The Check Point Certified Security Administrator
(CCSA) certification is a foundation level certification.
CCSA certified professionals are expected to be able
to do installation and management of Check Point's VPN-1/FireWall-1
product. The objectives covered by this exam are as
below:
objectives:
Install, configure VPN-1/FireWall-1
Log management
Intrusion detection and prevention
Set up and configure user, client, and
session authentication
VPN-1/FireWall-1 performance optimization
Security gateways deployment and management
Install and configure network address
translation
There are two versions of CCSA. One is CCSA CP 2000 (156-205)
and the other is CCSA NG (156-210). Duration of the exam is
90 minutes (120 minutes for non-English) and a minimum score
of 70%. For further details, visit the official website of CCSA,
CheckPoint Software, click
here.
1. The purpose of a firewall is to ensure security in communications
between internal and external networks. A firewall allows or
disallows communication across the firewall in accordance with
a pre-defined security policy.
2. Firewall implementations: There are different implementations
of firewalls. Most notable among these are:
A firewall implemented with the Packet Filters work
at Network Layer of ISO/OSI stack.
A firewall implemented with the Application Layer Gateways
work at the Application Layer of ISO/OSI stack.
A Firewall implemented with stateful technology (like
Checkpoint Firewall-1) works at all layers of IS/OSI model.
3. A firewall implemented with stateful inspection technology
(FireWall-1 uses stateful inspection) has several advantages
over packet filter:
Application Layer Gateway
Packet Filters
Stateful Inspection
Communication Information
Partial
Partial
Yes
Communication Derived State
No
Partial
Yes
Application Derived State
No
Yes
Yes
Information Manipulation
No
Yes
Yes
4. The following information are used by Firewall-1 that
uses stateful inspection technology:
Communication information from different layers of TCP/IP
stack
The state derived from previous communications
The state derived from other applications, for example,
a previously authenticated user would be allowed to access
through the firewall for authorized services only.
5. Hardware / software requirements:
The following are FireWall-1 GUI Management Clients Minimum
Requirements:
Platforms: Windows 9x, Windows NT 4.0 SP4, 5, 6, and
X/Motif Client.
Disk Space: 40 Mbytes
Memory: 32 MB Minimum and 64 MB recommended.
The minimum requirements for installing Management Server
are:
Windows: Windows NT 4.0 (SP4, SP5, SP6)
Solaris 2.6 and Solaris Operating Environment 7 (32
bit installation mode only)
IBM AIX 4.3.1 and 4.3.2
Red Hat Linux 6.1
SPARC x86 HP-UX 10.20, HP-UX 11.0
6.1 The essential components of a FireWall-1 Single Gateway
Product are:
Management Module - Security management module with
graphical user interface.
Inspection Module - This module is responsible for implementing
access control, Client authentication, and session authentication.
Network Address Translation is also done here.
Firewall Module - User authentication, and content security
6.2 FireWall-1's FireWall Module contains the following components:
FireWall-1 Daemon: This is responsible for communication
modules, clients and hosts.
Inspection Module: Access control, Authentication, NAT
and auditing are the responsibility of Inspection Module.
Inspection module contains INSPECT engine.
Security Server: This is responsible for handling authentication
of packets for any specific service or protocol
For Single Gateway product, the FireWall Module and Management
Module must be installed on the same machine. However, GUI can
be installed on another machine.
7. CP 2000 FireWall-1 has 3 GUI programs:
Security Policy Editor
System Status
Log Viewer
8. FireWall-1 is based on Client - Server model of operation.
Note that in FireWall-1, the modules like Management Server
can be separated from the GUI.
9. The basic components of a FireWall-1 Single Gateway Product
are:
Management Module - Security management module with
graphical user interface.
Inspection Module - This module is responsible for implementing
access control, Client authentication, and session authentication.
Network Address Translation is also done here.
Firewall Module - User authentication, and content security.
It is possible that a single Management module manages one
or more FireWall modules. The Management module consists of
a GUI client and a Management Server.
10. The FireWall-1 module sits in between the Data Link and
the Network layers ( layer 2 and layer 3).
