Browsing the internet comes with a couple of downsides. One being that your always at risk of a cyber threat. For this reason, most if not all computers come with a form of cyber defense method that are active out of the box. Windows even has a built-in firewall feature on each computer as a minimal way to try to prevent cyber attacks to your personal data on the device.
Firewalls work relatively well to prevent malicious attempts to succeed. However not all firewalls are made the same, meaning that you may not be getting the protection you thought you were getting.
You might be asking yourself "What is a firewall and how do I distinguish a good one from a bad one?"
To answer what a firewall is and how to find the right one, we will be looking at possibly the best firewall on the market: the XGS Firewall by Sophos. There are two types of firewalls that exist, physical and virtual firewalls. Both do similar jobs in terms of protection but physical and dedicated machines do a better job because they are independent from the devices allowing them to be optimized and implement features that otherwise would be unavailable.
The Sophos XGS firewall works in a relatively simple way that is very effective at monitoring internet traffic. When a firewall is set up, the way it is able to determine what data should be allowed to come through is done in a hierarchy.
Much like the doors in a long hall way at a hotel, internet traffic is checked to see if the rules in the firewall are applicable to let the traffic through. If it is unable to get through the first door with its key, it’ll go to the next so on and so forth, until it either reaches the end of the blocked off hallway or it enters a door. By doing this, the firewall is able to block off internet data traffic that is either unwanted or unsafe without slowing down the user’s experience.
The next thing that the XGS firewall does in order to protect its users from internet threats is block off any threat that would compromise users’ information and devices. Compared to other high end firewall providers, Sophos implements unrivaled threat identification and prevention. With the use of machine learning and a constantly updated dictionary of known threats, the XGS Firewall is able to block threats that other firewalls would be unable to recognize. Sophos is able to use prior knowledge of threats to predict and block threats that have yet to be classified.
Threat protection from the XGS Firewall is at the top of its class.
However, Sophos even goes above and beyond when dealing with threats. Even if a threat were able to make it onto a user’s device, the Sophos Heartbeat is a secure connection between the firewall and all other devices on the network. It monitors the health of each computer with a virtual heartbeat; a computers Heartbeat has three tiers: green, yellow, and red.
If a computer’s heartbeat were to go red, it will isolate that computer to prevent the possibility of further spreading the virus via the local network. Sophos carries other countless features which are available with the XGS Firewall.
With the amount of data being provided by the firewall, there must be a way to manage it all right?
Sophos allows it customers to easily view and monitor the data provided by the firewall in one easy to view cloud-based management platform. Sophos Central is organized in an easy to navigate platform that tracks a wide variety of data and presents it in an understandable manner. Via this cloud platform, one can keep track of the number of threats stopped, monitor Heartbeats, and manage licenses.
Sophos Central also unites other services like email protection all in the same place so that monitoring your services is as easy as possible.
Need secure VPN connection to your business? XGS Firewalls have it built in!
Firewalls are the best way to prevent and protect against cyber attacks for businesses and people. Finding the right one for your use case is critical because not all firewalls have all the necessary features or protection to allow you to confidently browse the internet without risk.
To learn more about Sophos and their products contact Firestorm Cyber.
We are able to provide more in depth information about countless other features and monitoring products that are available such as email protection, web protection, network protection, and web server protection options.
Firestorm Cyber is a Sophos Gold Partner.