Protecting the core
Core firewalls (or clusters) are used to create the enforcement points between assets residing in different data center segments. Here are some examples:
- Internal application servers that belong to a particular department located in one segment, communicating with the database servers for the same department located in another segment, where both are members of Active Directory, with domain controllers in yet another segment. The following diagram illustrates this:
Figure 2.9 – Core networks segmentation
- Different components of a development environment, each located in their own segments, but using the same Active Directory, with domain controllers in another segment.
- Different components of infrastructure management residing in their own segments, such as a network operations center (NOC) or security operation center (SOC), forwarding logs to an SIEM or SOAR server residing in a different segment.
Segments...
