1. Overview
This document provides the step-by-step process for requesting, approving, implementing, and reviewing a firewall rule change. This process is designed to ensure that all changes are authorized, documented, and compliant with the Firewall Rule Standard.
2. Prerequisites
- The requestor must have a clear, documented business or technical justification for the rule change.
- The requestor must know the specific source IPs, destination IPs, and destination ports/protocols required.
3. Process Steps
- Initiate Request: The requestor opens a “Firewall Rule Request” ticket in Jira.
- Action: The requestor must complete all fields in the form, providing detailed and accurate information. Vague requests (e.g., “open port 443 for server X”) will be rejected.
- Manager Approval: The Jira workflow automatically routes the ticket to the requestor’s direct manager for approval.
- Action: The manager reviews the business justification. If approved, the ticket proceeds. If rejected, the ticket is closed.
- SLA: 2 business days.
- Technical Review: The ticket is assigned to the Network Engineering team queue.
- Action: A network engineer reviews the request against the
firewall-rule-standard.md. They check for specificity, rule shadowing, and overall security impact. The engineer may ask for clarification or suggest alternatives.
- SLA: 3 business days.
- Implementation: If the technical review is approved, the network engineer schedules and implements the change during the next available change window.
- Action: The engineer applies the rule change and performs post-implementation testing to ensure functionality and verify that only the intended access was granted.
- Notification: The requestor is notified of the successful implementation via the Jira ticket. The ticket is then resolved.
4. Expected Outcomes
- All firewall rule changes are properly authorized and documented, creating a clear audit trail.
- Firewall rules are implemented in a way that adheres to the principle of least privilege.
- The requestor is kept informed of the status of their request throughout the process.