Firewall Management
Advantages and Disadvantage of using firewall rule to close all port except 80 and 443
Advantages
A firewall is a network security system, which filters outgoing and incoming network traffic based on several user-defined rules. Generally, a firewall aims to minimize or remove the incidence of unauthorized network communications while permitting the free flow of all legitimate communication. Firewalls offer an integral layer of protection in most server infrastructures, which, combined with other steps, prevents attackers from maliciously accessing the servers. The web browser uses the outgoing port 80 to make web requests, so if you block the incoming port 80, all you block are attempts by others to connect to the web server that you run on your computer (Rai, Devi & Guleria, 2018). Blocking outgoing port 80 is prevent internet surfing from your web browser. Port 443 is primarily used for the HTTPS (SSL or TLS authenticated HTTP) web servers. Many VPN providers can also use it, usually to circumvent certain firewall limitations by impersonating the HTTPS connection. Few ports mean better management of the traffic in the shadow. Besides, the provider wants all outgoing traffic monitored, checked, and policed (Rai, Devi & Guleria, 2018).
Disadvantage
Blocking the port 80 http will not be redirected automatically to https. Apache webserver is designed to redirect all http requests to https requests by using the Apache command ‘Redirect permanent.’ Technically, we do use the unsafe http protocol, but it is only used for redirecting, and no data can ever be accessible via http. When all traffic moves through one or two ports, then differentiating delay-sensitive traffic to bulk traffic when implementing transport engine forwarding policies at transport level becomes more difficult (Rai, Devi & Guleria, 2018). If ports 80 and 443 are the only ports that are opened, then given that middleboxes in networks inspect packets and validate HTTP traffic. This new protocol is not based on HTTP and requires a different transport port or protocol is difficult to access.
Benefits of Using Firewall Management
The benefits of using firewall management have a couple of perks (Best, 2017).
- Improved visibility into network traffic
- There are some significant up-front savings with the managed firewall service.
- Fewer data breaches and attacks
- It increased IT staff productivity.
References
Best, R. (2017, December 13). 5 advantages of a managed firewall service. Retrieved from https://www.infotech.co.uk/blog/5-advantages-of-managed-firewall-service
Rai, K., Devi, M. S., & Guleria, A. (2018). Packet-based Anomaly Detection using n-gram Approach. International Journal of Computer Sciences and Engineering, 6, 06.