Distributed firewall comes with predefined categories for firewall rules. Categories allow you to organize security policies.

Categories are evaluated from left to right (Ethernet > Emergency > Infrastructure > Environment > Application), and the distributed firewall rules within the category are evaluated top down.
Table 1. Distributed Firewall Rule Categories
Ethernet

It is recommended to include Layer 2 rules for this category

 Emergency

It is recommended to include quarantine and allow rules for this category

 Infrastructure

It is recommended to include rules which define access to shared services. For example:

  • AD
  • DNS
  • NTP
  • DHCP
  • Backup
  • Management servers
 Environment

It is recommended to include rules between zones. For example:

  • Production vs development
  • PCI vs non-PCI
  • Inter business unit rules
 Application

It is recommended to include rules between:

  • Applications
  • Application tiers
  • Micro services