The Importance Of SOHO3 Firewalls

Introduction

Firewalls are computer security systems that protect your office/home PCs or your network from intruders, hackers & malicious code. Firewalls protect you from offensive software that may come to reside on your systems or from prying hackers. In a day and age when online security concerns are the top priority of the computer users, Firewalls provide you with the necessary safety and protection.

What exactly are firewalls?

Firewalls are software programs or hardware devices that filter the traffic that flows into you PC or your network through a internet connection. They sift through the data flow & block that which they deem (based on how & for what you have tuned the firewall) harmful to your network or computer system.

When connected

This firewall was installed on a heterogeneous peer-to-peer network. This firewall was configured without a VPN but it should be noted that it is possible to add that option for additional security for remote users who need access to the network. The environment was comprised as follows: Hardware Memory OS Software Applications WKS 1 Dell 128 MB Windows 98 MS Office 97 Panda Titanium Antivirus Zone Alarm Pro Firewall WKS 2 HP Laptop 128 MB Windows 2000 MS Office 2000 Norton Internet Security Professional (Includes Application Firewall and Antivirus) WKS 3 IBM 128 MB Windows 2000 MS Office 2000 All workstations were connected to the SOHO3 firewall appliance with an Ethernet cable and shared a cable-modem Internet connection. The network connections for workstations were a speed of 10 mbps. The first step in installing a firewall is to get the network information from the Internet service provider. This can be a difficult step. Some Internet providers will tell you that a firewall can be used with their cable modem or DSL. However, they will not support any issues with firewall products. Thus, it can be difficult to get the information needed from the ISP in order to set up a firewall. Conversations with the ISP technical support staff and gleaning information from their website provided the network information needed. This is essential to correctly configure and set up the firewall.The firewall then needs to be installed with software, which is supplied by the vendor. This configures the hosts to the firewall on the network by specifying the appropriate IP addressing method. The first step for setting up the firewall is to set up the management station on the network that will control the firewall from any PC. The next step is to configure the firewall with the IP addressing information supplied by your ISP. The final step for configuring the firewall is to configure the workstations on the network.