Prevention is always better than cure. The same holds good for cyber security too.

That’s why, all server networks should have firewall system to protect from attacks. Pfsense is a popular open source firewall that comes with powerful features and configuration options.

At Bobcares, we often get requests from customers to secure their servers or network as part of our Infrastructure Management Services.

Today, we’ll see the Pfsense best practices that our Support Engineers follow while securing servers.

 

What makes Pfsense popular?

Firstly, let’s take a look on the factors that make Pfsense popular.

To begin with, Pfsense comes free of cost. Similarly, it has opensource design. Multiple users actively working on the source code can easily identify vulnerability and fix it.

Also, Pfsense has tons of additional features for network routing, remote connectivity, diagnostics, reporting, etc.

From our experience in server administration, we see customers using Pfsense as a VPN router, Network firewall and more. This gives them ability to configure it as a firewall to put rules and other security settings over the private network.

Yet another advantage of Pfsense is its scalability. When your network expands, you can easily expand the resources on your pfSense infrastructure. That’s why, our Dedicated Engineers often recommend Pfsense to enterprise customers too.

With it’s feature rich web interface, Pfsense becomes one of the best options for the home users too.

 

Best practices in Pfsense configuration

So far, we saw the many reasons for the popularity of Pfsense. After choosing Pfsense, there will be always be a need for configuration to match the exact networking settings. Not following the correct configuration can risk the security of your entire network.

Let’s now see the best practices that our Support Engineers follow in Pfsense configuration.

 

1. Restricted Admin access

Just like any other software, Pfsense comes with an Admin access. This gives complete control over the Pfsense configuration, rules, etc. Thus, an admin access compromise can be fatal. That’s why, we impose security measures on admin access. This includes restricting the admin access of Pfsense with a strong password, allowing IP based access to Admin portal, etc.

Here, we create additional access control list and selectively allow admin access for certain IP addresses. Again, if remote access is necessary, we encourage customers to do all firewall administration over a secure VPN.

 

2. Avoid unencrypted traffic

It is an accepted fact that unencrypted traffic can be dangerous. To avoid the risk of having an attack, we ensure that Pfsense supports Cryptographic features. Here, our Support Engineers primarily ensure the availability of the kernel module cryptodev. 

Further, we enable the option in Pfsense web interface with the following step.

Go to web GUI,  System -> Advanced -> Miscellaneous -> Cryptographic Hardware Acceleration, we select the option “AES-NI CPU-based Acceleration (aesni)” and save the changes.

 

3. Restrict internal network access

Similarly, we impose strict restriction rules for the IP address from the internal network too. Let’s see how internal network can affect security.

Basically, it’s a common myth that the attack can happen only from public network. But, that’s not the case always. At times, an attacker who has already created a back door in one of the private network machine can also create problems. That’s why, we allow selected access to specific ports or applications even for internal computers.

 

4. Proper updates

Further, we always ensure proper and timely updates for Pfsense. An outdated firewall is as good as NO firewall. Pfsense web panel readily shows the available updates.

When updates are available, our Dedicated Engineers install updates from web panel or from the console. Firstly, we navigate to System > Updates. Then, set Branch to Latest stable version. Later, we refresh the repository configuration and upgrade script by running the following commands from the console:

pkg-static clean -ay; pkg-static install -fy pkg pfSense-repo pfSense-upgrade

 

5. Periodic backup

Pfsense holds many firewall rules that matches your custom network settings. So, it is really important to save a copy of the Pfsense configuration at a safe place periodically. These backups can become life savers in case of any software crash.

 

6. Managing from console

Similarly, managing Pfsense from the console is a great option. Console gives many options to reboot or shutdown the firewall, reset the firewall back to factory default, assign interfaces, and more.

Recently, when a customer reported access problems with Pfsense web interface, our Support Engineers quickly did a reset of the password for the webConfigurator from the console.

 

7. Avoid abrupt shutdown

Last, but not the least, we always ensure the graceful shutdown of Pfsense firewall to avoid corruption of configuration.

When the virtual machine running Pfsense shutdown abruptly, problems can arise due to disk corruption. This may end up in  complete reinstall of the PfSense software. To avoid this, our Dedicated Engineers always encourage customers to ensure proper power backup for the Pfsense machine.

If at all there is a need for turning off the firewall, we always shut it down gracefully from the Diagnostics menu in the web GUI or Halt System option in the console.

[Need advise on enhancing server security? We are here to help you.]

 

Conclusion

In short, Pfsense can really help to make your network secure by functioning as a VPN router, firewall and more. Today, we saw the Pfsense best practices followed by our Support Engineers that helps to enhance the security of network.