Security Policies Overview

In a JUNOS software stateful firewall, the security policies enforce rules for the transit traffic, in terms of what traffic can pass through the firewall, and the actions that need to take place on the traffic as it passes through the firewall. From the perspective of security policies, the traffic enters one security zone and exits another security zone. This combination of a from-zone and to-zone is called a context. Each context contains an ordered list of policies.

A security policy, which can be configured from the user interface, controls the traffic flow from one zone to another zone by defining the kind(s) of traffic permitted from specified IP sources to specified IP destinations at scheduled times.

Policies allow you to deny, permit, reject (deny and send a TCP RST or ICMP port unreachable message to the source host), encrypt and decrypt, authenticate, prioritize, schedule, filter, and monitor the traffic attempting to cross from one security zone to another. You decide which users and what data can enter and exit, and when and where they can go.

Note: For a J-series or SRX-series device that supports virtual systems, policies set in the root system do not affect policies set in virtual systems.

Copyright © 2009, Juniper Networks, Inc. All rights reserved. Trademark Notice.