Monday 30 November 2015

Yes Filter: The Role of Firewalls in Strengthening Online Security

With a massive amount of data being sent to and processed in the Web or on hard drives, it has become a fundamental measure for companies to strengthen the security of their online network. Hacking and data theft are recurrent threats to many businesses, particularly in the finance and creative industries. Thus, many have invested in and built “firewalls” to prevent unauthorized access to or from their private network. This structure is either in the form of hardware or software, but could also be a combination of both. Firewalls were designed primarily to protect network traffic and connections. All messages entering or leaving the premises must pass through the firewall, which analyzes each message and filters out those that do not meet specific security guidelines. There are several types of firewalls, the most common of which being:

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Image source: referenceforbusiness.com
  • Packet filtering. One of the most basic firewall forms, this system examines each packet (unit of data) entering or leaving the network and decides whether to accept or reject it based on user-defined rules. Packet filtering is effective in most counts but it is quite challenging to configure and is prone to IP spoofing.
  • Circuit-level gateway implementation. This type of firewall works best on security mechanisms with established Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) or User Datagram Protocol (UDP). It monitors TCP or UDP handshaking between packets to determine whether a requested session is legitimate.
  • Proxy server. Proxy servers, which hide the true network address of computers, were designed to add structure and encapsulation to distributed systems. The firewall capabilities of proxies lie in the fact that they can be configured to allow only certain types of traffic to pass.
  •  Web application firewall (WAF). This firewall is a device or software filter that applies a set of rules to a conversation involving HTTP. Such rules are generally customized to the application so that many attacks can be identified and blocked.
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Image source: electronic-information.info

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