Network and Computer Security Chapter 6, Essay Example

The surprising factor is that firewall provides the protocol-filtering capability as it filters protocols and services associated with them in order to secure them from exploitation. Moreover, firewall hides inbound communication of the network from the outbound network that is also called a wide area network. Furthermore, the use of computer networks and communication lines require protecting data during transmission. In addition, firewalls also provide centralized management for the network. This is an ultimate advantage for the network security staff within an organization as the management and configuration of the overall network is possible by accessing a device. Security and access policies can also be configured centrally on the device, as the firewall is the first point of contact for data packets before making their presence to the inbound network of an organization.

The Firewall Gateways are Complex

The complex architecture of a circuit level gateway analyzes handshaking of packets in a data communication channels or sessions on the network, to verify whether the channel is genuine or not. The traffic is filtered by analyzing rule base on the arrival of each packet. Moreover, circuit level gateway provides enhanced security by hiding particulars of workstations that have established a remote session from any computing device outside the network. The computing device outside the network will receive only the gateway address i.e. the firewall.

The application gateways are also categorized as software-based firewalls. These types of firewalls provide advantages in terms of securing a personal computer located at home from hackers and intruders. Moreover, application gateway also facilitates parents to incorporate parental controls for children. These firewalls provide in depth level of security and access control for the organizations. Likewise, these firewalls do not allow granting permission to any data packet related to COM and EXE extensions. In addition, to provide enhanced security, the firewall does not allow direct session of data communication with any node on the inbound network. Consequently, application gateway firewall protects the network of an organization with viruses, malicious codes, Trojans, unauthorized access and denial of service attacks.