Types of firewalls

Firewalls can either be software or hardware, though it’s best to have both. A software firewall is a program installed on each computer and regulates traffic through port numbers and applications, while a physical firewall is a piece of equipment installed between your network and gateway.



Packet-filtering firewalls, the most common type of firewall, examine packets and prohibit them from passing through if they don’t match an established security rule set. This type of firewall checks the packet’s source and destination IP addresses. If packets match those of an “allowed” rule on the firewall, then it is trusted to enter the network.

Packet-filtering firewalls are divided into two categories: stateful and stateless. Stateless firewalls examine packets independently of one another and lack context, making them easy targets for hackers. In contrast, stateful firewalls remember information about previously passed packets and are considered much more secure.

While packet-filtering firewalls can be effective, they ultimately provide very basic protection and can be very limited—for example, they can't determine if the contents of the request that's being sent will adversely affect the application it's reaching. If a malicious request that was allowed from a trusted source address would result in, say, the deletion of a database, the firewall would have no way of knowing that. Next-generation firewalls and proxy firewalls are more equipped to detect such threats.
Read More : What is a network firewall and how does it work

Get Access to Network Security Solution and Support

Are you worried about data loss? Are you looking to have strong network security? Well, there are many businesses looking for the best network security support. Cyber security is one of the crucial approaches that every IT professional needs to focus on, protecting and securing systems from various threats and vulnerabilities. This reduces cybercrimes and disruption, allowing your business to stay ahead of your competitors.

Pro Group Networks offers one of the leading network security solutions that spotlight cyber resilience and brings forward opportunities to safeguard your business in the most ethical manner. Before diving into the whole subject, let’s first understand what network security is all about.

What is Network Security?
Network security is a method to protect data and network’s veracity and usability. Network security is bounded by software and hardware related service that protects your system and all data from various online and offline threats. There are various types of security layers in a network that protects the system form malware, viruses and online threats.

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Automatic Firewall Detection

Simply configure your firewall to export logs to Firewall Analyzer. Firewalls are then automatically detected and reports are generated instantly in this smart firewall log analysis tool. For all firewalls that support exporting logs in WELF format, this is the best configuration option.

Firewall Logs Import
In the case of Squid proxy servers, and firewalls that do not export logs in an acceptable format, you can import firewall logs or proxy logs files directly in to Firewall Analyzer (Firewall Log Viewer) and generate reports for the same.

Specific Check Point Settings
Firewall Analyzer lets you add LEA servers to establish connections and retrieve logs from Check Point firewalls. This firewall log analyzer lets you add as many LEA servers as needed, and set up authenticated or unauthenticated connections to retrieve firewall logs.

Embedded Syslog Server
Firewall Analyzer comes pre-bundled with a syslog server that listens for exported firewall log files at the defined listener ports. You can add more listener ports to this syslog server, in order to collect logs from different firewalls. The syslog server is a part of Firewall Analyzer and does not require a separate installation.

Exporting and Importing Report and Alert Profiles
Firewall Analyzer provides an easy way of saving the report and alert profiles. You can export the profiles and save it. You can import the profiles to get the profiles back. This will come handy in case of exigencies like when you are moving the server to a different machine etc. You can also save the exported profiles file.

Read More what is a network firewall and how does it work

Protect your business from cyber threats with Colt Managed Firewall services

Savvy enterprises have long recognized that the data they hold and the applications they rely on forms the lifeblood of their digital and commercial operations. Failure to proactively maintain the security, integrity, and availability of this essential data can threaten the very existence of any organization. A firewall is the front line of defense against cyberattacks, yet maintaining perimeter security has become a major challenge and firewalls themselves can become an unwitting security risk if not managed effectively.
With an increasing shift in organizations toward the cloud, managed firewall services are also shifting to cloud technology. Identity access management and email security are becoming important aspects of security with increasing adoption of cloud. Besides the adoption of cloud, predictive analysis is also a new trend in the managed firewall services market as it helps to predict unknown future events. In the U.S., strict regulations on information security and growing awareness regarding complexities about the protection of an organization’s sensitive information are pushing enterprises toward adopting managed security services such as managed firewall services. Different regulatory standards in the managed firewall services market include Payment Card Industry - Data Security Standards (PCI- DSS), ISO 27001:2013, SANS Firewall Security policy, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) guidelines, North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) - Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP) standard, etc. However, the ever-growing complex compliance requirement is a key challenge in the managed firewall services market.

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How packet-filtering firewalls work

When a packet passes through a packet-filtering firewall, its source and destination address, protocol and destination port number are checked. The packet is dropped -- it's not forwarded to its destination -- if it does not comply with the firewall's rule set. For example, if a firewall is configured with a rule to block Telnet access, then the firewall will drop packets destined for Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) port number 23, the port where a Telnet server application would be listening.

A packet-filtering firewall works mainly on the network layer of the OSI reference model, although the transport layer is used to obtain the source and destination port numbers. It examines each packet independently and does not know whether any given packet is part of an existing stream of traffic.

The packet-filtering firewall is effective, but because it processes each packet in isolation, it can be vulnerable to IP spoofing attacks and has largely been replaced by stateful inspection firewalls.

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