What are the risks of placing enterprise users in a DMZ?

What are the risks of placing enterprise users in a DMZ?

When implementing a firewall, would you recommend placing enterprise users in a DMZ?

    Requires Free Membership to View

    SearchSecurity.com members gain immediate and unlimited access to breaking industry news, virus alerts, new hacker threats, highly focused security newsletters, and more -- all at no cost. Join me on SearchSecurity.com today!

    Michael S. Mimoso, Editorial Director

    By submitting your registration information to SearchSecurity.com you agree to receive email communications from TechTarget and TechTarget partners. We encourage you to read our Privacy Policy which contains important disclosures about how we collect and use your registration and other information. If you reside outside of the United States, by submitting this registration information you consent to having your personal data transferred to and processed in the United States. Your use of SearchSecurity.com is governed by our Terms of Use. You may contact us at webmaster@TechTarget.com.

No. DMZs are designed to serve as a neutral location (hence the name demilitarized zone) where public and private services meet. Traditional firewall implementations create three zones: an untrusted zone (typically the Internet, in the case of a border firewall), a trusted zone (the organization's intranet) and a DMZ used to host public services. They're commonly used to provide organizations with a layer of isolation that protects their intranet systems from public exposure.

Enterprise services that must be exposed to untrusted networks, such as Web servers and SMTP servers, should be placed in the DMZ. This arrangement ensures that, in the event of a compromise, internal users and systems have a firewall that protects them from an affected server. Placing enterprise users (who belong on the intranet) in the DMZ eliminates this layer of protection and puts them at risk to systems on the untrusted network.

More information:

  • A DMZ is necessary for PCI DSS compliance. Read about the regulation's other important control objectives.
  • Hear security professionals' recommendations on how to implement a DMZ.
  • This was first published in March 2007