27 Feb Why Your Business Needs A Strong Firewall
Why Your Business Needs A Strong Firewall
You may not be storing military secrets or running a billion-dollar empire, but your business is still an attractive target for hackers. Enter the firewall – a guard standing at the door of your network to stop the bad guys from getting in.
A surprising number of businesses are operating without a firewall. For most, it’s a risk they don’t know they’re taking because they assume all systems have built-in protections.
A firewall is a type of hardware or software that acts as a protective shield between the computers on your network and cyber dangers. Data passes through at lightning fast speeds, invisible to the user experience.
What Does Firewall Do?
Filtering: A firewall looks for known viruses, phishing emails and spam, and then blocks them before they enter. Business firewalls also monitor data in both directions. When a computer goes online, data coming in and out is inspected. If it doesn’t pass the test, the firewall instantly blocks it and records the details in a log.
Performance: You can use your firewall to set network traffic priorities. For example, it can make sure a Skype call gets all the resources it needs to allow for flawless video and voice quality, while someone watching YouTube videos at the same time will receive reduced resources. Rules can be set to allow certain applications to be treated as a higher priority than others. You can tailor your network performance to meet your unique business needs.
Management: Business firewalls allow you to see who’s doing what and when over your network. You can create rules for specific users, devices and times. You might allow your employees to access Facebook during lunch breaks only, while keeping it unblocked for you or your marketing team throughout the whole day. Thorough logs are kept automatically and can be used to troubleshoot problems. For example, your firewall logs might show that a computer inside your network connects to a low-income country at 3am each night, which would certainly be worth investigating.
Connection: A strong firewall allows your remote workforce to access your servers with ease and security. Remote work arrangements are growing in popularity and necessity, often requiring server access at a moment’s notice. You can set your firewall to authenticate the identity of users before allowing access, and create a virtual private network (VPN) that keeps any transferred data safe from interception.
We install, configure and manage business firewalls – Call us at 570.235.1946 or visit our Contact Page