Firewalls Research Paper

Although there are other ways to secure a network, a firewall has proved to be the best effective tool for all network. Firewalls, however, are not a “Silver Bullet” solution for network security. The word “Silver Bullet” it is mostly used in folklore. In the folklore, this term was referred to as the only answer to eliminating threats like werewolves in that context. Besides, firewalls are a necessity for all networks, but are not a “Silver Bullet” Solution for network security. They are used allows packets to penetrate through and blocks the ones it does not need. Primarily, the importance of firewalls in a company is to protect its information as well as computers from an authorized access. It can also be used to protect computers from any malicious software like viruses, Trojan horses, and spyware among others.

According to Cafasso (1996), he explains how hard is for starters the moment they expose their business to the globe through the internet (Cafasso, 1996). They also protect computers from dangerous websites, which may harm the computers or the network. What is needed for them to run is electricity and network connection? However, software firewalls have to be installed on a computer like a server in order to run. They are used to prevent only a single form of malicious activity as they have been configured. Having that knowledge, we can look at the different types of firewalls and they include packet-filtering firewalls, which are used to authenticate packets created on certain protocols. As per Shabtai (2010), “Packet filtering usually works by the use of Access Control Lists (ACL) that is installed on network devices like routers or switches.

They usually have a high speed when performed in an Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC)” (Shabtai, 2010). It is also known as an application or gateway layer. It is a firewall used on a network to protect network resources by sieving messages at the application layer or layer 7 in the OSI model. Lawson contends, “Traffic in this firewall is interrupted and directed to a proxy connection and it does not packet to pass directly between application and the user” (Lawson, 1996). This means that for any connection to be complete it has to pass through the proxy server. It acts as an interface used to examine the traffic and filter the required content by allowing and blocking the packets. The application filtering is able to examine the flow within the firewall.

The clients and servers use application filtering as the interface. Circuit proxy is the other filtering method. It focuses through layers 3 to layer 5 (Alam, 2016). In addition, it permits or rejects admission through preliminary configuration and is very comparable to static filtering. (Jakobson, F. (2014)) Future trends Firewalls will keep on evolving, and their range of competences and functionalities will enlarge as well. This is due to the technology, which keeps on changing. More threats occur when an organization exposes its self to the internet because it is a public arena that can be accessed by anybody and this is the reason why the firewalls have to evolve with the technology. The future firewall has to distinguish amid genuine and ingenuine traffic flow automatically to recognize and remove the unseen risk on the fly.

Any device on a network is prone to attack any even the device that is controlling the network need to be protected or monitored. Other than that, preventing attackers from accessing the company’s content helps the company to save a lot. This is because when attackers access the details, it may alter, destroy or even use that information to blackmail the company. Any company has to invest a lot in firewalls for better security of its information. Other than that, the network administrator has to be well conversant with firewalls so that he or she can be able to control it without any problems or difficulties. proquest. com/docview/864292510?accountid=8289 Jakobson, F. Open source routing software: A comparative study of open source software routers.