eMazzanti Firewall Article: Don’t Skimp on Business Security

Hoboken, New Jersey ­- (Vocus) Oct, 2013 —A new article entitled: Don’t Skimp on Business Firewall Security is now available from eMazzanti Technologies, an IT and computer expert in the Hoboken, NJ and New York City areas.  The article is free and is available here. https://www.emazzanti.net/firewalls-dont-skimp-on-your-businesss-security/

 

“Today’s consumer-grade firewalls may not be robust enough to protect a small business,” noted Jennifer Mazzanti, president, eMazzanti Technologies. “Because the workplace environment has changed with more collaboration and remote workers, the opportunities for malicious-hacking have skyrocketed.”

 

Security: The Most Important Concern

Security is quite possibly the most important concern for any business. You need to know that your critical data – both internal data and customer information – is secure. If that information is hacked or accessed by the wrong person, you may be opened up to a world of legal and financial trouble.

 

Businesses today need more than a traditional firewall to protect their assets. As business collaboration increases and employees increasingly use the multitude of tools available to them – many of which were never designed for business use – enterprise data security and compliance requirements become a challenge. People work in a way that’s faster, easier, and more intuitive – whether they’re on the road, in the office, at an airport, or at home. And applications that weren’t designed for business can – and do – bypass traditional firewalls and enter a network, regardless of how carefully the IT staff may have tried to lock down the environment. This means it is essential that businesses implement security tools designed with today’s environments in mind.

 

Next-Generation Firewalls for Next-Generation Bad Guys

“A next-generation firewall (NGFW) “understands” real-world corporate network traffic in order to reliably secure it against hackers, malware, network attacks, intrusion attempts, data theft, and other cybercrime,” said Mazzanti.

 

Consumer-grade firewalls only provide a level of data protection via packet filtering or stateful filter, late 1980’s and early 1990’s-based technology. Packet filter firewalls (first generation) act by inspecting the “packets” which transfer between computers on the Internet. If a packet matches the packet filter’s set of rules, the packet filter will drop the packet, or reject it.

 

Firewalls based on second generation technology or “stateful” filters examines the transport layer of the message and retrains the packets until enough information is available to make a judgment about its state. Known as stateful packet inspection, it records all connections passing through it and determines whether a packet is the start of a new connection, a part of an existing connection, or not part of any connection. Though static rules are still used, these rules can now contain connection state as one of their test criteria.

 

The third-generation of firewalls looks at the application layer of the message. The key benefit of application layer filtering is that it can “understand” certain applications and protocols (such as File Transfer Protocol (FTP), Domain Name System (DNS), or Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP)). This is useful as it is able to detect if an unwanted protocol is attempting to bypass the firewall on an allowed port, or detect if a protocol is being abused in any harmful way.

 

“The next-generation firewall has the deepest and widest inspection of the application-stack,” said Mazzanti. “This approach provides some of the highest level of firewall security available.”

Read more… https://www.emazzanti.net/firewalls-dont-skimp-on-your-businesss-security/

 

About eMazzanti Technologies

eMazzanti Technologies’ team of trained, certified experts provide 24×7 outsourced IT support to help ensure business productivity, address challenges of growth, cloud computing, mobility, critical business continuity and disaster recovery demands. The consultancy has special expertise in manufacturing, distribution, retail, financial, architectural, engineering, construction, government, educational, legal services, accounting, marketing communications, and healthcare market segments, while maintaining high customer satisfaction levels. Flexible support plans range from fixed-fee, around-the-clock network management where eMazzanti functions as an extension of a businesses’ IT staff to a custom-solution provided on an as-needed basis. eMazzanti serves the Hoboken, NJ and NYC area markets as well as regional, national and international business support requirements. The IT firm is Microsoft’s 2012 Partner of the Year and on-going Gold Partner, Microsoft Northeast Region Partner of the Year, a four-time recipient of WatchGuard’s Partner of the Year and has achieved the Inc. 5000 list for the fourth year in a row. Download the free article: How to Select an IT Provider here. More than 400 companies trust their IT support needs to eMazzanti Technologies. For more information contact: Carl Mazzanti 201-360-4400 or emazzanti.net. Twitter: @emazzanti , Facebook: Facebook.com/emazzantitechnologies