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- Introduction of the problem
The protection of the information on the personal computer as well as on the internet has come along the way since the introduction and implementation of the internet. Firewall is a mechanism to stop virus, unauthentic access and other malicious program to enter into the computer on the network.
Now-a-days lots of information files and emails have been shared on the internet, all this information is vulnerable to get attacked by hackers because of this threat many organizations using firewalls to protect unauthorised access of their files. The information shared on worldwide web is not only the security issue but also the computer system itself needs some security it can be achieved by both software firewalls and hardware firewalls (Caruso, 2003).It increases the safety of the data by restricting traffic on the network. It’s impossible to provide the security to every single computer on the network; a firewall is the method to provide practical security to the whole network in an inexpensive way (Schultz, 1995). Now, the point arises here why someone need to attack my computer or network? The answer to this question is to do some type of fraud for example, to get some important information such as credit card detail and financial details to do some shopping or identity theft (hackers may use your system to attack another system).
As research shows that firewall is the first protection against attacks .However, the use of firewall alone cannot be satisfied this challenging security condition of computers or Data in this era of internet (Landwehr,2001). There are number of anti-viruses in the market which helps to clean and protect personal computers and several methods to encrypt the information to protect during transit process.
The purpose of this research paper is to discuss the need and the role of firewalls. The possible benefits of the firewall and this report also explain various types of firewalls and how it works in brief. Furthermore, it provides a case study on the firewall.
- Background of firewall
Currently, it’s very easy to get a firewall for computers, it has become mechanical. Sometimes you can get firewall free of charge and it is available at very low prices when we get internet services. However, in 1980’s the firewalls were very expensive, difficult to configure and offered very less security (Broderick, 2005) and these were only assembled in defence and government networks.The main methodology behind the firewall is to allow or disallow the information on the network to go out and come in according to certain criteria. Firewalls work properly if configured correctly (Everett, 2001).After the advent of Internet, the demand of security to the computers and to the data increased dramatically; therefore there were many new firewall technologies came and failed due to underestimation of attacks on the systems. In addition, the firewall does not help to protect data in-transit (process of data transfer from one computer to another). To protect data in-transit the only way is to encrypt the data (coded form of data) (Broderick, 2005).
- Statement of the problem (Case Study)
The president of one import/export company SunCom Int’l Corporation called their local network administrator to prepare a plan for linking the current LAN to the Internet and hosting a corporate Web server. The goal of the company is to set up an on-line electronic virtual shop which permits clients to place orders and check order status through an Internet. The president explicitly wanted a plan with proper security measures and called for a re-examine the security strategy before the execution of the Internet connection. The local area network administrator came up with a firewall strategy after considering all the threat such as hackers and unauthorized access of information (Wen & Tarn, 1998). They selected firewall (vendor A.S.I, cost $3995, combination of packet filter and application proxy firewall) according to certain criteria such as Remote management, secure multiple server access and logging capability (Wen & Tarn).
- Firewall and System protection for Personal Computers
A simple firewall protects the data on the basis of IP address included in that particular data. It accepts data from outer network if the data has valid IP address for any computer on that particular network and rejects the information with invalid IP addresses (work like normal postal system)(Fulp,2009).
There are mainly two types of firewalls –Hardware firewall (external device such as router) and Software firewall (software runs straight on computer)but they are further divided into three different categories Packet filter firewall, Stateful firewall, Application Proxy Firewall(Wen & Tarn,1998).
Packet Filter Firewall
This is very basic technique to check the data coming to and going from the network. Packet Filter firewall receives information (which is in the packet forms) and test it with some predefined set of rules (based on ports), accordingly three actions are possible: forward the received information, dropped the information and throw back to the originator with cause of refusing. This mechanism provides security with ease as the packet filtering rules are easy to set but there is one problem with this firewall is if the unidentified IP address come across it passes the data (Kumar, 1999).
Stateful Firewall
Stateful firewall is the advancement in packet filter firewall. In this case, firewall checks the data like packet filtering and in addition it also check the state of the connection between source and destination if the connection is genuine it passes the data otherwise drop it (Coley et al., 1998).It works better than Packet Filtering.
Application Proxy Firewall
Application Proxy firewall is most secure firewall than others. This firewall works at application level which means it inspects the elements of the coming packet not just the IP address .When connection between source and destination has to established proxy firewall goes between the source and the destination, it terminates the connection by acting as a destination and receive the data. After this Proxy firewall makes the connection to the destination and validate till application layer (Wen & Tarn, 1998).
5. Conclusions
In conclusion, firewall is very effective means to improve security to the system in many different ways. The main benefit of firewall is to reduce the number of attacks to the computers and to protect the important information. The benefits of the firewalls need to be balanced against the potential challenges to implementing well configured firewalls. In addition, advancement in technology leads to new security threats to the system so the firewall technologies also need to be up-to-date.
References
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Coley, D.C., Hill, M., Wesinger, E.R., & Livermore, J. (1998).
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