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Firewalls – An Important Security Measure

By: Mahesh Thakur

A firewall is a hardware or software solution to enforce security policies. In the physical security analogy, a firewall is equivalent to a door lock on a perimeter door or on a door to a room inside of the building - it permits only authorized users such as those with a key or access card to enter. A firewall has built-in filters that can disallow unauthorized or potentially dangerous material from entering the system. It also logs attempted intrusions. Training franchises providing courses in information security will give you a better idea about the basic firewalls. There are three basic types of firewalls depending on whether the communication is being done between a single node and the network, or between two or more networks. Whether the communication is intercepted at the network layer, or at the application layer. Whether the communication state is being tracked at the firewall or not.

With regard to the scope of filtered communications, the different types of firewalls that exist are personal firewalls and network firewalls. Personal firewall is a software application which normally filters traffic entering or leaving a single computer. Network Firewall is normally running on a dedicated network device or computer positioned on the boundary of two or more networks. Such a firewall filters all traffic entering or leaving the connected networks.

In reference to the layers where the traffic can be intercepted, the three main categories of firewalls which exist are Network layer firewalls (example would be ip tables), application layer firewalls (example would be TCP Wrappers) and application firewalls (example would be restricting ftp services through /etc/ftp access file). An education franchise dealing in ethical hacking courses will teach you the latest in firewalls.

The network layer and application layer types of firewall may overlap, even though the personal firewall does not serve a network. Single systems can implemented both together. There‘s also the notion of application firewalls which are sometimes used during Wide Area Network (WAN) networking on the World-Wide Web and govern the system software. An extended description would place them lower than application layer firewalls, at the Operating system layer, and could alternately be called operating system firewalls. Some firewalls have higher privileges than others like mysql and pj. Lastly, depending on whether the firewalls track packet states, the two additional categories of firewalls which exist are stateful firewalls and stateless firewalls. An education franchise or training franchises in information security will educate you better about the different types of firewalls.

Network layer firewalls operate at a low level of the TCP/IP protocol stack as IP-packet filters, not allowing packets to pass through the firewall unless they match the rules. The firewall administrator may define the rules or default built-in rules may apply. A more permissive setup could allow any packet to pass the filter as long as it does not match one or more negative rules or deny rules. Today, network firewalls are built into most computer operating systems and network appliances.

Application layer firewalls work on the application level of the TCP/IP stack, and may intercept all packets traveling to or from an application. They block other packets (usually dropping them without acknowledgement to the sender). In principle, application firewalls can prevent all unwanted outside traffic from reaching protected machines. By inspecting all packets for improper content, firewalls can even prevent the spread of the likes of viruses.

Article Source: http://www.notepad.in

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