Ask Slashdot: Is Running Mission-Critical Servers Without a Firewall Common?

An anonymous reader writes: I do some contract work on the side, and am helping a client set up a new point-of-sale system. For the time being, it's pretty simple: selling products, keeping track of employee time, managing inventory and the like. However, it requires a small network because there are two clients, and one of the clients feeds off of a small SQL Express database from the first. During the setup, the vendor disabled the local firewall, and in a number of emails back and forth since (with me getting more and more aggravated) they went from suggesting that there's no need for a firewall, to outright telling me that's just how they do it and the contract dictates that's how we need to run it. This isn't a tremendous deal today, but with how things are going, odds are there will be e-Commerce worked into it, and probably credit card transactions... which worries the bejesus out of me.

So my question to the Slashdot masses: is this common? In my admittedly limited networking experience, it's been drilled into my head fairly well that not running a firewall is lazy (if not simply negligent), and to open the appropriate ports and call it a day. However, I've seen forum posts here and there with people admitting they run their clients without firewalls, believing that the firewall on their incoming internet connection is good enough, and that their client security will pick up the pieces. I'm curious how many real professionals do this, or if the forum posts I'm seeing (along with the vendor in question) are just a bunch of clowns.

Comments

Re:It Depends

[i.r.id10t]

Depends on the quality of the web apps running under LAMP

If they get hacked, it may be possible for the attacker to spawn a new process running on some other port (ie, a shell), or sending stuff out to other machines, so having a firewall that only allows the services you have listening may be good, as well as possibly having it restrict new outgoing connections.

And no, you don't need to write complicated iptables scripts/rules to do this. The ufw utility (available in Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, etc) has truly simple syntax

ufw allow ssh
ufw allow http
ufw allow https
ufw enable

Re:Fire(wall) and forget

[plover]

It doesn't matter if it's a rational argument backed up by facts or not, or if he's done a risk assessment, or if it's a free, cheap, or expensive firewall. The Payment Card Industry's Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) has as their very first requirement 1: "Install and maintain a firewall configuration to protect cardholder data." It's not an optional requirement, and you can't justify not having one.

If you're going to handle credit cards on the system, it has to be protected with a firewall.

If your POS vendor isn't requiring a firewall, either they are not selling a system that takes credit cards, or they are selling shoddy, insecure systems that are in violation of PCI DSS. Fixing these problems will cost you dearly; worst case, they are setting you up for a breach.