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A firewall is like a bouncer at a nightclub: If your name’s on the list, you get in; if not, you’re blocked. As a network security device, the firewall is one of the most essential tools to protect your home or business system from malware and cyber threats. Without it, savvy third parties can steal information from your systems, access networks and even hijack systems to send out malicious software to others. A firewall is what prevents this, by monitoring incoming and outgoing data to detect and block these unauthorized movements.

Firewalls come in a wide variety of hardware appliances and software solutions. They’re designed to meet specific requirements, such as adaptability to your environment or support for virtualization technologies or advanced security strategies like Zero Trust.

Hardware firewalls work by scanning information packets, which are bits of data that carry messages across a network and the internet. These packets contain everything from message content to media to destination addresses and more. The firewall looks at the contents of each packet to see if it matches any known threats. If it does, it discards the packet or blocks the flow of information.

Some firewalls also employ stateful inspection, which compares the characteristics of each packet to a trusted database. It looks at where the information came from, what ports it uses and more to see if it’s an approved source. For example, if you specify that the firewall should look for packets with certain words or phrases in them, it’s like an advanced word filter on your computer.