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Digital assets can define a business and must be protected by a competent IT support firm in San Antonio. They include all the applications you use and electronic files, which must be backed up and protected from cyberattacks. A proven method that your IT team can protect your data with are firewalls.
Network Protection with Firewalls
Enterprise networks are often integrated into local area networks (LANs) through a gateway or router. A firewall, which is a combination of hardware and software, can be configured to allow employees to access certain websites while blocking other websites. There are good legal reasons to block sites if they are malicious, provide access to pornography or violate copyright law. Some sites, such as social networks, can reduce worker productivity as well. A firewall can also be configured to block network access for suspicious visitors.
Firewalls guard networks and are very useful for keeping them private. The fact that enterprise networks store plenty of sensitive company and customer information makes it important to use other layers of protection beyond firewalls, so that your system is difficult to penetrate. Ideally, a hacker will realize your network security is too robust and give up.
Components of Firewalls
The main components of a firewall are gateways, routers, and filters. The manner in which these devices are connected depends on the particular firewall design. There are multiple ways to configure firewalls based on routers, gateways, subnets and other factors. Packet filters, configured by your administrator, determine which internet sources and destinations are allowed on your network.
One of the important functions of a firewall is that it serves as an application gateway. The mail gateway can be used by an IT support firm in San Antonio to check every incoming and outgoing email message to make sure it isn’t infected with malware. The system can be configured so that packets do not enter or exit the network without passing through the application gateway. The administrator has controls to block certain hosts, ports and IP addresses.
Firewall Considerations
In order for your IT team to configure your firewall, they will need to consider different aspects of your business. A major concern is how serious of a crisis will it be if the firewall is breached by an outsider? Another question is: how many other different entities will be at risk if the network is breached?
Your IT technicians should be able to easily access information that detects specific devices on your network, whether they are authorized or not. There should be plenty of available information when diagnosing an attack. Ideally, the firewall should not create any major inconveniences that affect your company’s productivity.
Firewall systems tend to operate in one of two modes. They either forbid whatever is not expressly permitted or they permit whatever is not expressly forbidden. Other considerations include ease-of-use, pricing, corporate policy and how well the firewall will integrate with your existing infrastructure.
Conclusion
A strategic solution for protecting your network from cyberattacks involves your IT support provider in San Antonio using firewalls. It’s a helpful solution for controlling access on your network. Contact us at ICS to learn more about how firewalls can keep cyber criminals off your back and away from your data.
Further reading
ICS is a Texas-based 40-year-old technology company specializing in Managed IT, VoIP, Video Conferencing and Video Surveillance solutions for US and International businesses. ICS has over 4000 regional installations and specializes in multi-site businesses between 25 and 2500 employees. ICS’s customers enjoy the experience of ICS’s Total Care program which provides clients flat fee services with obsolescence and growth protection. Whether a customer elects to deploy their IT, Video Conferencing or VoIP in the cloud or on the customer’s premise, ICS can provide a full turn-key solution for our clients under one flat monthly fee.