Campus Firewall
The Campus Firewall provides protection to devices and services at the University from certain forms of attack from the outside world, by blocking or restricting access to them.
This helps guard services from disruption, or being used as gateways enabling an attacker to target other computers.
Key features
- Access can be granted so that specific servers and services at the University may be accessed from off campus, either from selected computers only, or from anywhere in the world.
Access instructions
If you're running a service or system that needs to be accessed from off campus, see how to request a service be made available off-campus.
Staff and students automatically benefit from the Campus Firewall
Staff can request additional services are added to the Firewall (restrictions apply).
Funded by the University
There isn’t a cost to you for standard use.
Additional information
If you're running a service or system that needs to be accessed from off campus, you should contact your Departmental Computing Officer (DCO). Your DCO will contact IT Services, who will then get in touch to discuss your requirements.
We will establish whether access to your service needs to be granted through the Campus Firewall, or whether it can be accessed by other means, such as via the VPN service.
Access instructions
If you're running a service or system that needs to be accessed from off campus, see how to request a service be made available off-campus.
Related tools
Contact for support
If you're experiencing technical issues and need advice, please contact IT Services.
Service commitments
We expect you to:
- Discuss your service with us and identify whether access to it from the outside world needs to be granted through the Campus Firewall, or whether it can be accessed by other means, eg by members of the University connecting to the VPN service.
- Allow our Cybersecurity team to check the security of your service and/or the computer it runs on. This includes allowing us to carry out a security scan before the server is made visible, and at periodic intervals afterwards
- Meet any requirements needing to be met before access through the Campus Firewall can be granted, eg including links to the University's legal statements on a server's website.
- Keep us informed about changes to your contact details.
- Keep the server and software running your service up to date, with all relevant security patches applied.
- Inform us promptly when the service is no longer required to have access from the outside world through the Campus Firewall.
If you are requesting external visibility for a web server, we expect you to:
- Contact us to discuss the service and explain why the site cannot run on an existing University or departmental web server.
- Have created the website (we won't open up sites that are under construction).
- Include a link to the University disclaimers on the front page of any domain or IP that the web server responds to
- Allow us to carry out a security scan before the web server is made visible, and at periodic intervals afterwards.
The following policies apply to all IT services provided by the University.
Availability
- This is a live service, available 24/7.
- Check the status of this service and any planned maintenance.
Support
- This service is managed by IT Services.
- We are responsible for monitoring, identifying and fixing faults.
- Support is available during our opening hours.
Standards
- Our service performance and standards have been produced in consultation with our customers, and we monitor the delivery, performance and availability of facilities and services.
We appreciate feedback as it helps us review and continually improve our service.
Page last reviewed: 9 September 2024