McAfee Firewall Enterprise (aka Sidewinder)

I figured since I went to the trouble of pointing out how nice the new ASDM interface was I would point out an equally nice interface for firewall management. The McAfee Firewall Enterprise (aka Sidewinder), I still just call it the Sidewinder, has a very nice user interface for managing that appliance.

It is an explorer type interface with navigation on the left and tasks on the right. It is laid out logically and because it is a native Windows app, is very fast. I can honestly say I have never had this interface crash on me.

Besides having a nice management interface the Sidewinder is just a darn good firewall. Although, be warned, it is a proxy based firewall, so setting up rules isn’t always as straight forward as you might find with other firewalls, but don’t let that scare you away.