Practical OPNsense: Building Enterprise Firewalls with Open Source

Traditional packet filters are becoming obsolete, as even the open-source community shifts towards Next-Generation Firewalls. OPNsense stands out as a leading solution for intrusion detection, application control, web filtering, and antivirus protection.

No network is too small to escape the attention of attackers. Home networks, smart appliances like washing machines and smartwatches, all face security threats and require robust protection.

Firewalls are an integral part of a security strategy, shielding computers and networks from both known and emerging threats. A firewall offers the best protection when its features are well-understood, easy to manage, and strategically placed within the network infrastructure.

OPNsense rises to this challenge, meeting these criteria in various ways. This book serves as the perfect guide to understanding, installing, and configuring an OPNsense firewall.

Each chapter addresses real-world scenarios, covers theoretical concepts, and includes practical lab exercises to reinforce learning. It then provides solutions using OPNsense’s techniques and tools, with a technical focus.

While the chapters are mostly standalone, they gradually increase in complexity. The topics cater to both beginners and professionals, making it suitable for a wide range of readers.

This book is a practical guide to using OPNsense, an open-source firewall and routing platform, to build enterprise-level network security solutions.

The book is designed for IT professionals, network administrators, and anyone interested in learning how to deploy, configure, and manage firewalls in an enterprise environment using OPNsense. Some of the key topics covered in the book include:

Major topics include:

– Installation of OPNsense on physical hardware, VMware or VirtualBox
– Initial setup
– Updates and configuration
– IPv6
– Transparent firewall
– Address translation (NAT)
– Management interface
– IPsec and OpenVPN
– Web Proxy
– Authentication
– Multi-WAN
– Intrusion Detection
– High Availability
– API
– Performance Tuning