A firewall device is one of the first lines of defense in a network because it isolates one network from another. Firewalls can be standalone systems or they can be included in other infrastructure devices, such as routers or servers. You can find both hardware and software firewall solutions; some firewalls are available as appliances that serve as the primary device separating two networks.

Firewalls exclude unwanted and undesirable network traffic from entering the organization’s systems. Depending on the organization’s firewall policy, the firewall may completely disallow some traffic or all traffic, or it may perform a verification on some or all of the traffic. There are two commonly used types of firewall policies:

• Whitelisting — The firewall denies all connections except for those specifically listed as acceptable.
• Blacklisting — The firewall allows all connections except those specifically listed as unacceptable.

There are four types of firewalls: packet-filtering firewalls, stateful packet-filtering firewalls, proxy firewalls and web application firewalls.

When buying Network Security Firewalls, you should evaluate the needs of your organization specifically and your needs. It is important to consider what exactly you need from a firewall. For free advice on how to buy network security firewalls for your business, call us on +254700446536. Forcepoint, Fortinet, Sophos,  firewalls and more

Firewalls carefully analyze incoming traffic based on pre-established rules and filter traffic coming from unsecured or suspicious sources to prevent attacks. Firewalls guard traffic at a computer’s entry point, called ports, which is where information is exchanged with external devices. For example, “Source address 172.18.1.1 is allowed to reach destination 172.18.2.1 over port 22.”

Think of IP addresses as houses, and port numbers as rooms within the house. Only trusted people (source addresses) are allowed to enter the house (destination address) at all—then it’s further filtered so that people within the house are only allowed to access certain rooms (destination ports), depending on if they’re the owner, a child, or a guest. The owner is allowed to any room (any port), while children and guests are allowed into a certain set of rooms (specific ports).

The right firewall for your company is the one that matches your current requirements and can handle most future needs. Enterprise firewalls are very expensive, and most SMB’s don’t require that level of protection, but if you have a massive network and a lot of data to protect, it’s your best option. For an SMB on a budget, a high-performance network firewall can meet your demands.

If you can’t afford on-site maintenance and mostly work with remote employees, a cloud firewall solution should provide all the protection you require. And for companies with a low-traffic website and network, a software firewall will be sufficient in keeping you safe and secure.

Since there are so many features packed into each and every firewall, here’s a short list of some essentials that you should look for in the firewall you choose.

A virtual private network, or VPN, is an encrypted connection over the Internet from a device to a network. The encrypted connection helps ensure that sensitive data is safely transmitted. It prevents unauthorized people from eavesdropping on the traffic and allows the user to conduct work remotely. VPNs implement site-to-site encryption and anonymize your IP address so that hackers, governments, and even your ISP can only see that you connected to a VPN server.

If your primary firewall shuts down for any reason, it will cut over to a secondary firewall which will resume operational capabilities.

Packet filtering is commonly deployed in a small network by using a router that functions as a firewall to examine every packet of data passing through your network.

A Stateful firewall individually tracks sessions of network connections traversing it. Stateful packet inspection, also referred to as dynamic packet filtering This is a very effective feature that any SMB should look for in their firewall.