A Firewall is a Must

‘An intelligent almost impregnable wall of fire, alert 24 hours a day and 365 days a year, to deter invaders’, would be an easily relatable explanation for a high tech defence tool, employed to protect your computer and its contents from the untiring attacks of the various external malicious software present in the speedways of the Internet. Think of it as an active and alert monitoring sentry, at the entrance gates of your computer, to the Internet.

Firewalls can be in the form of software, or alternatively be embedded into the hardware. A software firewall is independent of any hardware and is a stand-alone package which is installed like any other software, into the computer that connects to the Internet (in computer parlance, this computer is known as ‘the gateway machine’). Popular software firewalls are Zone Alarm, Jetico, Agnitum Outpost, Comodo etc. which are available in free and paid flavours.

Hardware firewalls are embedded instructions (or embedded software) routinely incorporated into hardware equipment like broadband connection routers and other Internet access equipments, which perform the function of a firewall i.e. to filter the data that is relayed between your router and the Internet. The router itself is the gateway and all the computers in your network need to connect only to the router, instead of a gateway computer.

Going into the merits of these firewalls, it is acknowledged that hardware firewalls are much more secure and resilient than software firewalls. The underlying reason is because of the fact that the hardware firewall is a dedicated device with its own operating system, vastly superior quality and quantity of additional firewall capabilities, as well as its ability to handle large volumes of network traffic with aplomb.

A software firewall suffers from the infirmities of the underlying operating system, on which it depends for its existence. Chinks in the operating system weaken the firewall too. This type of firewall and its operating system software have to be consciously updated for being battle-ready, compared to the ever ready combat readiness of the hardware firewall. Generally, a software firewall is designed to protect only a single computer i.e. the gateway computer, unlike the hardware firewall.

Industry experts, however, point out that to achieve fool-proof security from unwanted Internet intruders, a tandem arrangement of a hardware firewall and a software firewall is ideal.

Station a hardware firewall along with your broadband connection. This first level sentry drops and blocks all unwanted or unrecognised access attempts from the Net. Only the filtered data is routed onto the software firewall on the gateway computer, for further inspection and then routed after the ‘all-clear’, to the machine on your internal network, which had requested for the data.

The exact methodologies employed by firewalls (hardware and software) involve one or more of the following three methods:

• Packet-filtering: A set of rules acts like a filter to analyse and weed out suspects, from the small chunks of data (known as ‘packets’) that criss-cross between your computer and the Net. Only clean data is sent through to your gateway computer or network.

• Proxy service: The firewall itself retrieves the desired Information from the Internet and forwards it to the requesting computer system and vice versa.

• Stateful inspection: One of the recent methods where only certain vital parts of the data packet are compared to an inbuilt database of trusted / validated information, within the firewall itself. A reasonable match will allow the data through to your network, while variant data is discarded.

Increasing usage of the Internet has led to a massive flow of all kinds of data i.e. the good and the bad alike. Only the foolhardy would venture out into the unsafe and unpredictable world of the Internet, without sufficient protection. You are at risk every time you enter into the world of the Net. Expect trouble and safeguard yourself accordingly.

Many believe that, merely having excellent anti-virus software is a sufficient insurance to venture into the Net. To draw a parallel, it is akin to allowing the danger into your household and then trying to clear the danger out! Why let it in, in the first place, when an armed sentry at the gate can easily repulse the invaders, on sight, outside your home! By the way, an anti-virus application that is not updated regularly does not serve any purpose. Neither does an outdated software firewall serve its intended purpose.

Other protective software like anti-rootkit packages, adware and spyware removers are ineffective in blocking access to the uninvited and unwanted baddies. They let them in and then try to remove them.

The Internet is a vast treasure house for those who seek the treasure responsibly and with proper safeguards. A firewall is a must-have armour in your arsenal of weapons, to combat the plague that can descend on your computer.

Article Source: http://www.article-host.com/