What Is Firewall Management?
What Is Firewall Management?
What Is Firewall Management?
For nearly two decades, internal and external firewalls have been at the heart of network security management, and there's no sign of that changing soon. Firewalls allow a business to operate safely with constant connectivity, and keep out malicious traffic.
Of course, ideally a firewall would manage itself. But, with constantly changing business demands and rapidly evolving and increasing security threats, firewalls need to adapt all the time to cope with these changes. A lot of repetitive work can be needed just to avoid the ever-changing threats to security or organisational continuity.
There are various types of firewall on the market, from a packet filtering firewall, which stops traffic based on IP protocol, to a stateful firewall which tends to be more intelligent about tracking active connections. (With the former, you will need some kind of intrusion prevention, on top of the firewall, to distinguish between good and bad web-based traffic.)
But whatever type you choose, it will need proper management to ensure it keeps one of your business's most important assets (after it's people), it's critical and confidential information, safe and secure.
Essentially, a firewall management program can work in one of two ways. With a default-deny policy, the firewall administrator lists allowed network services, while denying access to everything else. If you use a default-allow policy firewall, the administrator lists network services which are denied access, and everything else is accepted.
While a default-deny approach to firewall security is a far safer method of network security management, it can be hard to manage and configure a network in that way, so many networks make use of the default-allow approach instead.
But whichever method you go for, firewall management is a labour and resource-intensive business, and demands a very high level of skill. Rules and policies surrounding firewalls tend to be quite complicated, and because of this, most firewall breaches occur as a result of mis-configuration of these rules and policies.
So it's perhaps not surprising that so many organisations choose to outsource this aspect of network security management; they simply don't have the expertise in-house. Even those that do, often prefer to focus their time and efforts on core business activities.
An outside professional organisation specialising in management of firewalls can offer site assessments, log monitoring, firewall policy design, equipment installation and configuration. They can also offer emergency response, comprehensive reporting and firewall monitoring and management to help keep your business operating at peak performance every day of the year so that it never goes offline.
Managing your firewall may not be a particularly straightforward business, but, without it, the security of your business and its most important data really is at stake.
At ControlCircle, as well as a full range of online data storage and managed hosting services, we provide a managed firewall service so that the security of your network and business productivity are never compromised.
How knowledge management solutions can make your life easier Examining Mouth Management Stress Management Strategies - 4 Everyone Needs To Use Document Management And Its Systems Proper Call Centre Management Information On San Diego Property Management Career Management: What Do You Want To Be When You Grow Up? Stress Management In The Workplace Management skills to equip for your industry requirements Stress Management Tip - Massage Your Stress Away Best Practices for Threat management Project Management Training For Brighter Future Property Management and Cleaning Services Toronto