Enterprise Firewall: Is One Enough?

Firewalls are installed on a network to ensure control on the incoming and outgoing traffic. They act as a door between secured and unsecured network and filter data based on a fixed set of rules. Usually they are a part of the antivirus software but for in depth security, companies prefer to combine different types of enterprise firewall, to ensure complete security.

Types of Firewall
Firewalls have been taking care of network security since 1980’s. Back then, they were simple packet filter systems that check the header of the incoming data for its details and accepted or rejected it based on the protocol. Firewalls are categorized based on the network they are protecting, interception point and the data form that is being intercepted. Currently, there are three types that cover almost all kinds of network security threats.

Network Layer Firewall or Packet Filters

Network layer firewalls work on the network and filter data based on the packets they arrive in. They can be both state full and stateless based on the fact whether they maintain or don’t maintain a state table of the network activity.

Application Layer Firewall
Application firewalls work on the application layer stack of TCP/IP. Thus, they can be set to inspect data flow from a particular application and scrutinize the traffic for any threats. This is an efficient option for enterprise security, with the only constraint being that application level checking ads to data transfer time.

Proxy Firewall

Proxy Firewalls use proxy servers as gateways between networks. These can be either hardware or software and are considered to be the most efficient firewall systems. Existence of a proxy server between an external and internal network makes tampering difficult. The system is so compound that even if one application is hacked, it is almost impossible to use simple hack codes to reach other internal application through it.

Conclusion
Firewalls are an essential security component when it comes to securing networks. Networks are a complicated system and protecting them from intrusion is a logically challenging task. There have been many efforts to pinpoint one particular system that can completely protect a network and it goes without saying that all the efforts have failed. 

A single firewall can never be enough against the ever growing threats on the internet. An enterprise firewall is a combination of different types of firewalls placed aptly on different levels of network, for complete protection.

How Enterprise Firewall Handles Growing Threats to Network Security

Enterprise firewall is recognised as the backbone of network security. This long-established workhorse needs to be updated to successfully withstand the sophisticated ways of network security breaches that have become a bigger threat for business organizations. Use of latest generation of firewall by enterprises crossed 50 per cent in the year 2013 and this trend is showing signs of continuing even in 2015.

The techies responsible for managing and securing enterprise networks are wary of application-level risks as well as slow and subtle, multi-modal attacks. Both these types of attacks tend to slip past traditional firewalls. Organizations looking to upgrade their technology need to ensure that the new applications they install are not vulnerable to threats.

Traditional firewalls are still useful but not adequate for organizations that need to upgrade their networking systems. The extra features of next generation firewalls have become critical for certain advanced applications. Let us understand this “next generation” enterprise or network firewall.

Next Generation Network Firewall

The term next generation, in the context of network or enterprise firewall, implies a software or hardware-based security that goes beyond the general methods of URL blocking, network address translation, and packet filtering. This advanced firewall comes with granular controls that enable it to conduct a detailed examination of the Web application traffic that passes through it. The firewall is not restricted to examining traffic data only of certain packets, as it is able to track each packet of traffic to larger transactions.

Tracking packets to specific large transactions is not a simple achievement as it enables application-level awareness in the firewall. In addition to this, its other advanced features include intrusion prevention, quality of service, SSH and SSL inspection, malware detection and deep packet inspection. Another important aspect of latest enterprise firewall technology is cloud-based threat intelligence.

Firewall for the Cloud

In order to use contemporary applications, enterprises now need to upgrade their network protection with cloud-based intelligence. Development of firewall which provides threat intelligence by factoring in the various aspects of cloud computing is the way forward for many organizations. Such firewalls offer centralized management and can be customized to be implemented on a global scale.

The capabilities of network firewall continue to evolve to bring contextually-aware intelligence as the fight against malware and other attacks intensifies. Companies need to install something that suits their network architecture and budget and for this, they need to find service providers capable of high end customizations.