What is the purpose of a Firewall?
A firewall acts as a sentinel, detecting and reacting to dangers. First, it keeps an eye on traffic to look for unusual activity, malware, or unauthorized access attempts. Then it bans communications from unknown sources and dubious sources.
How does it work?
A firewall generates a security filter to manage traffic, whether it be hardware, software, or both. It thoroughly examines the traffic at each computer’s entrance point (ports). This is because communication occurs with external devices through such ports.
In order to perform activities such as filtering, allowing, and blocking, we need to set firewalls. They also examine data packets delivered across networks for attack vectors, malicious code, and other potential threats. After a firewall has reviewed traffic, it will only accept the inbound connections that you have selected to receive, as well as those that are deemed safe. Data packets and connections that are potentially dangerous will be refused. To put it another way, it will accept only trustworthy sources (IP addresses). In addition, let’s not forget that IP addresses are identifiers of sources and computers.
Key Advantages of a Firewall
In this computer era, we consider that the use of a Firewall is mandatory. There are many benefits to implementing it, some of which are:
- Prevent initial malware and phishing
- Provide monitor Traffic
- Find malware devices on your network
- Better privacy and security
Different Types of Firewalls
We can deploy different types of firewalls depending on the needs of the users. We’ll take a look at the most popular of them.
- Software Firewall provides more granular control, letting you use one function or program while blocking others. Unfortunately, this type can eat up a lot of your system’s resources, notably RAM and CPU.
- Hardware Firewall acts as a gateway between the internet and internal networks, preventing traffic queries and data packets from entering the private network from unknown sources.
- Packet filtering entails analyzing and distributing a tiny amount of data in accordance with the filter’s specifications.
- Proxy service is a network security mechanism that protects users by filtering communications at the application layer.
- Stateful inspection is a type of dynamic packet filtering that looks at active connections to see which network packets should be let over the Firewall.
- Next-generation firewall (NGFW) improves on the basics by adding features such as deep packet inspection, encrypted traffic inspection, intrusion prevention technology, antivirus, and so on.
Conclusion
You now appreciate the importance of a Firewall. It has the ability to allow teams to focus on other activities while also establishing a secure proactive, rather than reactive, network experience for everyone in your company.