Which of the following should NOT normally be allowed through a firewall?

The correct answer is A. SNMP. SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) should not normally be allowed through a perimeter firewall because it is a network management protocol intended for internal infrastructure monitoring and management. Allowing SNMP through a firewall exposes network topology, device…

Submitted by tarun92· Apr 18, 2026Network and Communications Security

Question

Which of the following should NOT normally be allowed through a firewall?

Options

ASNMP
BSMTP
CHTTP
DSSH

How the community answered

(32 responses)

A
94% (30)
B
3% (1)
D
3% (1)

Explanation

SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) should not normally be allowed through a perimeter firewall because it is a network management protocol intended for internal infrastructure monitoring and management. Allowing SNMP through a firewall exposes network topology, device configurations, and system details to outside parties. Older SNMP versions (v1 and v2c) use easily guessable community strings (essentially plain-text passwords), making them a significant security risk if exposed externally. In contrast, SMTP (B) is needed for email delivery, HTTP (C) is needed for web traffic, and SSH (D) has legitimate use cases for secure remote administration-all of which are commonly permitted with appropriate controls.

Topics

#Firewall rules#Network protocols#SNMP security#Security best practices

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