The Importance of Firewall

The amount of data that can be transferred through a computer is enormous. With this in mind, it is important to have a firewall to protect our computers, devices and networks from threats. And thus, the role of firewall comes in. Firewall monitors and blocks traffic from external sources, such as hackers and other malicious parties, while still allowing traffic from trusted sources such as your ISP or other programs on your machine. While taking on company level – Enterprise Firewall protects an entire company or network from cyber attack by filtering incoming and outgoing traffic at the point where it enters or leaves an organization’s network.

Firewalls – in A Simple Term

Firewalls are used to protect computers and networks from attack. They work by blocking any incoming traffic that is not explicitly allowed.

Firewalls exist at the router level, the operating system level, and at individual application levels. If a machine has a firewall running on it, it will have an active input filter that blocks all inbound traffic unless the packet is specifically allowed.

There are many different types of firewalls are available but few of them we would like to mention are: the packet filtering firewall, Stateful inspection firewall (also called proxy firewall), Deep packet inspection firewall and Web application Firewall, A fifth type of firewall, commonly called a Next-Generation Firewall.

Packet Filtering Firewall

This sort of firewall has a certain number of firewall security rules which can hinder traffic dependent on IP convention, IP address or potentially port number. This firewall is programmed in such a way that, all web traffic will be permitted but block the traffic intendent for electronic assaults.

But we also need intrusion prevention, in addition to firewall security, in order to differentiate between organic web traffic which is nothing but real users web requests from genuine sources browsing your website and individuals assaulting your site. But a packet filtering firewall has limitations here, it can’t differentiate between the packets coming from legitimate traffic source or any other source

Stateful Firewall

This is also working on the same principles as the packet filtering firewall, but smarter about tracking active connections, so you can define firewall management rules such as “only allow packages into the network which is part of a predefined outbound connection. This kind of firewall is doing more than simply analyzing packets when they pass and rejecting as a function of simple parameters, it manages the dynamic information and continue to monitor packets when they pass via the network.

A simple packet filter firewall just blocks only the static information such as the IP address or port. Whereas the Stateful firewalls are better in indicating and blocking illegitimate traffic because they recognize models and anu other advance threats.

Deep packet inspection firewall

The Firewall takes a new approach to detecting and blocking attacks by inspecting the content of network packets. It compares the known good traffic generated by the internal protocols with never-before-seen network traffic. If it discovers something it doesn’t recognize, the device isolates it from your network and alerts you with detailed information about what was seen. It is a hardware centric and depending on the processing power to manage the deep packet inspection for the network.

Web Application Firewalls 

Companies are still using stateful technology but it is no longer sufficient to maintain a safe network. Nowadays many applications are web based and safeguard them from threats become the priority. Thus, Web Application Firewalls were the next big step.

Traditional firewalls are struggling to detect traffic coming or going from a web application or services. Thus. Web application firewalls are designed to tackle these kinds of threats. It is capable to track the intrusion attempts that take advantage of web app or services or software vulnerabilities.

Next-Generation Firewall

NGFW is the latest generation of firewalls and have a board security application to provide overall security. This enterprise grade firewalls are designed as the combination of many firewalls mentioned above in this article. It comes with many network security features to mitigate threats coming from every possible source. If any company looking for any advanced firewall security technology then NGFW is the best choice to get highest level of security.

The sudden spread of global pandemic, COVID-19, has changed the entire lifestyle of every individual and especially the work front. The ongoing lockdown to curb the spread of the virus has compelled people to adopt Work from Home (WFH). Not only are people trying to cope up with this new normal, but the situation has also thrown a challenge to the technology partner community to gear up to meet the challenges and demands of the present situation. In a chat with VARINDIA, Subbaram Gowra, /Managing Director, Gowra Bits & Bytes, discusses about the rising demand of remote work, challenges of WFH, Remote Work Solutions, etc.

There is an unprecedented spike in remote work today. How are your customers geared up for this new age of remote workforce?

There are some interesting discussions happening around this aspect, more than the customers alone, we as an ecosystem or an industry must be geared up for this challenge now and for the unforeseen/uncertain future.

As a leading solutions provider, how is Gowra Bits & Bytes geared to address the growing adoption of Work from Home (WFH) challenges?

As an end-to-end System Integrator, we have dedicated SMEs (Subject Matter Experts) with in-depth hands-on experience cutting across areas like Network Transformation, Backup Automation, Information Security, etc. Till now, we have orchestrated and even successfully delivered more than 200+ turnkey IT Infrastructure projects, the nature of them being mostly complex. This experience helped us better understand the challenges and quickly come up with cost effective WFH (Work from Home) solutions.

In your view, what are some of the key challenges faced by employees while working remotely, especially in India? How are you working with Dell Technologies to help your customers sail through these challenges?

What I feel is that it is more to do with a sudden culture change (like work distractions, motivation levels, time management, etc.). Of course, the internet speed and the quality of the service delivered by the local ISPs does matter a lot too for effective work delivery. The advantage of working with Dell Technologies is that they have a huge portfolio of solutions with workstations, laptops, thin clients or deploying “VMware Workspace One” solutions.

Employee experience and productivity is becoming extremely important while enabling Remote Work solutions. Therefore, RWS is not just about devices but the entire ecosystem like displays and right peripherals too. What is your take on it?

It really matters what the budget or maturity of the customer is. The huge portfolio of products and solutions from Dell Technologies made our life much easier and as a System Integrator, all we needed was an absolute clarity on the scope of work and challenges.

Working Remotely is also leading to crucial data being exposed to cybercriminals. How are you supporting your customer’s business-critical technology needs with Dell Technologies solutions?

Traditional, RDP or VPN Solutions which are normally used as a WFH solution are not full proof and secure. Luckily, we have various options like Multi-factor Authentication, Encryption and Application Access Gateway Solutions, which could be used as stand alone or in combination, depending on the customer’s challenge or the scenario in a way which enables users working from any network be IT trusted LAN or untrusted WAN or internet or mobile network to securely access corporate resources without requiring any network changes.

Subbaram Gowra, Managing Director, Gowra Bits & Bytes

The above article is published in Varindia Magazine