This article is a part of the Working From Home Series
Due to the Covid-19 pandemic businesses have had to be pro-active in ensuring the safety and health of their employees and their customers. Many businesses have been forced to shut down. Many have had to be creative in finding a workaround enabling their employees to be productive even if they’re quarantined. To do so many have been pushed towards working from home. But a company can’t just do this without taking proper security measures and planning. If they don’t they leave themselves vulnerable to the threats to their network.
What is a Firewall?:
A firewall is the basic form of network security for our devices. They work by filtering traffic that is based on a specific criteria that is set by the admin. Firewalls can be network-based or host-based. Meaning that they can act as protection for an individual device on the network or for the network as a whole at a given site. Firewalls also come in hardware and software varieties.
Firewalls protect a given network by restricting the flow of network traffic. This is done by either dropping provable attack packets or by accepting seemingly acceptable packets. Packets are any form of data that is traveling to and from a network. If a firewall decides to drop a packet then the details of that drop will be logged for review by the admin. Two types of filtering are executed by firewalls. Ingress filtering analyzes incoming packets of data, while egress filtering analyzes outgoing packets of data.
Types of Firewalls:
Firewalls are traditionally placed on the edge of the network to prevent and catch threats before they enter. They tend to be actual little boxes similar to your router. It is quite common to have routers with a built in firewall. However, you can have a firewall that is separate from your router. Even though some boxes can be strictly firewalls, it is more common for these boxes to perform multiple security roles. They can act as a VPN endpoint, run anti-malware, and/or be a server proxy. This can be a called a UTM (Unified Threat Management) box.
A network firewall protects the whole network from anything coming in or out. Since it is a dedicated box this is considered a hardware firewall. Each individual computer on the network can also have its own firewall feature. You can get individual boxes in front of some or all of the individual hosts. This can be a bit excessive if all of the hosts are on the same network. Software firewall can also be installed on individual hosts. This type of firewall is also a host firewall since it’s job is to protect the individual host from threats coming in and out of the device.
Why Do I Need a Firewall?
Everything in our lives is connected through technology. Seemingly anything that we have that is connected to a network is at risk of any number of online threats. Home networks are especially at risk due to all of the things we have connected through our networks. For example, our computers, cell phones, security cameras, DVR systems, wall panels that control heating and air, and home lighting systems are all connected through the home network. Home routers can pass unauthorized traffic through any of these hosts. Everything on the network is at risk without a firewall to protect it.
Without a firewall our networks and devices are open to a multitude of potential threats. Your network could be at risk of receiving or transmitting unpatched software, a potential hacker gaining access to your device, hardware exploits, or any number of social hacking techniques. An exploit is any vulnerability that i known, documented, and may be used by hackers. Hacking is an act of taking advantage of an exploit and gaining unauthorized access to data. Hacking is not simply accessing data that someone intended not to be seen. There must be an effort expended to overcome a security system to gain access to that data. It is the act of breaking down a door to get into a house, rather than just walking in through the front door. Firewalls are all about locking the door to your network and devices. They grant access both in and out of that door. Firewalls are the most fundamentally important protection for a network.
Whether you are working from home or preparing to go back into the office or have employees back in the office, it’s important to make sure your networks are protected. If you have any questions regarding network security or need help setting up a firewall or other network protections please contact Seras IT today at 803.233.9216.
