Centralized Administration of Distributed Firewalls

Allowing the connection of various networks to one's internal network while keeping the internal network protected from unauthorized access is key to success in this information age. Firewall systems are currently the best known way of achieving this objective. Management of these firewalls in a secure, consistent and reliable manner is a strategy that is imperative to the successful interconnection of diverse networks. This paper describes the technical implementation of a paradigm enabling the administration of distributed firewall systems from a centralized location.