A firewall is a well-known name in cybersecurity. It is a device that sits on a network and protects your system by preventing traffic from getting into your private network.
Firewalls are basically of two types:
- Traditional firewalls
- Next-generation firewalls
Let’s discuss both one by one-
- Traditional firewalls:- These block traffic based on the kind of traffic it is. To cite an example- traditional firewall can identify web browsing traffic or email traffic but it cannot identify traffic inside the traffic itself.
- Next-generation firewalls:- It is one step ahead of traditional firewalls. It detects malicious traffic and stops it to enter into your network.
Apart from these types of firewalls, have you heard about hardware and software firewalls?
- Hardware firewall:- This kind of firewall work with a particular piece of hardware and provides protection and maximum functionality. For example, Sophos XG115.
- Software firewall:- If you can’t afford a hardware firewall, then a software firewall is the right choice for you. These are usually free. If you have an old computer scheduled for decommissioning, you can reuse it to run the firewall software.
To run a software firewall, below are some of the requirements need to be fulfilled:
- Two network cards are required; one for outside traffic and one for inside traffic connected to your local area network (LAN)
- Intel or AMD processor
- Hard drive space
Now, how do these firewall helps in identifying threats?
- Assume the connection as a bridge, from your network to the internet.
- The traffic represents the cars on this bridge.
- The firewall represents the guard on the bridge who monitor by giving a permit to cars to ride on the bridge.
- The guard takes care of the traffic by allowing particular cars like blue or red which depicts web traffic and email traffic and restricts the entrance of yellow car which depicts SMTP traffic.
This is how the traditional firewall works but it has one limitation. Though it can identify the color of the car; however, it cannot find the bad guys who were driving the car. These bad guys represent traffic from another website with a malicious payload.
However, this is not the case with next-generation firewalls as they can inspect malicious payload before giving entrance. Moreover, it also has an invaluable feature of inspecting traffic from inside before allowing it out.
Choosing the wrong firewall can leave you vulnerable to the emerging threats of today’s threat landscape.
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