The advanced firewall provides advanced security features like deep packet inspection (DPI), multi-factor authentication (MFA), and application control. These features can help you better protect your network from malicious activity.
Deep Packet Inspection (DPI)
Deep packet inspection (DPI) is an advanced firewall technology that enables administrators to monitor all data sent on their networks. It evaluates the contents of packets as they pass through a checkpoint and then makes real-time decisions about what to do with them.
DPI can help organizations prevent malware, data exfiltration, and security attacks hidden within the data stream. It also allows copyright holders to protect their content and serve targeted advertising to users.
It can also prevent employees from leaking company information when they send email attachments or make other data transfers. It can be integrated into many network management systems, but some are not free.
Threat Detection
Threat Detection is a critical component of any advanced firewall strategy. It helps identify threats like worms, malware, and ransomware, thwarting their progression before they become malicious.
By analyzing network traffic, threat detection tools compare behavior to an accepted baseline. They can then alert security teams when outliers fall outside these parameters.
These behaviors often indicate that an attacker has established persistent access to a targeted network. Unfortunately, this constant access is where the real damage occurs.
Multi-factor Authentication (MFA)
Multi-factor authentication (MFA) is used with advanced firewalls to increase security and reduce risk. It’s used to secure critical systems that store sensitive data, such as financial or personally identifiable information (PII).
MFA uses more than just a password to verify the user’s identity. It also neutralizes phishing and social engineering attacks.
Application Control
Application control is a security strategy that allows administrators to whitelist or blacklist applications from being installed or run on a computer. It can be done either through user-level settings or through policies that are applied at the network level.
This policy works by analyzing the behavior of applications to determine whether they are allowed, blocked, or suspicious. Then, it is used with advanced firewalls to safeguard data and reduce the risk of a data breach.
IPS
Intrusion prevention systems (IPS) work with advanced firewalls to help detect and block threats before they reach your network. They use signatures and statistical anomaly-based detection methods to identify threats.
IPS is a critical part of preventing modern, sophisticated attacks. It provides additional security and increases the efficiency of other security controls. It also helps to meet compliance requirements like PCI DSS and HIPAA.
Firewall Manager
A firewall manager is a centralized service that builds firewall rules, creates security policies, and enforces them consistently and hierarchically across your entire infrastructure.
You can use your custom firewall rules or purchase managed practices. As you deploy these policies, the firewall manager automatically applies them across your accounts and resources.
IPSec
IPsec is a protocol used to secure data packets between two devices. The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) created it to eliminate data snooping on IP networks.
Protocols for establishing mutual authentication between agents at the start of a session and negotiating the cryptographic keys to be used throughout it are included in the IPSec standard. It also provides data encryption, data integrity, and source host authentication.
VPN
VPN is an internet security tool that encrypts your data as it moves through the web. It also hides your IP address, preventing hackers or other third parties from seeing your online work.
The best VPN for your needs depends on whether you want to protect yourself against censorship, access region-specific content, or protect your privacy from surveillance and hackers.
A firewall is a computer program that tries to control how other programs can access the internet and what information they can see. Usually, a firewall is included with your computer operating system, but it can also be purchased separately from online vendors.
Web Filtering
Web filtering is used by businesses, schools, and government agencies to prevent employees from accessing dangerous or distracting websites. In addition, it helps to boost productivity and protects companies from viruses, malware, and phishing threats.
Web filtering technologies block access to harmful or inappropriate sites by examining the Domain Name System (DNS) response to a request. Some web filters also scan each page for content and use a score to determine whether a site is safe.
These filters can be customized based on user context, device type, and workgroups. It allows for a more targeted approach to internet restriction than traditional firewalls, which operate at the network level and apply internet restrictions uniformly for everyone.
WAN Optimization
WAN optimization is a set of tools and techniques that allow distributed organizations to maximize the efficiency of their existing high-performance WAN links. These tools include bandwidth management, caching, compression, and protocol optimization.
CIFS, for example, requires many background transactions to transfer a file across a WAN successfully. It can result in delays and a poor performance experience.
WAN optimization improves CIFS performance by reducing the number of requests and acknowledgments required when sending data. It also bundles multiple smaller windows into larger blocks of transmitted data, using available bandwidth entirely.
