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I have two servers in the datacenter.

FreeBSD <--> Windows Server

FreeBSD configured as a gateway for Windows Server.

What is the best:

  1. FreeBSD has only firewall. All services are on the Win Server machine (e.g. firewall on FreeBSD, mail, web server on Windows Server)

  2. Services are on the both servers (e.g. mail/firewall on FreeBSD, web server on WinServer)

schroeder
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poison1456
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1 Answers1

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As a general rule of thumb, running other services on security-related devices such as firewalls should be kept to a minimum. In other words, a firewall should ideally only be a firewall, and nothing else. The more services you run, the more likely one of them will contain a vulnerability that can allow an attacker to take over the machine. If that machine happens to be a firewall, it will make it much easier to compromise the rest of the network.

tlng05
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