User's Manual Part 2

Using Rules
Chapter 9: Setting Your Security Policy 211
Using Rules
The Safe@Office appliance checks the protocol used, the ports range, and the
destination IP address, when deciding whether to allow or block traffic.
User-defined rules have priority over the default security policy rules and provide
you with greater flexibility in defining and customizing your security policy.
For example, if you assign your company’s accounting department to the LAN
network and the rest of the company to the DMZ network, then as a result of the
default security policy rules, the accounting department will be able to connect to
all company computers, while the rest of the employees will not be able to access
any sensitive information on the accounting department computers. You can
override the default security policy rules, by creating firewall rules that allow
specific DMZ computers (such a manager’s computer) to connect to the LAN
network and the accounting department.
The Safe@Office appliance processes user-defined rules in the order they appear in
the Rules table, so that rule 1 is applied before rule 2, and so on. This enables you
to define exceptions to rules, by placing the exceptions higher up in the Rules table.