Firewall is often considered as the first line of defence against digital intrusions. There are factor that we need to determine when we plan to choose the best available firewall in the market. For home-based and small businesses uses, software-based firewall is often the cheapest and simplest solutions. For larger companies with more critical information that any hacker would love to grab, it is essential to choose hardware-based firewall. In both solutions, firewall will serve as a barrier or a boundary between the internal network and the Internet or WAN. Software-based firmware must be regularly updated and it is important to choose firewall solutions that are properly supported by the developer. Updates should patch known security holes and provide protection against latest known malware and virus that can wreak havoc in the internal network.
Hackers are known for their resourceful efforts and they will do everything to break into our network with great diligence. So, it is important to keep virus and spyware from spreading into our network. Some free firewall software is good enough to deter bots and automated codes. Because it is quite unlikely for hackers to devote their time to hack into personal computers of average computer users and random small businesses, these software-based solutions should be quite adequate. However, we should make sure that free software solutions are good enough to authenticate any incoming code. In fact, free firewall can be infected by virus itself, causing it to spread malicious codes to the internal network. In this case, we may need to integrate both reliable anti-virus and firewall solutions to form a decent form of defense against external intrusions.
It is also important to find out how firewall can provide us with comprehensive security solutions, not only for individual computer, but also the whole network. The very first thing that we need to consider is whether the firewall has all necessary features to provide us with the proper protection. Features that we need can be determined by history of attacks on our computers and networks. By identifying the security risks that may lie ahead, it should be much easier to identify features that we need from a firewall. As an example, viruses can be transmitted through email attachments. The firewall may also include data encryption and a variety of virus protection, as an example during web browsing. It may actively block specific websites with dubious reputation to prevent us from getting hacked by automated codes or direct efforts by hackers.
In the end, it all come to our available budget and it is more sensible to choose firewall solutions that can provide us with the most features at specific prices. It is especially true when we want to acquire paid firewall solutions. An important consideration is the number of firewall that we want to protect. The more computers we have in the network, the more comprehensive firewall protection that we need. This is a factor that we need to evaluate before we get the firewall installed in our network.