I read an article (can't find link) recently that advocated dumping software firewalls if you had a hardware firewall.
I was just curious as to the take on Firewalls in general for a small-medium office. Assume we had a router with a dedicated hardware firewall behind it that filtered and routed traffic before it hit the LAN.
Would it be worth the effort to maintain the firewall software that typically comes with A/V or Windows these days? I've seen many times where we are diagnosing PC issues and once the firewall is off, the problem goes away. Typically this leads to us turning the software firewall back on though after customizing the rules for the application which had issue.
Does anyone agree with the idea that a hardware firewall is enough of a defense or is it worth having the software firewall also?
Per fianchetto - When I say hardware vs software I should clarify to gateway firewalls (At the perimiter or router level) and endpoint firewalls (software firewalls on the desktop or laptop).