SolidShare Overview

SolidShare secures your network, allowing you to implement your security policy by configuring a set of rules that specify which sites (IP addresses) and applications can be passed through the SolidShare server computer, it can also perform NAT (Network Address Translation) to share a single Internet connection.

SolidShare monitors requests and responses between the Internet and internal client computers, controlling who can access which computers on the internal (local) network, and also controls which computers on the Internet can be accessed by internal clients. By setting the security rules, you can prevent unauthorized access from entering the local network, you can also restrict what traffic is allowed for each source, destination, application, schedule, and perform NAT or not.

SolidShare Architecture:

SolidShare is divided into three parts: Kernel, Service and Management Console.

• Kernel, performs all actual NAT, packet-filtering (Firewall), etc, executing in kernel mode of the operating system, can intercept all data, exchange between NIC driver and TCP/IP protocol, and perform all necessary operations. 

• Service: Controls and supports Kernel, and also performs Auto Dial Up, Event Log, etc;
• Management Console: Gives the administrator a GUI interface, using it to control the functions of Kernel and Service more easily.

SolidShare  includes the following firewall and NAT features:

• Outbound access control. You can use SolidShare  to configure rules that control how your internal clients access the Internet. For more information, and you can perform SNAT (source NAT) to change the source IP address.
• Inbound access control. SolidShare allows you to publish internal servers to the Internet without compromising the security of your internal network. You can configure inbound (publishing) rules that determine which requests should be sent to a server on your local network, and you can perform DNAT (destination NAT) to change the destination IP address. 
• Application filters. SolidShare controls application-specific traffic with data-aware filters. SolidShare uses the filters to determine if packets should be accepted, rejected, redirected, or modified.
• Event log. SolidShare will log the events such as add/remove/change rules, rules applied to pass/drop the packets, create NAT mappings etc. into log files, you can exam these files to seem what is happening in your network.
• Log Analyzer. You can use the "SolidShare Analyzer" program to parse the log files generated by SolidShare service, generate the report which gives you a summary report of the network activities and possible security problems.