Firewall's were used to consist of simple mechanisms to controlling access into and out of the company. Traditional firewall techniques such as port blocking and NAT still play a massive part; however on their own they do not have the in depth power to stopping today’s threats. The primary job of a firewall is to protect the company’s network from internet threats and to enforce company security policies. The security policy will dictate what service, ports and IP addresses are allowed and disallowed via the firewall. Companies are in need of firewall's that do not only consist of advanced protection tools, but also have other built in advanced capabilities for other uses, such as VPN’s, WAN Optimisation, Failover and high availability, VLAN support, Dynamic routing, logging and reporting and other very handy utilities.
Choosing a firewall can be a daunting task when you look at the vast amount of firewall's on the market. Do you go with a market leader firewall from Cisco Juniper and Checkpoint paying £10,000 more for a brand name, or do you purchase a cheaper firewall which is still playing catch up and has not really had enough coverage and reviews in the world of security. Also to take into mind that this product will be the main entrance point to and from your company.
So for example if you were to purchase a door, which door would you invest in? A solid, heavy duty and bullet proof door from a worldwide manufacturer; or a door from your local DIY shop, which looks the part but has not really been put to the test. Or even a door that has been promised to provide top notch security, which really is hollow in the middle, comes with weak hinges, built from cheap material and comes with a warded lock which is very easy to circumvent. When you question the manufacturer of the door and question their marketing on the door claiming it meets certain security standards, you find that these tests were internally tested from the developers themselves and not from a third party known reviewer!
Firewall's come with different techniques to stopping many of today’s threats and come in different forms and setup methods depending on the environment they will accommodate. This is why you need to spend some time researching each firewall, what you and your company require from a firewall and carefully choosing the right firewall for your company based on a balance of a number of things such as reputation of the vendor and the cost of the product.
