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A Brief Look at Firewalls
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Firewalls today are becoming more commonplace with the advent of high speed internet access. Most high speed internet service providers will provide some sort of firewall protection as part of the high speed package. So what exactly is it? In a nutshell, firewalls are a protective measure from hackers and other malicious intruders trying to gain access to your system and potentially cause damage. There are two flavors of firewalls. Firewalls can either be software or hardware.
Software based firewalls are basically programs that run on your system and is active anytime your system is turned on. Since it is software, usually there is no indication that it is running as it is kept in the background of your system. As technology and the ingenuity of hackers gets better, firewalls need to get better as well. So firewalls need to be upgraded regularly and with software firewalls that is very easy to do.
Where software firewalls are not really visible, hardware firewalls are. They can take the form of a computer or just be a piece of equipment that is designed to just be a firewall. As mentioned, software firewalls are easy to upgrade because all they require is an update or patch program. Hardware firewalls are a little different. Typically the hardware has the firewall program burned into chips called firmware. Since the code for the firewall is on a chip it is not easily upgraded. In certain cases a firmware update program is needed and if not done properly could destroy the whole firmware chip. Or on some larger hardware firewalls, a simple swap of the old chip with a new updated chip is be possible.
Like most things in life, nothing is absolute. Firewalls are designed to keep unwanted people and computers out of your system but there is no guarantee that it will keep everyone out. Think of it as a security guard for your system. It will be able to stop most intruders but some one is bound to get though. Does that mean firewalls are useless? No, they are very necessary to keep your system as safe as possible. A properly maintained firewall can provide just another small measure of security for your system to function properly.
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Brief Look at Firewalls
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