Firewalls Implementation

Firewalls Implementation

Introduction and Types of Firewalls

When business institutions changed from mainframe computers to the client-server model, server access control became a necessity. Initially, security of network was assured through the use of access control list (ACLS) which were resident on routers. However, the access control list relied on internet protocol (IP) addresses to grant or deny access to a network. This led to the development of packet filtering firewalls. Firewalls refer to software or firmware that enforces various rules dictating data packets allowed to enter or leave a network (Kaur & Gupta, 2016). Firewalls are part of several networked devices that filter traffic lowering the risks of malicious data packets improving the security. They limit damage from an external or internal cyber-attack when installing at the network perimeter. In a host-based firewall, it is installed on individual servers and monitors incoming and outgoing signals.

Network-based firewall work on cloud infrastructure while packet filling firewall examines packets in isolation without knowing packets contexts. Examination of network traffic to know whether one pack is related to another occurs in stateful inspection firewall but in the proxy firewall, packets are inspected at the application layer of the OSI reference model. Next-generation firewalls are a multilayered approach to integrate organization firewall capabilities with an intrusion prevention system and application control.

Implementation of Firewalls and Conclusion

       Firewalls perform various tasks which include resource defending, access validation, managing and controlling network traffic, recording and reporting any events on the network and act as an intermediary between outbound and inbound data (Gray, 2017). This makes its implementation to be critical to the organization. During implementation of defining security need of the organization, researching solutions to meet the need and working on the best installation programs, configuration and maintenance of the firewalls ought to be addressed. Firewalls isolate computers from the internet using a wall of code that inspects each individual packet of data as it arrives to determine its access (Kettlewell, Mitchell & Arambepola, 2015). They use signatures and host conditions to allow or deny traffic by application of granular control of a system functions and processes. The current modern network perimeters have so many entry points and users that require strong access control and security at host hence the use of the Next Generation Firewalls.

Reference

Gray, N., Lorenz, C., Müssig, A., Gebert, S., Zinner, T., & Tran-Gia, P. (2017, March). A priori state synchronization for fast failover of stateful firewall VNFs. In Networked Systems (NetSys), 2017 International Conference on (pp. 1-6). IEEE.

Kaur, S., Kaur, K., & Gupta, V. (2016, October). Implementing openflow based distributed firewall. In Information Technology (InCITe)-The Next Generation IT Summit on the Theme-Internet of Things: Connect your Worlds, International Conference on (pp. 172-175). IEEE.

Kettlewell, P., Mitchell, J., & Arambepola, S. (2015). U.S. Patent No. 8,949,391. Washington, DC: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.