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Every IT support team in Houston that wants to be perceived as up-to-date with security solutions should be prepared to implement a firewall management plan. A firewall can be hardware or software that denies or allows network access to certain devices. Setting up a firewall management plan is an effective long-term security strategy.
Firewall Management Plan Features
- Details on policy goals and firewall configurations
- Assessment of risks involved with changing a security policy
- Centralized network control that allows for setting different policies for different teams
- Lay out proactive steps for making changes
Establishing Firewall Policies
Your IT support team in Houston should stay with standard naming conventions when setting rules for your firewall. The rules should be prioritized in a logical order. The system should be flexible enough to allow certain rules for certain computers that don’t apply to other devices. In this stage of configuration, you can decide which websites and applications to block. You can also implement temporary company policies for specific time periods.
Once these rules are set in place, it’s helpful to test them with regular risk queries to find out which rules are vulnerable to failure. A test known as predictive change modeling involves transmitting packets across a network to analyze the impact of a new rule. This process confirms that a packet follows its intended path and reaches its intended destination.
Audits and Other Maintenance
Part of your regular firewall management plan should include scheduled security audits. These tests are designed to ensure that your firewall rules comply with organizational, as well as government security regulations. These audits are necessary due to the possibility of misconfiguration from frequent policy adjustments.
Another important aspect of firewall management is monitoring user access. Your IT team can determine from studying firewall logs any suspicious activity or access from unauthorized visitors. In order to manage the network more carefully, your technicians can create profiles on each employee to ensure that their network activities are legitimate.
Your IT team needs to further protect your system by making sure that firewall software is consistently updated. Old software leaves your system open to vulnerabilities. Since the key to robust security is setting up multiple layers that confuse or frustrate hackers, it’s advantageous to use multiple firewalls from different manufacturers across your network.
Surrounding your network with layers of protection allows you to focus on your core business, while IT experts handle security. There is an IT support team in Houston that can provide strong security with a firewall management plan. Contact us now at ICS to learn more about how we can give your business maximum protection through firewalls and other options.
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.