nap. Seems some customers had their firewall protection turned off for 12 hours.
The issue was brought to our attention by Reg Rip who reports that the licensing server woes left some firewall users exposed for up to 12 hours on Tuesday. Computerworld adds that SonicWALL's customer support section has filed up with adverse comments about the issue, particularly from a shop reportedly flooded with a deluge of spam and malware as a result of the glitch.
Oops. Didn't see that one coming.

As someone who works in the security industry, it's ungood to shut your customers off suddenly. It's double plus ungood to cut them off by mistake.

1 comment:

  1. Oooh, somebody forgot security fault tolerance rule number one:

    FAIL CLOSED NOT OPEN

    ReplyDelete

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