Network Security - Firewalls

A firewall in its most basic terms is a filter. Where-as in reality a firewall is a structure that prevents a natural disaster fire from spreading. In computing terms, it would simply filter and prevent malicious or unusual data packets and activity that flows through the network, either inspecting the packets or abiding by the rules that have been configured to allow and deny data packets in and out the network.

Firewalls come in both hardware devices and software utilities, there are also different types of firewalls that work at different layers of the OSI Model and require different policies therefore using different inspection techniques and achieving different results for different purposes.

It’s important to monitor and analyse the flow control of the packets on the network and set rules to allow or block specific data packets that can help protect a network against malicious attacks, there are specialised hardware, software and firmware equipment that can be used to countermeasure and reduce risk against malicious attacks. The specialised equipment that can help reduce risk are:

·        Firewalls

·        Intrusion detection and prevention systems (also contains a firewall)

·        Honeypots

·        Access Control List (ACL)

·        Demilitarized Zone (DMZ)