Symantec ProxySG must fail to a secure state upon failure of initialization, shutdown, or abort actions.

Failure to a known safe state helps prevent systems from failing to a state that may cause loss of data or unauthorized access to system resources. Network elements that fail suddenly and with no incorporated failure state planning may leave the hosting system available but with a reduced security protection capability. Preserving system state information also facilitates system restart and return to the operational mode of the organization with less disruption to mission-essential processes.

An example is a firewall that blocks all traffic rather than allowing all traffic when a firewall component fails (e.g., fail closed and do not forward traffic). This prevents an attacker from forcing a failure of the system to obtain access.

Depending on the deployment architecture, there are many configurations to check external to the ProxySG to ensure that failures of initialization, shutdown, or abort actions result in a secure state. With these external configurations in place, the ProxySG meets this requirement inherently. However, if a ProxySG hardware appliance is configured in a transparent, physically in-path manner, the check and fix apply.