No business is completely safe from cybersecurity threats. While firewalls are an essential part of your cybersecurity architecture, firewalls should not be considered a total solution to your company’s security worries.
Firewalls are a must for securing your network, but they do have potential vulnerabilities. Here is a short list:
Mistakes in Configuration
Your firewall is configured on your network with all current vulnerability patches. But what about the settings? The firewall can fail if the settings are in conflict. Dynamic routing is a well-known example. It’s not advised to enable dynamic routing because it can result in a loss of control.
But some companies unwittingly leave it enabled.
Emerge IT services can assess your system to ensure that your settings aren’t making an attacker’s job easy.
Attacks from Inside
A perimeter firewall focuses on blocking attacks that come from outside your network. But what do you do if an attack originates inside your network? In this case, your perimeter firewall needs some help in the form of internal firewalls.
Internal firewalls serve to partition or segment off individual assets on your network. So, if an attack is successful in one segment, the damage can stop there. Internal firewalls make it difficult for an attacker to move from one system to another.
By slowing the attacker down, you have more time to identify and address the problem.
Improper Patch Management
It is critical to have a regular patch management schedule. Any firewall program, just like software, has vulnerabilities that vendors fix by developing and distributing patches. But it is up to you to ensure that the patches are applied to your software.
Under a regular patch-management schedule, you or the company that manages your network security, checks regularly for security updates and applies them to your firewall software.
DDoS Attacks
Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks can mean extreme frustration and lost revenue.
A DDoS attack aims to overwhelm a business’s defense, causing a shutdown or lasting inability to deliver services. Protocol attacks, a form of DDoS attack, are designed specifically to jam up the system so you can’t process legitimate traffic.
Firewalls can fight some types of DDoS attacks but can still be overloaded.
Defense against these attacks is difficult. Correction strategies include the use of scrubbing services to divert incoming traffic from your network, determine which part is safe and legitimate, then send it back to your network so you can continue to work.
Deep Packet Inspection
Look for a firewall that is able to perform a Layer 7, also known as “deep packet” inspection. This means you are looking for a next-generation firewall that can examine the contents of an information packet for known malware before allowing or blocking that packet’s passage into or out of the system.
Less sophisticated firewalls might only inspect the data packet’s destination or point of origin before allowing or denying a request, so an attacker is able to trick your firewall.
Consult the Experts
Organizations of all sizes rely on their networked infrastructure as the primary means of communication and productivity. These networks are under constant attack from a continually evolving array of threats that affect performance, communications and reliability.
Securing data from external and internal threats is a challenge that requires expert knowledge of the latest technology.
Emerge is an expert on next-generation firewalls. We can assess your network and needs, and explain the options. For example, there are many solutions offered by Universal Threat Management (UTM) firewalls.
They offer intrusion detection and prevention, by monitoring network traffic to detect threats or violations of policy. They also offer deployment of anti-malware tools, and a UTM firewall that continuously updates with the latest threat definitions.
To find out more about firewall security, reach out to Emerge at 859-746-1030 today!