How often are internal host implemented firewalls employeed in the workplace for internal servers and desktops?
So far in nearly all of the companies I have worked for, I have not seen host implemented firewalls (iptables) employeed for internal servers or desktops. Just wondering how prevelent this is out there in the world.
Furthermore, is this a good thing or a bad thing and why?
Firewalls between the DMZ and the internal network are common. Within the internal network probably not as much. Windows has it’s default firewall which everyone hates and some people disable. Specifically setup firewalls, probably not very often as you would need so many holes in the firewall to let the employees work that anything an attacker might want to do wouldn’t take them very long to find a machine which has the access.
That said I worked at one company which had about 12 different internal networks with DENY all firewalls between them. Getting anything done was a nightmare and took hours of work to get the specific firewall hole that you needed opened up.
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