```json
{
    "title": "Enterprise Shield: Automated Penalty Box",
    "url": "https://performancezen.com/2026/08/25/enterprise-shield-automated-penalty-box/",
    "datePublished": "2026-08-25",
    "dateModified": "2026-08-25",
    "language": "en-US",
    "description": "The Enterprise Shield firewall system that I have implemented on my home server has a Penalty Box feature that allows me to add priority blocking rules to the system for…",
    "author": "spierzchala",
    "publisher": "Performance Zen"
}
```

# Enterprise Shield: Automated Penalty Box

![image](https://performancezen.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/8142031c-1b98-4d74-b75e-c1189fb40960.jpeg)

The Enterprise Shield firewall system that I have implemented on my home server has a **Penalty Box** feature that allows me to add priority blocking rules to the system for IPs or CIDRs that manage to evade the other rulesets or are particularly annoying (I'm looking at you,*Cloudflare WARP*).

However, this required me to watch the logs of my web server for these abusive systems and add them, as I noted, manually. With the number of attacks or floods that even a home server like mine gets, this can become a full-time analysis job.

I had been considering *fail2ban* for a while, and finally implemented it with a number of jails designed to detect Wordpress and general web attacks. The positives are really easy to document.

- **Automatic Blocking of 403 Floods:** I have a number of rules in my web server config that redirect unwanted traffic directly to a 403 page. Things such as old browsers, blank UA strings, undesired bots, and attempts to access pages that should not be accessed immediately redirect a visitor to the 403 page. After five (5) 403 responses in a minute or less, immediate 24-hour ban. There is a separate low-and-slow 403 jail that looks at the same IP and if it generates a number of 403s over a 1-hour period, it also gets the 24-hour ban.
- **General Wordpress Attack Patterns:** Thes patterns are well-documented, and have their own jail. These are even less permissive -- one strike and your out for 24 hours.
- **General Web Attack Patterns:** A one stike rule also applies to visits that try general web attack patterns, credential-sniffing, or environment file requests. Again, immediate 24 hour ban

The setup is obviously more complex than this under the hood, but it removed the need for me to add Penalty Box rules except in very specific cases.

Silently alongside this I implemented a special ruleset for Cloudflare IPs. As these have been particularly egregious in sending attack traffic my way, I have created a special bucket using Cloudflare's published CIDR blocks that begins to block traffic if large volumes of traffic begin to originate in total from these ranges. THis alone removed the need to have a very large number of Penalty Box rules specific to dealing with this group of "visitors".

On the whole, the new automated Penalty Box maintains a constant 25-50 rules that automatically cycle in an out after 24 hours. This prevents me from:

- Adding unecessary rules for one-time attacks/floods from IPs or CIDRs that will never visit again
- Blocking traffic for "real" bot traffic that may inherit an IP or CIDR I have blocked due to a previous attack/flood
- Constamtly monitor web log files for potential new attacks and ranges that could cause load or security issues on the server.

For those that chose to build their own security system for Home Servers rather than relying on paid services or CDNs, I definitely recommend integrating *fail2ban* into the automation path.