What Are Firewalls And How Effective Are They?
As cybercrime continues to grow, securing your confidential data, such as online banking and personal accounts, should be a top priority – and using a firewall is your first line of protection. While antivirus software helps protect your devices from unwanted programs, firewalls help keep attackers or external threats from accessing your system in the first place.
What Is A Firewall?
Firewalls can be defined as hardware or software working similarly to a filtration system, fighting off threats that are trying to enter a network or computer system. Firewalls work on scan packets for malicious attacks or code vectors that have been identified as threats.
This first line of protection can shield a system by regulating and monitoring network traffic in three different ways:
- Packet filtering
- Proxy service
- Stateful inspection
With the help of packet filtering, a firewall protects a system from packets entering the network against various filters. While proxy services are among the most secure options, the stateful inspection comes with a unique method of filtering through various sources like ports, applications, and IP addresses.
A firewall protects data and networks from service denials, backdoors, remote logins, macros, viruses, and spam.
The Importance Of Maintenance And Configuration
Operating systems already come with a general firewall solution, however, some users may have requirements that exceed the basic one provided. Hence, some people look for a better solution in the market. Firewalls are designed with particular rules in place, and this creates the necessity of configuring and maintaining a firewall regularly to obtain maximum security.
Some of the essential reasons for configuring and maintaining your firewall include:
- Default features of firewalls are not capable of covering every possible area of attack
- The limits set in a firewall may not provide top performance, so analyzing the usage of the server and optimizing it becomes essential
The Two Types Of Firewalls
There are two main types of firewalls, namely the packet filters and application gateways.
- Packet Filters
The packet filters are located in the network layer. The filters work based on a particular rule set which is based on the transport header field or the IP content on every packet. It is also based on the various outcomes and eventually either discards or forwards the packet. The security threats the packet filters cover include IP address spoofing, source routing attacks, and tiny fragment attacks.
- Application Gateways
Application gateways are also termed as proxy servers. Gateways contact the application with the help of an IP application or TCP application. These systems work on remote hosting with the help of the user ID and password required for accessing the services.
How To Maximize Effectiveness
Firewalls are designed with some basic features and security configurations. Here are some of the possible ways of making the firewall additionally effective to meet security challenges with active internal networks.
- Think Like A Cybercriminal: Learn about your firewall and check the possibility of hacking it. To obtain the answer to this, attempt to bypass the firewall. You can also incorporate the various services provided by the vendor of the firewall security to check on any vulnerabilities. Once the vulnerabilities are tracked, patch them
- Verification Of The Rule Relevance: Firewalls work according to a particular list of rules. These rules permit limited traffic to your system and network. So, make sure the set of rules is well updated regularly, working on new threats, and check the relevancy of current rules
- Monitor security actively: Deployment of a firewall and ensuring that it remains active through reviews and vulnerability checkups is quite essential. But remaining proactive in monitoring firewall events is still required. This will help you learn about the attacks ahead of taking the required steps
Bottom Line
Firewalls act as the first line of defense from threats. They can be used by individuals, businesses, and large organizations. You can use a firewall to prevent cybercriminals from gaining unauthorized access to your device and data. It is important that you start using this feature to get better control over the connections and programs on your device. Firewalls are effective and necessary in 2020, but there is absolutely configuration and monitoring needed.
