Build a Firewall Policy Analyzer and Optimizer

Over time, firewall configurations can become bloated with redundant, shadowed, or overly permissive rules — leading to inefficiencies and potential security gaps. A policy analyzer helps administrators audit, clean, and strengthen these rule sets efficiently.

The tool parses firewall configurations (e.g., iptables, Cisco ACLs), detects conflicting or unused rules, calculates rule hit ratios, and proposes an optimized configuration with improved readability and security alignment.

The tool ingests firewall configuration files and parses each rule into a structured format. It then analyzes rule precedence, usage statistics, and syntactic conflicts to flag inefficiencies and risks. Suggestions are generated for improved rule order, reduced overlaps, and tightened access controls.

• Upload or parse existing firewall rule sets (e.g., iptables-save format).
• Analyze each rule’s condition and check for overlap or shadowing.
• Simulate packet flows and check how many rules are actually used over time.
• Highlight risky rules like “allow from any” or unused services.
• Generate optimized rule suggestions in the same syntax or JSON format.

• iptables-save Syntax Guide
• Cisco ACL Reference
• Firewall Rule Optimization Techniques
• Firewall Log Analysis with Python
• Pyparsing Library