Reputation Driven Firewall Using Community Feedback
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Solution Overview
Problem
Traditional firewall approaches are ineffective in managing network access for unknown or malicious applications, as users lack the knowledge to make informed decisions, leading to potential harm from undesirable programs and frustration from annoying prompts.
Innovation Solution
A reputation-driven firewall system collects data from multiple clients on application attempts, exposes it to a community for feedback, and uses this feedback to generate reputations that automatically determine whether to permit or deny network access.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If traditional firewall prompts users to manually permit or deny each application's network access, then user control over network access is achieved, but user frustration increases and ineffective security decisions are made due to lack of user knowledge
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a reputation service as an intermediary between the firewall and applications. This service automatically evaluates applications and assigns reputation scores, eliminating the need for users to manually make security decisions while maintaining effective security control through automated trust assessments
Solution Approach 2:
The system enables applications to self-evaluate by allowing them to register with the reputation service and provide information about their functionality and security practices. This self-service approach allows applications to demonstrate their trustworthiness without requiring user intervention or complex firewall configuration
2Ease of operation
If all applications are permitted network access by default, then ease of use is maintained, but malicious or unknown applications can harm the system
Solution Approach 1:
The reputation service performs preliminary evaluation of applications before they are permitted network access. By pre-assessing applications and assigning reputation scores in advance, the system can automatically permit trusted applications while blocking potentially harmful ones, maintaining both ease of use and security
Solution Approach 2:
The system implements feedback loops where the reputation service continuously monitors application behavior and updates reputation scores based on observed activity. This ongoing feedback mechanism allows the system to adapt to new threats while maintaining permissive access for verified safe applications
Data Source
AI summary
Reputation based firewall policy techniques are described, in which, a computer-implemented method may be employed to collect data from a plurality of clients regarding an application attempting to access a network via the clients. The collected data may be exposed to a community of users to obtain feedback on the application which is used to produce a reputation for the application. The reputation may then be provided to the plurality of clients to determine whether to permit the attempt by the application.