Firewalls Contribute to Information Security
Firewalls monitor network activity to identify potential threats and block unauthorized access, keeping your organization safe from cyber attacks. Whether it’s from hackers, malicious software or unwanted applications, firewalls are a critical component of information security and can be configured with a wide range of rules that limit access to your most sensitive data.
Firewall rules are applied to incoming and outgoing network traffic on the basis of your organization’s specific needs, including policies for acceptable use of network resources. Firewalls also create a record of attempted connections, improving your ability to detect suspicious activity and better understand the nature of malicious threats.
As your first line of defense, a firewall protects your organization from threats that enter the network via the perimeter. Often located at the edge of your network, the firewall can be hardware-based or software-based and is typically installed on your router or gateway device. It works by separating your internal network from the internet and blocking all data communication to or from the external internet except for those communications originating from within the organization’s perimeter.
How Do Firewalls Contribute to Information Security?
Most of the data that reaches your firewall is assembled into packets, which contain the sender and receiver’s IP address and port number (a unique 32-bit number that identifies the purpose of a network communication). The firewall will look up the outgoing network connection’s existing rule set and match it with the incoming packets to determine what actions need to be taken. If the packets match, the associated rules will be implemented — for example, human resource employees can’t access code server data and technical department members can’t access each other’s workstations.
Basic packet filtering is an effective way to prevent information security, as it examines each incoming and outgoing packet on a packet-by-packet basis and blocks the ones that don’t fit your established rule sets. However, it’s not very effective against sophisticated threats because they can manipulate network packets to appear legitimate.
Stateful inspection firewalls are more advanced than simple packet filters, examining the entire context of active network connections. Unlike packet filters, which operate at the packet and transport layer of the OSI model, stateful inspection firewalls track active session states and apply filtering decisions based on the full history of these connections and their individual characteristics.
A proxy firewall acts as an intermediary between internal systems and the internet by fetching a requested service for users and relaying it to them, preventing direct system access by internal devices. It also filters and modifies the content of communications to help ensure that only approved data is sent. Proxy firewalls are very useful for protecting web applications, but they can slow network performance and introduce latency. A threat-focused NGFW goes even further than a traditional firewall, providing real-time protection against emerging threats by leveraging advanced threat intelligence and automated mitigation. This helps to reduce your risk of a breach and mitigate damage from the latest sophisticated cyber attacks. Its real-time threat detection capabilities also allow for faster responses to emerging risks, so you can continue operating with confidence and peace of mind.
