Systematic Literature Review on Usability of Firewall Configuration

Abstract

Firewalls are network security components that handle incoming and outgoing network traffic based on a set of rules. The process of correctly configuring a firewall is complicated and prone to error, and it worsens as the network complexity grows. A poorly configured firewall may result in major security threats; in the case of a network firewall, an organization’s security could be endangered, and in the case of a personal firewall, an individual computer’s security is threatened. A major reason for poorly configured firewalls, as pointed out in the literature, is usability issues. Our aim is to identify existing solutions that help professional and non-professional users to create and manage firewall configuration files, and to analyze the proposals in respect of usability. A systematic literature review with a focus on the usability of firewall configuration is presented in the article. Its main goal is to explore what has already been done in this field. In the primary selection procedure, 1,202 articles were retrieved and then screened. The secondary selection led us to 35 articles carefully chosen for further investigation, of which 14 articles were selected and summarized. As main contributions, we propose a taxonomy of existing solutions as well as a synthesis and in-depth discussion about the state of the art in firewall usability. Among the main findings, we perceived that there is a lack (or even an absence) of usability evaluation or user studies to validate the proposed models. Although all articles are related to the topic of usability, none of them clearly defines it, and only a few actually employ usability design principles and/or guidelines.