#WeekendWisdom 004 Firewall
Welcome to #WeekendWisdom number 4. This week we are going to talk about what a firewall is.
Firewall
“What is a firewall?” I hear you ask.
A firewall is usually a piece of dedicated hardware that sits between your internet connection and your local area network, your local LAN that all your computers are on. And what it does then, is it monitors any traffic that is coming in from the internet, into your network and blocks anything that shouldn’t be getting in. People from scanning your network devices and trying to discover them and also it then would set it that it prevents people from connecting out, if you so want, out onto the Internet.
As I say it can be a dedicated piece of hardware, it can also be put in software, but really for a bit more secure application you would want have a piece of hardware.
Your Internet Service Provider probably has provided you with a router to connect to the Internet. These have built-in firewalls. They’re not great. They would be fine for a domestic environment, but in a business set-up you really do want a dedicated firewall.
Firewalls are inexpensive, particularly for the smaller offices, you can get them for like a €150 to €200 and it’s just a case of getting them set-up then, and active monitoring your network.
There are fancier appliances called Next Generation Firewalls, they just do more advanced scanning and filtering and they provide other services usually that are tacked on, but for a normal small office you don’t really need those next generation firewalls. Your basic firewall should be adequate to protect you.
So that’s it for this week. Let’s be careful out there and we’ll see you again next week.