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Firewalls are an essential tool for protecting your computer, devices, and personal data from cyberattacks. They constantly monitor incoming and outgoing traffic to detect suspicious patterns and block malicious attacks from entering or leaving your network.

They are a key component in your cybersecurity defenses against new and evolving threats. For every step you take to improve your security measures, cybercriminals take ten steps in response. A firewall is your best line of defense against these sophisticated attacks, which can target your devices, networks, and computers to steal sensitive information, compromise your network, and extort money.

A firewall identifies and filters data packets based on pre-established security rules. These are based on several aspects indicated in the packet data such as its source, destination, type, and content. It welcomes good traffic to the private network and blocks malicious traffic from gaining access, thus preventing cyberattacks from penetrating the private network.

Firewalls can be divided into two categories based on the network they protect: host-based and network-based. Network-based firewalls are hardware and guard entire networks while host-based firewalls protect individual hosts (computers) within a network and are often software. Packet filtering firewalls examine packets in isolation, while stateful inspection firewalls analyze packets to determine their context.

Application layer firewalls examine the contents of outgoing and incoming network traffic to distinguish malware from legitimate content. These are able to detect vulnerabilities in applications that traditional packet-filtering and stateful inspection firewalls can’t. Some firewalls are bundled together into a single device called an Next Generation Firewall (NGFW).