Please Provide a short pararaph for your answer : As you\'ve learned, a firewall
ID: 3552774 • Letter: P
Question
Please Provide a short pararaph for your answer :
As you've learned, a firewall can be a software application or a hardware device. Its purpose is to prevent intruders from accessing your computer system or network by creating a barrier between your system and the Internet. Use the Internet to research firewalls, including at least two types of firewall software and one piece of firewall hardware. At least two of the firewalls should be designed specifically for enterprise use, not for home users. Answers the following questions in a brief paragraph not more than 1 page. What is the name and who is the manufacturer or publisher of each firewall? What is the purchase price? Are there any other fees (e.g., monthly subscriptions)? Does the firewall work with all operating systems? Does it support the most recent versions? What differentiates an enterprise firewall from a firewall used at home? What are the pros and cons of software versus hardware firewalls? How do firewalls work?Explanation / Answer
3.A firewall is included in most Windows operating systems. To turn on or check your firewall settings, click the link that corresponds to the operating system you use
Windows Firewall comes with Windows 8 and is turned on by default.
4. Firewalls for Enterprises
Organizations of all sizes want secure network connectivity to their business data and applications. The need to connect and collaborate with partners, customers, and remote/mobile employees anytime and anywhere has expanded network connectivity requirements beyond traditional wired local area networks (LANs) to include dial-up remote access, VPNs, and wireless networks. To enable greater access to the network and higher productivity, customers must address issues around security, management complexity, and cost. With Windows Server 2003, Windows 2000, Windows XP, and a carefully designed firewall architecture, administrators can provide secure and integrated network connectivity to business-critical applications and data.
When addressing secure network connectivity, administrators need to consider the following:
Security: Employees not only work from corporate offices, but also from branch offices, home offices, or the road. Providing remote connectivity requires solutions that are secure, standards-based, and manageable.
Management complexity: Many vendors offer dedicated product solutions with little integration with other products and infrastructure. Setting up wireless clients with centralized authentication and policies can be a challenge unless there are integrated solutions.
Lowering cost: Secure networking can be expensive if there are multiple products and technologies with separate licensing, support contracts, and training. For example, a secure VPN implementation might require a separate certificate authority for PKI, a separate authentication model, client-side software, and additional server gateways and firewalls.
By addressing these key secure connectivity challenges, organizations can achieve greater employee productivity, decrease costs, and improve business integration.
5. Advantages of Hardware Firewalls
- Single Central Solution, Easier to Maintain and Ideal for Large Organizations: A hardware firewall allows a large organization to have a central solution for its firewall needs. This would be better than having to install and manage firewall software on every computer that it is connected to its network. Configuration changes to a hardware firewall affect all the computers on that network. Thus, those changes do not have to be carried out on each and every computer.
- Require Little Configuration or User Input: Hardware firewalls provide strong protection right out of the box. They do not require any configuration on the part of the individual users. If any such configuration is needed, it is usually carried out centrally by an experienced IT professional precluding the occurrence of errors which may render the firewall useless.
- Can Handle Greater Amounts of Traffic: A large network of computers generates a lot of traffic and hardware firewalls are especially designed to manage and handle such amounts of traffic while protecting the network at the same time.
- Advanced and Extra Features: These include features like being able to create and manage multiple firewalls (e.g. between different departments in an organization), the use of more sophisticated protection methods, etc.
Disadvantages of Hardware Firewalls
- Expensive: While hardware firewalls are available at different prices, they are certainly a lot more expensive than software firewalls.
- Less Upgradable: Hardware firewalls cannot be easily upgraded as software firewalls can.
- May Not Adequately Block Outgoing Traffic: Some hardware firewalls work by only preventing external intrusion into a network and allowing all outbound traffic which they consider "trusted" to leave freely. If hacker or malware manages to breach the firewall, he (or it) could retrieve and export sensitive information unchecked and undetected.
Software Firewalls
Software firewalls are also called Personal or Host-based firewalls because they are installed on individual computers.
Advantages of Software Firewalls
- Portable: Since software firewalls are installed on individual computers they allow users to have firewall protection at all times. For example, people still connect to the internet when they leave an organization's network and for this they need firewall protection.
- Easily Upgraded: Upgrading software firewalls is easy as updates are simply downloaded from the internet. (3)
- Cheap and Ideal for Individuals and Small Businesses: Firewall software is typically several times cheaper than buying firewall hardware. Installing software firewalls on individual computers is more cost-effective if protection is needed for only one or a few computers.
- Can Effectively Block Outgoing Traffic: Personal firewalls can be configured to authorize only certain applications or programs to connect to a network or the internet. In the event that malware finds its way unto a computer, software firewalls can prevent it from sending unauthorized data - which may contain passwords and financial information - out of your computer.
Disadvantages of Software Firewalls
- Can Be Defeated By User's Lack of Computer Security Experience: With personal firewalls users need to know how to configure them to achieve optimum security. Improper configuration may render a personal firewall useless. Many firewalls usually display prompts to alert users of unauthorized incoming or outgoing traffic whether safe or unsafe. If a user cannot tell whether such traffic is unsafe, he or she may allow dangerous traffic to enter or leave the computer.
- Harder to Maintain: When firewall software is installed on several computers such as in a large organization, it can be difficult to ensure that each and all of them are updated and properly configured.
- Only Protect Individual Computers: A personal firewall only protects the computer on which it is installed.
6. Firewalls are setup at every connection to the Internet, therefore subjecting all data flow to careful monitoring. Firewalls can also be tuned to follow "rules". These Rules are simply security rules that can be set up by yourself or by the network administrators to allow traffic to their web servers, FTP servers, Telnet servers, thereby giving the computer owners/administrators immense control over the traffic that flows in & out of their systems or networks.
Rules will decide who can connect to the internet, what kind of connections can be made, which or what kind of files can be transmitted in out. Basically all traffic in & out can be watched and controlled thus giving the firewall installer a high level of security & protection.