Different Types of Network Firewall Security Businesses Should Know About

The introduction of network firewall was inevitable once the administrators of early internet systems understood that they were under frequent attacks. It was a given that some sort of process had to be introduced for looking at network traffic for issuing clear warning signs of attackers. It was around 1987 when the term firewall was first used for referring to the process of filtering out unwanted network traffic. It was used as a metaphor that likened the device to partitions that prevent a fire from moving from one area of a physical structure to the other.

As far as the networking case was concerned, the purpose was to add a filer between the safe internal network and any traffic leaving or entering from the same network’s connection to the internet. Today, there is no conversation regarding network security that can be done without the mention of firewall. However, since its introduction, the concept of network firewall security has also evolved considerably as technology continues to progress. Consequently, we can now find different types of firewalls nowadays. The firewall services and devices available these days provide protection beyond what standard network financial security was able to accomplish in the past.

For instance, network firewall security also includes denial-of-service attack protection, intrusion detection and other security services for protecting servers and numerous other devices in a private network. Let’s take a look at the different types of network firewall security that you can find these days:

Packet filtering firewall

This type of network firewall security is used at junction points, where devices such as switches and routers can be found. Their function is not to route packets, but to compare every packet that’s received to an already established criteria. This can be packet type, allowable IP addresses, port numbers and various other aspects. Any packet that’s flagged as trouble is dropped immediately, which means they are not forward and so do not exist.

Circuit-level gateway

Malicious content is a major problem that people have to face these days and circuit-level gateway is designed to deal with this aspect of network firewall security. They are a relatively quick way of doing so. This type of network firewall security monitors TCP handshakes and a number of other network protocol initiation messages sent across the network. These are established between the remote and local hosts for determining the legitimacy of the session being initiated, whether the remote system can be relied upon. However, they are not responsible for inspecting the packets.

Application-level gateway

This kind of network firewall security is technically a proxy and so it is called a proxy firewall. It is actually a combination of circuit-level gateways and packet filtering firewalls. Not only do these filter packets according to the service for which they are needed, but they also filter according to certain characteristics like the HTTP request string. However, it is essential to keep in mind that this form of network firewall security, while good at providing a strong layer of data security, can have a very dramatic impact on overall network performance.

Stateful inspection firewall

As far as this type of network firewall security is concerned, it can provide good security, better than most other kinds. This is due to the fact that state-aware devices don’t just focus on examining each packet, but they are also responsible for keeping track of whether the packet belongs to an established TCP or any other network session. In this way, this element of network firewall security can provide additional security, but it can take a serious toll on the performance of your network.

One important thing to note about this type of network firewall security is that it boasts a multilayer inspection firewall. This takes into account the flow of transactions across various protocol layers of the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model, which has seven lawyers.

Next generation firewall

Perhaps the most advanced form of network firewall security, NGFW is a combination of stateful inspection and packet inspection. Other than that, it also includes an array of deep packet inspection, along with other network security systems like malware filtering, intrusion prevention/detection and antivirus. In traditional network firewall security, packet inspection focuses exclusively at the packet’s protocol header, but deep packet inspection is more concerned about checking out the actual data being carried by the packet.

Hence, a deep packet inspection firewall keeps an eye on the progress of a web browsing session and can notice whether a packet payload, when it is assembled with other packets, can be considered a legitimate HTML formatted response.

These are the five different kinds of network firewall security that can be found. When it comes to deciding what kind of firewall security is best for you, there are some questions that need to be answered. You have to decide the intended purpose of the firewall, how it will be used and what it is supposed to protect. You also need to address some questions about the infrastructure for which the network firewall security is required. It is vital to bear in mind that network firewall security will not be the same for every organization because every private network is unique and so their requirements vary.

Furthermore, most of the network firewall security implementations include features of different types of firewalls. Therefore, selecting one is rarely about finding one that will fit neatly into a specific category. As far as selecting the right form of firewall security is concerned, it will start with understanding the functions and architecture of the private network that’s being protection. However, you also need to be familiar with the different types of network firewall security that exist as well as the firewall policies that would be most helpful for the organization.

Regardless of the type of network firewall security you select, it should be noted that a misconfigured one can often turn out to be worse than not having a firewall at all because it creates the dangerous impression of security, while providing none.