Hardware Firewalls Vs. Software Firewalls
Firewalls are an important line of defense against attacks against network users and assets. Two types of firewall exist to protect users from dangers on the internet: software firewalls and hardware firewalls. Both firewalls have several significant differences, and also work for different customers, depending on the individual needs of the customer or organization.
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Software Firewalls
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Software firewalls are firewalls that are installed directly into the computer as programs. Once installed, these firewalls activate themselves and set up with relative ease. Popular software firewalls include Norton Internet Security and McAfee Internet Security. Free firewall software, such as ZoneAlarm and Comodo also exist as well. Many software firewalls intuitively know popular programs and automatically set up for them, making them user-friendly.
Hardware Firewalls
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Hardware firewalls take the form of a physical device that sits between the computer and the internet. Unlike software firewalls, hardware firewalls require quite a bit of work to fully configure. Firewalls such as these may range from a simple router to a proxy server that directs all traffic to a server elsewhere on the internet before sending or taking data from a computer or a network. Cisco is one of the more popular companies that makes these kinds of firewalls.
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Firewall Effectiveness Study
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Experts at O'reilly conducted a series of tests against three particular firewalls: A Cisco PIX hardware firewall, a open-source software firewall, and a firewall that came with the OpenBSD operating system. The testers administered a series of hacking attack techniques against each of the firewalls, ranging from firing a massive amount of random data at the firewall to attempting to trace the server to firing an extraordinary amount of pings at the firewall, known as "the ping of death."
Firewall Test Results
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The test showed that through all of the attacks, the Cisco PIX firewall held admirably. The firewall that came with the OpenBSD system, although not performing as well as the Cisco firewall, also did relatively well. The other software firewall, unfortunately, failed at too many tests to be considered reliable. However, what can be taken into consideration here is that as previously stated, the Cisco firewall is difficult to set up for non-technical individuals, and OpenBSD is also difficult for people to configure as well.
What should you use?
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O'reilly's testers make it clear that for a large corporate network or business that needs the security, a hardware firewall is the way to go. For the economically-minded business, configuring a router or a firewall that runs on OpenBSD can be much cheaper. Lastly, for small business and home users, a hardware firewall such as the Cisco PIX might be a bit too expensive, and the recommended firewall would be a software firewall. O'reilly's testers state that although there is still the danger of being hacked for small business and home users, most hackers tend to target large corporations and leave others alone. Since risk is lower, home and small business users can rest comfortably with a software firewall.
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