The history of fire walls
The term “firewall” used to mean a physical barrier to protect people from real fires in a city, between buildings, or even in large transportation like trains. There was a movie called War Games in 1983 called “War Games” that used the term “technology.” Before it was used on computer networks. Some people think that’s where the term “networking” came from.
Firewalls used to be hardware devices that were used to stop unauthorised traffic and let data packets that were supposed to be on a network pass through. A firewall’s policy set out the rules by which it let or blocked traffic. As cybersecurity threats became more sophisticated, firewalls began to pay more attention to the traffic they were blocking. Now, some firewalls block or let people in based on how much traffic they have seen in the past.
It’s hard to tell which one is better, hardware or software.
A piece of hardware can be made with hardware, software, or both. Both are important, but they serve different needs.
A hardware firewall protects your whole network from the outside world with just one physical device. There is a stand-alone hardware firewall that can be bought, but most of them are install between the computer network and the internet. This device watches packets of data as they are sent and then blocks or moves the data based on a set of rules. It takes a lot of computer skills to set up hardware firewalls, and they need to be manage and monitored by people who know how to do that. Because hardware firewalls are usually used by bigger businesses where security is a big deal, they are usually used.
A software firewall is install on a computer by a user. It only protects the computer that the user owns. This protects a network inside and out. It can be change, giving users some control over how it works and how it protects them, like being able to block access to certain websites on the network. To make it easy to set up, many people use software firewalls to protect their homes and small businesses.
Another way to make your computer more secure is to make it have a firewall built into the operating system (OS). For example, Windows Firewall, a free software firewall, comes with any Windows OS that isn’t XP. It tells people if there’s something wrong with their computer. It also finds and stops viruses, worms, and hackers.
The different types of fire walls
There are a lot of different types of firewalls, and some of them work the same way as each other when it comes to analysing, allowing, or blocking network traffic. They range from basic protection for a private network to more advanced packet inspection and threat intelligence for businesses that need it.
This is one of the first ways to keep your computer safe. Packet filtering firewalls are easier and cheaper than other types of firewalls to set up. They do basic data packet filtering by looking at IP and port addresses to see if the packets can go through. This filtering is do by people who set it up the way they want. Packet filtering isn’t very good at blocking packets, but it’s hard to set up. In addition, it can be fool by IP spoofing.
They act as a gateway between one network and another for a certain application. They start a new network session based on the information in the first request, almost like a copy. In this way, it is more difficult for attackers to get their hands on the data that is being send. Proxy firewalls only look at Internet traffic that comes from certain protocols. Proxy servers can add extra functionality by blocking direct connections from outside the network.
In a network address translation (NAT) firewall, multiple devices with separate network addresses can all connect to the internet with the same IP address. This keeps people’s private IP addresses from being see. They act as a middleman between the group of computers and the outside world. NAT firewalls are similar to proxy firewalls in that they act as an intermediary between them.
Cloud-based firewalls
People can get cloud firewalls (or cloud-based firewalls) from the internet instead of having them install between two networks on hardware. Cloud firewalls don’t need to be install between two networks. They can be use in many ways, and users can get through the firewall and get into the network from any place with an internet connection. Some cloud firewalls are only good for small networks. Cloud firewalls that are good enough for businesses are often install at the outside of cloud infrastructure.
State inspection: Firewalls let or block packets based on the state of a network connection that is being make. Bits in the packet (or network connection) tell the firewall how the connection is going, and it looks at things like the address it came from or how big it is. Stateful inspection firewalls do more detailed packet inspection than other types of firewalls, which is good because they can better stop malicious traffic. They can also be slower, because the inspection takes more time, but that isn’t the only reason for this.
Unified threat management (UTM) firewalls aren’t just a type of firewall. They’re part of a bigger security plan. Firewalls are just one of the things UTM can do. Machine learning may also be use for better threat intelligence, endpoint security, and intrusion prevention systems, which can figure out how attackers work.
Network segmentation firewalls
Network segmentation firewalls keep parts of a private network from being able to talk to each other. In this way, they can also be think of as sub-firewalls for a sub-network (subnet). They can be a good way to keep network traffic under control and keep people from getting into the network, but they can also be hard to set up and expensive.
It is now common for businesses to use next-generation firewalls (NGFW) to protect their networks better. They are usually a complete perimeter solution that adds extra security and monitoring features. These features can vary from one company to the next, but they can include deep packet inspection, UTM, IPS, threat intelligence, and machine learning. A lot more about next-generation firewalls will be talk about in the future, though.
Source: fortinet network security , fortinet network firewall