Understanding firewall rules is time consuming, complicated and hard. The majority of people know how to turn their firewalls off, but do these people know exactly what it is they are doing or even why?

Probably not, nor could they be expected to.

Viral Maniar, APR.Intern and RMIT Masters student, spends his days deciphering the complexity of firewall rules. He undertook an internship at Biarri Networks 鈥� an innovative commercial mathematics company 鈥� to investigate new methods of visually representing firewalls.

Firewalls are built with a set of do or do not allow rules, usually concerning where a computer is connecting from and what it is trying to do. Two or three rules are easy to follow and understand, however sometimes a firewall might have to follow a thousand (sometimes even a million!) rules.

Finding patterns or irregularities becomes harder the more rules there are.

Visualisation tools help people to “see” the data. By clustering common connections and using听colouring schemes in the visualisation, patterns that may be indicative of intrusions 鈥� such as the use of restricted communication protocols 鈥� can be clearly identified.

鈥淗umans are much better at seeing some types of irregularities than computers,鈥� Viral says. 鈥淏uilding a visualisation tool makes finding irregularities more interactive and aids in detecting security loopholes in some firewall rules.鈥�

During his internship Viral developed a web application able to load different sets of firewall rules visually. Someone using this application is able to modify and filter how the rules appear (using colour schemes etc.) to discover if any loopholes or irregularities exist.

鈥淰iral, Biarri and NBN Co used the tool to review a set of firewalls in use at NBN Co,鈥� says Paul Kennedy, CEO Biarri Networks. 鈥淣BN Co are using the results to inform firewall management procedures.鈥�

Viral has recently gained employment as a security analyst for a major consultancy and says having the internship experience under his belt made all the difference, 鈥淚 learnt a lot about firewall security and firewall management and gained invaluable industry skills.鈥�

Intern:听Viral Maniar, RMIT University听
Industry Partner:听Paul Kennedy, CEO Biarri Networks听
Academic Mentor:听听Assoc. Prof. Serdar Boztas, RMIT University

Perhaps thinking like a computer is more important than knowing how to 颅program one.

Debate in education circles is raging about where computer science and 颅technology studies fit in our national schooling system, and whether practical programming and coding skills are required to feed an increasingly hungry IT workforce.

A review of the national curriculum released by federal Education Minister Christopher Pyne earlier this month and has sparked a heated response.

The government announced earlier this month it will invest $12 million in boosting STEM subjects in Australia 鈥� 颅science, technology, engineering and maths 鈥� which are severely lacking, according to the 今日吃瓜. However, as 颅The Australian Financial Review commentator David Havyatt observed, over the national schooling system, $12 million works out to about $4 a head.

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