During a security audit, you compare two perimeter devices. Appliance A keeps a table of each TCP three-way handshake and allows only packets that match an existing entry. Appliance B simply evaluates every packet against a static rule set without storing any session information. Which characteristic of Appliance A best identifies it as a stateful firewall?
Filters traffic solely based on static rules
Monitors and maintains the state of active connections
A stateful firewall can monitor and maintain the state of active connections. By building and consulting a state table, it makes filtering decisions based on the context and history of the session-something a stateless firewall, which inspects packets strictly against static rules, cannot do. Dynamic rule creation or raw performance differences are not defining traits; it is the connection-state tracking that distinguishes stateful inspection.
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