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Welcome to Security Steps Firewall Page. This section shows you the importance of having a good Personal Firewall. Remember to visit I Security Dictionary to see meanings for common security related words.
What Is A Firewall? A firewall comes in either the form of software or hardware and its main purpose is to watch and filter incoming and outgoing data. Say you wanted to connect to a friends computer for a webcam conversation, this is something the firewall would allow, but say a hacker wanted to connect to your computer and control it to do his or her malicious activities the firewall would block this. Firewalls used to just filter incoming traffic and stop malicious activities from the outside, but what about if you had a malicious program on your computer trying to send details about you to its master or your private data. They used to be useless. Now they have totally changed and work both ways. Now firewalls should prevent what is called “Data Leak” which is basically the scenario we described above of a malicious program sending your data to its master. Some malicious programs attempt to Hijack your trusted applications such as your browser to send data and only the best firewalls can detect this. To see which firewalls perform the best, take a look at I Security Labs. Why do I need a Firewall?
To watch and filter the incoming data on your computer as described in the paragraph above. The diagram above shows the firewall filtering incoming and outgoing data. Without a firewall, you could lose Credit Card details, Personal Documents, Passwords and your machine could also be turned into a zombie, which is a computer being controlled by a remote user. Zombie machines are often put under the hackers control for a specific reason such as to send out junk email or perform Denial Of Service attacks on companies websites which hackers can instruct your computer to do whenever he or she likes. Firewalls also stop your computer from being detected by “Port Scanners”. Port Scanners are malicious programs that constantly Scan computers connected to the Internet for a way to get inside. These ways that the Port Scanner can get in is usually called an “Open Port” or A “Backdoor”. With a firewall, it closes ports that are not being used, or ports that are being scanned. If a port is open it usually sends a message to the scanner such as “Port *** Open” and the scanner knows that it is open. If your firewall isn’t very good, it will block the scanner but then send the message “Port *** Closed” to the scanner so they actually know that your computer exists. If your firewall is good however, it closes the port and keeps silent about it or in other words it does not reply to the port scanner so the scanner doesn’t know that your computer even exists. Without A Firewall Am I Safe To Just Browse The Internet? No of course not, you could still be a victim of a hacker. In fact, your computer could already be a zombie without your knowledge. We suggest that you assess the risks yourself by visiting Scan Online, scrolling to the bottom of the page and clicking the Grc.com button which reads “www.GRC.com, test your computers exposure to hackers and data thieves.” You should also scan for pests that could be letting in hackers by clicking on “GFi Trojanscan” and you could also click on “Pestpatrols www.pestscan.com Scan for spyware online”. This will make sure you are totally secure. Get a firewall now! Why keep using our scanners to scan for pests and security threats. Why not download a firewall to prevent them getting there in the first place and to watch and filter your inward and outbound data. We’ve tested free firewalls and firewalls that will cost you between £20.00 and £50.00 at I Security Labs Firewalls.
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