What is a Firewall?
Whether you are a home user, business manager, or government official, you have likely encountered the term “firewall”. This technology is used to protect computers, network, and data from hackers and cyberattacks. They can also be used for content filtering.
A firewall protects computers from outside threats by examining traffic and deciding whether or not to accept or reject packets. Packets contain information about data, including source, destination, and protocol. The firewall determines whether to accept, drop, or forward the packet based on pre-established security rules.
Firewalls can be software or hardware. They can be installed at the perimeter of a network or inside a corporate network. Most commercial firewalls come pre-configured with settings to prevent malicious traffic. If you’d like to write your own firewall rules, check with your IS&T security team. They’ll be able to help you create complex policies for Unix, Linux, and other operating systems.
Traditionally, firewalls were physical hardware appliances. But in the past few years, they have also been built into software. They can also run in a virtual cloud.
These next-generation firewalls are installed in a data center or in the cloud. These firewalls can run at the application level, the network layer, and the packet filtering layer. They require significant resources to configure.
Network layer packet filters inspect packets at the lower level of the TCP/IP protocol stack. They analyze packets based on ports and IP addresses. They perform better than application layer inspection.