Summary

This concludes our discussion of the fundamentals of perimeter design. In the course of this chapter, we talked about the need to carefully examine our environment before jumping into design. Also, by spending time in the planning stages of the deployment, we minimize late changes to the network's architecture, thus saving time and money. Business needs drive all security requirements in the real world, and we must understand our goals and requirements before deciding what traffic should be blocked at the border and how many firewalls should be deployed. Recognizing that organizations differ in their business needs, we discussed several popular building block patterns and explained their advantages and disadvantages. We will use these principles in the upcoming chapters to empower you to create a robust network perimeter that meets your security and business needs.