Perimeter Security

Why do I need a Firewall to protect my Network?

From the IT Security experts at EverTech:

1. How good is the inherent security protection by the major Internet Access providers?
Answer, not very good. There are 65,536 ports to each IP address provided by major internet access providers. You cannot research this information, but they typically block 25 or less ports. How many ports does a Firewall block? Implicitly, 65,536 to start with. You should only let in the traffic that is desirable to your network. This is termed stateful packet inspection.

2. Of the ports that I do let into my network, are there possible exploits or security risks?
Yes, there are many and these are critical points of entrance within your network’s attack surface. Even if you opted to incorporate stateful packet inspection. The next step is to drill down into these packets and determine if there are exploits embedded within this packet stream. This requires a security processor to quickly evaluate these packets to determine if they pose a risk before releasing them to your network.

3. Next Generation Firewalls as they are referred to today incorporate the features included in 1 and 2 above.
In addition, they require an annual security subscription referred to as Unified Threat Management (UTM) which provides live updates in the following security services.

a. Gateway Antivirus: scans files and blocks viruses
b. Web Filtering: content control and blocks malicious websites
c. DNS Filtering: domain blocking and botnet protection
d. Application Control: Monitors and determines application use
e. SSL Certificate Inspection: Monitors first level handshake on secure protocol.

4. How important is a Firewall?
A Firewall is the most single important IT asset in any organization because it provides the most comprehensive network protection of all your IT assets and data.

5. How valuable and secure is your data in today’s IT environment?
Let’s look at Ransomware Attacks statistics alone:

a. A new organization will fall victim to ransomware every 14 seconds in 2019, and every 11 seconds by 2021. (Source: Cyber Security Ventures)
b. 1.5 million new phishing sites are created every month. (Source: webroot.com)
c. Ransomware attacks have increased over 97 percent in the past two years. (Source: PhishMe)
d. 34% of businesses hit with malware took a week or more to regain access to their data. (Source: Kaspersky)
e. In 2019 ransomware from phishing emails increased 109 percent over 2017. (Source: PhishMe)

EverTech Corporation has been supplying well configured Firewalls and other security devices since 1990. With all this experience, we are keenly aware of the best in class products and practices to support our customers in our efforts to protect their IT assets and ever-growing data requirements.