Choosing the Right Firewall
Introduction
Network security is needed to monitor any unwanted intrusion, violating, or damaging to communications and protect an organization’s network from external attacks and cyber threats. It plays a crucial role in securing the environment of an organization. Firewalls are critical for shielding systems and information from dangers. Choosing the right firewall that protects your system from malicious attacks and viruses will always be confusing and frustrating. Purchasing the right firewall for an organization situation requires a mindful appraisal. By following best practices of Network Security an organization safeguards the confidential and sensitive data of the organization (Joshua, 2014). Before choosing a firewall, it is important to know the growth and size of an organization, it will help to decide the complexity of the firewall system. Thus, the goal of this paper is to examine the best ways of selecting the right firewall for one’s need which are software firewalls, hardware firewalls, and a commercial firewall.
There are various types and features with different levels of security when it comes to firewalls. Choosing the type of firewall to use is determined by the scope, size, and scale of the organization. In order to choose the best firewall being software, hardware, or commercial firewall, there are different features that the paper will look at. There are a lot of features found in every firewall that the user should look for while choosing the firewall. The first crucial feature, in this case, is VPN (Raje et al. 2017). If the business or user is trying to create a safe as well as secure infrastructure, VPN should be included in the firewall. VPN is the site to site encryption that anomalyze the IP address so that the adversary or the government can see that one is connected to the VPN server. They will never be aware of what one is looking at or even what they doing on the internet. Another important factor to be put into consideration is built-in high availability. It is the standard back up feature the organization will require if it cannot risk losing the firewall. If the primary firewall shuts down for no apparent reason, it will then cutover to the secondary firewall which starts operational capabilities. The feature is not required for the case of small business which can operate minus firewall when a short period while it is being restored. However, if it’s a commercial and large service provider with a lot of data for the customers to offer protection built-in high availability feature must be implemented to prevent the dangerous exposures when the primary firewall case being operational (Sharma, & Parekh, 2017). Another important feature to consider when choosing the type of firewall to use is packet filtering. Packet filtering is mostly applied in the small network through the application of routers which operates as the firewall evaluates each packet of data passing through the network. The primary challenge with this feature is that it is limited in its protection and thus cannot safeguard against the attack which utilizes application-layer vulnerabilities. The feature is applied by the small organization which has limited network use.
Stateful inspection is another factor that determines the firewall to be used. Stateful inspection works deeply in the network layer of the OSI model. The approach analyzes packet headers and then investigate the content of the packet themselves for thorough protection. Proxy server changes the IP address and then mask the origin of the network traffic through acting as the intermediary between the internet as well as the computer (Sharma, & Parekh, 2017). Additionally, while the VPN encrypts the traffic which passes through its server the proxy encrypts the IP and can even handle multiple connections. the VPN is a higher security better alternative one can afford it, however, the proxy server offers satisfactory privacy for organizations on the tight budget but all of them can be applied together to achieve maximum security. Before going ahead to choose the firewall to apply the organization should consider the number of people that would be using it and how large the organization is expected to grow soon. This will determine the complexity of the firewall wall to be chosen. The system to choose from can be therefore dependent on the size of the organization (Yaakov et al. 2019). A host-based firewall is programs that safeguard a single computer and thus can only work on the computer to a computer basis. Every separate system would have its host-based firewalls. In most cases they are always flexible, simple, and lost cost however, they provide minimum protection from the cybersecurity threats. On the other hand network firewalls are created to offer protection to various computers simultaneously and also harder to penetrate due to having a separate system from the host. Network firewalls effectively identify and stop viruses and malware from gaining entry.
A commercial firewall is designed for business with a complex network as well as an increased number of users. The commercial firewall is applied to the client/server network. Most of the commercial firewalls can be used in the agent infrastructure where every host’s firewall can be administered from the master management console (Chopra, 2016). Since commercial firewalls are always complex they require special training and certification for maximum application. It is also crucial to note that commercial firewalls make use of the UNIX like command line interface which is powerful and efficient however it is not intuitive. The firewall incorporates VPN pathways, the built-in high availability, and also has quality monitoring as well as a reporting system. In most cases, commercial firewalls are the most expensive however the greatest amount of protection to the business.
Software firewall
In most cases, software firewalls are installed in personal computers with a reduced or light network connection (Cheminod et al. 2018). The software firewall is the form of the application installed on the host. It is also referred to as a hot firewall while a hardware firewall is known as an appliance firewall. The software firewall largely depends on the hardware’s host as well as the opening system. Therefore before the use of a software firewall the organization should take note of this. More so, when the host’s component is not well hardened the software firewall will be less useful mostly if there is another communication pathway or the attack on the hot. Typically, a software firewall should compete for resources together with other processes that are active on the host. The software firewall can only protect one single host from malicious network activities. A software firewall can filter the traffic which reaches the network interface of its host (Cheminod et al. 2018). Software firewalls are designed to block viruses, malware, Trojans among other dangerous activities. The software firewall offers internal protection or security to the network. The software firewall typically controls the behavior of specific applications. However, the data packets are often allowed to pass through the network switch and router before the software could have the chance to scan. A software firewall is not recommended for the organization that requires to protect the sensitive data.
Hardware firewall
Hardware firewalls are crucial in the organization that protects sensitive data from the outside world through the help of a single physical device. Hardware firewalls are also installed behind the router to scan every single data packet coming from the interment (Chopra, 2016). Hardware firewall makes use of intelligent functions to identify and recognize the unknown viruses as well as malware thorough analysis of the greatest dataset and detecting the irregular activity. The hardware firewall is created as the turn-key system which poses pre-installed software and once set it can offer 24/7 protection. The hardware firewall is the dedicated hardware appliance or hardware which is built and hardened to support the function of firewall software running on it. Hardware firewall to not require extra hardware or even software for its functionality. It requires one or more connection together with the power source (Cheminod et al. 2018). When the user or organization wants to incorporate a firewall with other kinds of security then a hardware firewall should be applied. Once the hardware firewall is installed, it offers a single point to manage the whole network which saves both resources and time However the drawback of hardware firewall that it requires constant updates and if the organization requires higher bandwidth, then it must pay for the new system as well as an installation which is both costly and time-consuming.
Conclusion
The personal and commercial versions of the software as well as the hardware firewalls may entail various add-ons or the enhancement than their commercial equivalents. The enhancement comprises registry protection, antivirus, driver protection, password management, and remote access control, spam filtering, VPN gateway, and IDSs. The add –ons only makes the product more attractive to the customer. Before the installation of any type of firewall is important to be sure that the firewall implements the privacy and security policies that satisfy the needs of the user or the organization.it should also not conflict with the available security measures. When it comes to prices, a hardware firewall is more expensive compared to a software firewall. This is because the hardware firewall provided with a wider range of capabilities. However, at times the organization can incorporate the three types of firewalls to achieve maximum security for sensitive data.
References
Cheminod, M., Durante, L., Seno, L., & Valenzano, A. (2018). Performance evaluation and modeling of an industrial application-layer firewall. IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, 14(5), 2159-2170.
Chopra, A. (2016). Security Issues of Firewall. International Journal of P2P Network Trends and Technology (IJPTT), 22(1).
Raje, S., Vaderia, S., Wilson, N., & Panigrahi, R. (2017, December). Decentralized firewall for malware detection. In 2017 International Conference on Advances in Computing, Communication, and Control (ICAC3) (pp. 1-5). IEEE.
Sharma, R., & Parekh, C. (2017). Firewalls: A Study and Its Classification. International Journal of Advanced Research in Computer Science, 8(5).
Yaakov, Y. B., Wang, X., Meyer, J., & An, B. (2019, October). Choosing Protection: User Investments in Security Measures for Cyber Risk Management. In International Conference on Decision and Game Theory for Security (pp. 33-44). Springer, Cham.