Firewall

Firewall – What is it?

It's a system designed to prevent unauthorized access to your home or small business network. Firewalls can be implemented in both hardware and software, or a combination of both. Firewalls are frequently used to prevent unauthorized Internet users from accessing private networks connected to the Internet.

All messages entering or leaving the intranet pass through the firewall, which examines each message and blocks those that do not meet the specified security criteria. There are several types of firewall techniques:

• Packet filter: Looks at each packet entering or leaving the network and accepts or rejects it based on user-defined rules. Packet filtering is fairly effective and transparent to users, but it is difficult to configure. In addition, it is susceptible to IP spoofing.
• Application gateway: Applies security mechanisms to specific applications, such as FTP and Telnet servers. This is very effective, but can impose a performance degradation.
• Circuit-level gateway: Applies security mechanisms when a TCP or UDP connection is established. Once the connection has been made, packets can flow between the hosts without further checking.
• Proxy server: Intercepts all messages entering and leaving the network. The proxy server effectively hides the true network addresses.

A firewall is a protective system that lies, in essence, between your computer network and the Internet. When used correctly, a firewall prevents unauthorized use and access to your network. The job of a firewall is to carefully analyze data entering and exiting the network based on your configuration. It ignores information that comes from an unsecured, unknown or suspicious locations. A firewall plays an important role on any network as it provides a protective barrier against most forms of attack coming from the outside world.

Firewalls can be either hardware or software.

The ideal firewall configuration will consist of both. In addition to limiting access to your computer and network, a firewall is also useful for allowing remote access to a private network through secure authentication certificates and logins.

Most traffic passing through a Firewall is not threat-based, but is instead applications and data.

Traditional firewalls focus on blocking simple threats and intrusions.

This gave rise to the Application Firewall which can manage and control data and applications that pass through the Firewall.

What does it do?

An Application Firewall provides bandwidth management and control, application level access controls, data leakage control functionality, restrictions on the transfer of specific files and documents, and much more.

How does it work?

An Application Firewall allows custom access controls based upon user, application, schedule or IP subnet level. This allows an administrator the ability to create polices that address the full range of applications that are available for access and for the first time truly manage them.

Control Misuse of Company Time
	The Stats 20 HOURS of video are uploaded to Youtube every minute, 15 billion of those videos are streamed every month... and the average internet user watches 3 hours of streaming video*. source: http://www.onlineschools.org 3 out of 4 office workers admit to spending more than 30 minutes a day surfing the web on company time (not on break)*

Ten Things Your Firewall Should Do

• Manage Streaming Video
  Limit the bandwidth given to streaming video sites.
• Bandwidth Management
  Create a Policy to not limit streaming video for a specific group.
• Web-mail & Data Loss
  Create a policy to block 'Company Confidential' e-mail and notify the sender.
• Application Use Enforcement
  Ensure all company systems are using a specific application.
• Deny FTP Upload
  Create a Policy to allow FTP uploads, but only for certain people.
• Control P2P Apps
  P2P applications can be blocked or just limited through bandwidth and time-based restrictions.
• Manage Streaming Music
  Once "detected" you can block or just bandwidth manage the streaming audio.
• Prioritise Application Bandwidth
  Ensure mission-critical applications have priority to get the network bandwidth.
• Block Confidential Documents
  Create a Policy to block e-mail attachments which contain the 'Company Confidential' watermark.
• Block Forbidden Files & Notify
  Create a policy to block forbidden file extensions which can be specified in a list.

Do I need it?

While many people do not completely understand the importance and necessity of a firewall, or consider it to be a product for businesses only, if your network or computer has access to the outside world via the Internet then you need have a firewall to protect your network, individual computer and data therein.