Which Firewall?

[Justin Sherrill]

On Mon, Dec 15, 2014 at 9:42 PM, Jeremy <dyre17 at gmail.com> wrote:

> I want to learn networking & network security. I want to understand how
> people attack systems so that I can mitigate these attacks as much as
> possible.

It sounds like you're more in need of a general overview so you know
where to go.  You could use a specific firewall tool, but you don't
necessarily know enough to judge one over the other.

Two good people to start with would be Bruce Schneier and Richard Bejtlich:

https://www.schneier.com/

http://taosecurity.blogspot.com/

The both have separate books to read, and write prolifically online.
Read through what they talk about, and see where it takes you.

Past that, if you get to a scenario like "I need to protect a network
site with a fiber link, several outward facing webservers, and a few
internal-only applications, with 50 users", that gives you a target to
work towards.  Also workable is "I want to set up a software
router/firewall for my home instead of using a Linksys router or
similar." Think about that part, of what goal you want to set.