Like a lot of other people across the globe, you probably don’t know where to begin when it comes to protecting yourself against the dangers of cybercrime. An excellent place to start in this instance is to install a firewall on your network. This will provide you with the first line of defense that you need in the war against hacking, scamming, phishing, and ransomware.
Before you go ahead and configure your firewall, be sure to check out all of the information and guidance laid out below. Here’s everything you need to know about this type of protection technology:
What is a firewall?
For those of you that have no prior experience in dealing with this cybersecurity tool, it’s best to start right at the very beginning. What is a firewall, and what does it do? In a nutshell, here are the most essential points that you should be aware of:
- Firewalls can come either in the form of hardware or software, but generally speaking, they are hardware-based
- They connect to the user’s network and protect them from all of the dangers that are lurking around on the web
- Once data has been exchanged between the device and the cyber destination that it is connected to via the network, the firewall monitors the transaction packets and checks them thoroughly for bugs, trojans and viruses
- Firewalls seek to establish whether the data packets that are being transferred back and forth meet regulatory cybersecurity laws — if the packets don’t meet required standards, they are simply rejected by the firewall
- Without a firewall in place, cybercriminals find it much easier to compromise devices that are connected to the web
Firewalls are not created equal
Firewall developers do not have to abide by a set ‘industry standard’ model when creating this type of cybersecurity tech. To keep up with the ever-evolving cyber threats of today, firewalls are continually changing and growing to ensure that they are strong enough to deter the very latest attacks. This all means that firewalls are not created the same. They may come off the same virtual production line, but that doesn’t make them equal.
The Unified Threat management watchguard firewall, for example, is capable of performing a whole host of different tasks, some of which include packet filtering, intrusion detection, application control, and proxy. Circuit-level gateway firewalls, on the other hand, are only capable of concealing the details of the network that it is protecting… but, as they are configured to perform this task solely, they provide the best possible protection in this instance.
The type of firewall that you choose to install should depend on the type of protection that you require. If you own a business, for example, you should opt for a UTM firewall as this will safeguard you across the board; conversely, as an individual web user, you should opt for a circuit-level gateway firewall as this will be enough to provide you with the level of support you require.
No matter who you are or what you use the Internet for, you need a firewall in place.