Firewall Protection for Network
Firewall Protection for Network
Firewall protection enquiries has been on the rise these few years as more companies are affected by network attacks in the form of ransomware and other malwares. It has been even more prevalent when our country healthcare data was hack this year (Read the news link here).
For SMEs to understand network security, and what we can do to protect ourselves from the security risk, SMEs are often sold to the idea of firewall by IT vendors. Just like buying antivirus for the fear of virus, we often do not really understand how this works. We have a false sense of security. In the end, we have antivirus that is not undated or worst of it, some not enabled.
So what is a firewall? Wikipedia define firewall as a technological barrier designed to prevent unauthorized or unwanted communications between computer networks or hosts.
Common brands of firewall include Cisco, Fortinet and Watchguard. But buying boxes does not end there. One has to remember like antivirus, you need to subscribe to the updates. These updates will allow you to get the latest hacking patterns.
But firewall is actually just rules and regulations like customs officer for your network communications. For example, you can set to allow your staff to retrieve important information from your office server. So technically a firewall without an active management may be open to different kinds of attempt attack, as the hacker will try different methods to intrude.
Here is a typical example of what is hacking and how a firewall can help. So when a firewall is setup on your network, log files that the firewall captured have to be review every single day, so that intrusion could be stop as soon as possible.
This is how a log file look like:
Upon reviewing the log file, the source of the attack have to be traced, and reputation of the IP address have to be determine, before we can place the IP on block list and update it to the firewall.
As you can see from the log, hackers can come from any countries and they are well-equipped with malware to affect your network the moment they successfully penetrate your network.
Without active management, it is as good as not having firewall protection, as intrusion will simply go unnoticed.
Hopefully this will give you a better understanding on network firewall.
This example is derive from our SMESUITE which we do active management of firewall for you.
We hope to simplify IT security taking off your daily concerns on network security. Please feel free to contact us for more information.
William Tan
tel: 65898878 Ext 7001
email: websales@amcpro.asia