FirePass questions

[john.smith () minolta-qms com]

Greetings Everyone,

        I've searched through the 2002 and 2003 Bugtraq, Firewall Wizards and VPN lists and not come up with anything.

        A group within our company is looking at the FirePass appliance (www.uroam.com).  The appliance appears to work 
by punching a hole through your firewall and offers a whole range of services.

        My opinion is that this is a *very* bad thing:

        a) The group wants connectivity from a large enough number of locations that filtering would be next to 
impossible, if not impossible, therefore we would have to allow access to it from the whole world.
        b) We would eliminate the firewall from the security equation.
        c) We would be depending on the security of the appliance to protect the corporation, and it is designed to 
*grant* access, not prevent or deny it.

        My questions:

        1) Does anyone have any experience with the FirePass?
        2) Is there a way to securely offer access to this box?
        3) Am I totally off base in my above assumptions and my analysis of the appliance?

        Chances are I will be required to install this box.  In this case the middle ground I am shooting for is only 
granting access to the box via VPN (even though they are eliminating 'traditional' VPN from the picture according to 
their literature).  We already use VPN, so to me only allowing external access through the VPN is a trade-off - our 
security stance is no worse than it was before.

        Thanks for all your help.

js
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