What is an Enterprise Firewall?

In the age of big data, computer remote network communication technology has more comprehensive characteristics. Enterprise firewalls assist computer networks in establishing a protective barrier between their internal and external networks to secure user data and information security.

What is an Enterprise Firewall?

Enterprise Firewalls are a network security system that sits between the internal network and the external network. It is a data security protection system that permits or restricts data transfer based on predefined rules, which can prevent unauthorized remote login, Distributed Denial-of-service, and viruses and worms spreading on the network. Enterprise firewalls help protect sensitive information, monitor data, and ensure a healthy and secure network environment.

How an Enterprise Firewall Works?

An enterprise firewall is similar to a physical firewall. It safeguards internal networks by physically isolating them from external networks. Then, using the firewall, regulate access behavior by the pre-configured security policy, achieving effective control of access to the enterprise's internal network. Enterprise firewalls usually have two working modes: bridge mode and routing mode. If the firewall is installed as a security barrier between the corporate intranet and the Internet, it is best to select routing mode. In this mode, the firewall's network address translation function and proxy function can be used to protect the corporate network from attacks from the Internet fully.

Enterprise Firewalls not only protect the security of an enterprise's internal network information, such as preventing the leakage of sensitive information such as bank server user account information, confidential information of government departments, combat plans, and strategies in the military, but they also prevent computers from being maliciously accessed or attacked from non-secure networks outside the enterprise.

The Main Features of an Enterprise Firewall

A wide variety of firewalls are readily available. Some of the features of business/enterprise/commercial firewalls are:

• Customization: Enterprise firewalls are highly customizable to accommodate the unique risks and threat profiles of a given organization.

• Protection: Enterprise firewalls provide the broadest levels of protection for businesses.

• Updates: When new threats emerge, this class of firewalls pushes out updates to provide enhanced security for your infrastructure.

• Deep-Packet Inspection: Other types of firewalls don’t have this advanced ability to inspect and manage network traffic.

• Supports: Enterprise (Business or Commercial) firewalls come with technical and user support so that your users are always covered, no matter where or when they are working. Warranties are bundled into support along with returned merchandise authorization (RMA).

• Technology: Business/enterprise/commercial firewall choices are more technically difficult to deploy and operate than consumer and prosumer firewalls. However, with that complexity comes the potential to tailor the security parameters to the exact threat profile and dangers that your organization confronts.

How to Choose the Right Firewall for Your Enterprise

Deciding what to look for when choosing a network firewall for your business is one of the most important IT decisions you’ll make. Here are five key factors to consider when picking the right network firewall to fit your organization’s unique security risks, current business scale, maintenance capabilities, budget, and more:

• Hardware: Mainly depends on throughput and number of concurrent connections. Throughput is divided into three layers (network layer) and seven layers (application layer); secondly, the number of network ports and bandwidth, is chosen according to your own needs.

• Protected Devices: Corporate IT architectures are rapidly growing more diverse. Many businesses have hybrid data centers with both on-premises and cloud applications and workloads. All organizations also likely have Internet of Things (IoT) devices connected to their network. All of these devices introduce new security risks and have unique security requirements.

• Application functions: The application access control and auditing, domain name access control, link load balancing, server load balancing, IPsecVPN, and SSLVPN.

• Security detection and protection functions: Equipped with IPS intrusion prevention, AV virus detection, DDoS defense, WEB application firewall, and threat intelligence blocking; these functional modules need to be tried to identify whether they are available.

• Technical support service capabilities: Have reliable after-sales service and can solve problems promptly to meet needs.

Conclusion:

Computer information network has become an important guarantee for enterprises to realize modern management and sustainable development. As the basic protection equipment of cyber security, enterprise firewalls have been paid more and more attention to their security. A firewall is a widely used cyber security measure, that can protect the network of enterprises from external attacks and ensure that only legitimate information flows can enter and exit the protected network.