Experiences Validating the Access Policy Tool in Industrial Settings

The Access Policy Tool (APT) analyzes the firewall configuration in an enterprise network for compliance with a global access policy, such as one that describes the industry's best practices. APT is the culmination of several years of academic research and development; in this last year, we have been working with industrial partners in the energy sector to validate the results of the tool. More importantly, through this interaction, we've learned of significant requirements for tools like APT that must be met for real industrial use, and have incorporated the changes needed in APT to meet those requirements. This paper describes our experience with validating APT, and documents its performance on systems of the scale on our industrial partners.