Firewall Security Solutions – The Great Wall of Protection from External Threats

In old ages, the kings used to build the wall around his kingdom to protect his place, people and property. The walls used to protect the kingdom from external threats and attacks of the enemy. Apart from this, it used to give partial protection from natural disasters like floods and thunderstorms. The strength of the kingdom was evaluated based on the strength of the wall around it. Of course, the military and ammunition force was also the deciding factors, but the primary protection was provided by the wall only.

If we see this in today’s context, the property has become more digital and intangible. The companies are more dependent on data, systems and basically, the IT infrastructure. Hence, to protect the company from external threat a company must build a wall around its intangible assets like data, software, files, network etc. Of course, the team of IT engineers play a vital role whenever the company faces malware attack or any other unwanted external interference. However, the primary security relies on the wall. That is called Firewall Security!

As Explained above, Firewall security is a network security system which secures the internal network and all the devices connected to the network from external threat and creates a protective layer around your network!

Firewall Security – Know More About the Firewall

How a firewall in a computer network works?

A firewall is Network Security Device placed strategically and the point where external network first interacts with the internal network. The firewall is a very basic, but very important and trusted cybersecurity tool. Suppose your network is your home or office premises, in that case, the firewall acts as a watchman for your place.

The workflow of the Firewall is explained below in layman words

• Install a Firewall Device in your network
• Any outer network first comes in touch with your firewall security
• The firewall security setup checks the incoming data and evaluates the eligibility of that data to enter your network with the help of pre-defined rules and policies.
• If the data from the outer network passes the policy test and protocols set by the IT admin in the firewall, the firewall allows that information to enter your network.
• If the firewall smells any threat in terms of security, the firewall will restrict the entry of that information to your network and protects the network with the potential threat.

Firewall can be at a network level as well as a system level, the firewall protects the network and protects each system based on the rules and policies defined.

4 ways to Make Your Firewall Security Strongest

• Think as your enemy thinks
• Audit your policies and protocols
• Keep Your Firewalls and Network Security Updated
• Keep changing the Passwords

Think as your enemy thinks

To protect your data, you first must identify your enemies. Enemies could be the viruses, hackers or the data thieves. You must see the potential threat and think what a cybercriminal would want from your data? Or what kind of viruses are a real threat to you? Once you identify the threat it easy to select best suitable security solutions for your network, or if we use the medical terms, once you diagnose the disease, it will be easy to search the cure.

Audit your policies and protocols

Firewall Security follows the rules you have defined for it, Network Firewall evaluates and decides the inbound or outbound flow of information, strictly based on the rules you, as a manager, have decided and defined for Firewall.

Hence, it is very important to be confident about the rules you have set are working 100% as per your desired results. The regular audits must be done to evaluate few checkpoints as below

1. Check whether all the set rules are active, and the firewall is acting accordingly
2. Check that the firewall is not restricting any important information or data
3. Check if any threat could not pass through the policy and firewall

Keep Your Firewalls and Network Security Updated

Once you are done with the Audits, you must analyze the audit results and accordingly you must change the policy, security checkpoints and passwords. This will keep your network firewall security updated. The threats keep changing. Cybercriminals have become smarter and they keep inventing new ways of stealing your data or hacking your systems. Hence, it is essential to keep your security systems updated.

Keep changing the Passwords

Passwords are an essential element for keeping your organization’s data secure. Ensure that all staff with rights to sensitive data have complex passwords that have the appropriate length and strength.

Types of Firewall Security Systems

• Packet Filters
• Stateful Inspection
• Proxy Server Firewalls
• Next-Generation Firewall

Packet Filters

Packet Filter Firewall as the name suggests, it works on filtering the packet and it evaluates the outgoing and incoming packets based on predefined criteria like packet types, port number, IP addresses etc. This type of Firewalls is for a small network and cannot handle huge networks. Also, the security provided by this type of Firewall is very limited and it is more vulnerable compared to other types of Filters of Firewalls.

Stateful Inspection

Stateful Packet Inspection (SPI), is a higher level of protection system compared to the Packet Filter. This type provides the end to end encryption. They are based on powerful and smart firewall architecture. These firewalls work at the network layer in the OSI model and are more secured than the basic packet filtering firewalls.

Proxy Server Firewalls

Proxy Server Firewalls generally referred to as application-level gateways. This web application firewall is the most trusted and recommended type of Firewall. They filter the information at the application level. They mask the IP addresses and limits the traffic types. They provide an entire and protocol-aware security analysis for the protocols they support. Proxy Servers offers the best Internet experience and results in network performance improvements.

Next-Generation Firewall

next-generation firewall (NGFW) is a part of the third generation of firewall technology. It is a combination of traditional firewall and network device filtering. This uses Deep Packet Inspection methodology. The Sophos Firewall is one of the widely used Next-Generation Firewall

Contact Us to get the best Firewall Solutions for your company. For maintenance and up-gradation of your existing firewall, we are available near you at Surat, Gujarat.