Firewalls can be defined as a gateway or a system which works out to prevent unauthorized access to your private network or you computer. These systems act as a defense line to safeguard your data or any kind of private information stored on your computer or your network. This information can be anything, some data which are lifeline of your network and computer and loss of such information can give you some huge losses. All the malicious attacks from ad ware, spy ware, worms, Trojans, worms and hackers can be prevented with the help of a good firewall.
A firewall is made up of multiple security mechanisms which keeps an eye on those who are sending and receiving your data and it keeps a constant check on the access control of data through your computer or your private network. A firewall can be software or hardware. You can use either forms of firewall in your systems. If you want greater protection then you must use the combination of these two firewalls. The working protocol of firewall is quiet simple. All messages or datagram’s entering or leaving your computer has to pass through the firewall. According to you security criteria have and rules firewall checks all the messages and datagram’s and blocks those which are of no use to you, so any unauthorized access is prevented in this way.
Describing firewalls in a layman language then we can compare them to a security scanner or security guards who safeguard your computer networks and servers. They just check every thing that enters and allows only those to pass through who are useful to you and are of no threat. Though it is defined very simply but firewalls are very complex structures which consist of a whole lot of techniques which can be implemented in permutations and combinations according to the security level you want for your computer network and servers.
Here are some types of firewalls:
Firewalls which are used for some specific areas ad applications like telnet, FTP are know as Application gateway firewalls.
Those firewalls which scan each individual packet entering your network and then rejecting or accepting them according to you security levels are known as Packet filters.
Firewalls which are used for protocols like UDP (User Datagram Protocol) and TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) are known as Circuit-level gateway firewalls.
If you want firewalls which are capable of hiding your true network address then you can use a Proxy server.
by Camila 1 year ago
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