Computer Firewalls

A firewall can be software or hardware based and it protects your network by analyzing the traffic that goes in and out of your computer network.  If the firewall notices that something ugly like a virus attempts to enter or leave your computer network, it will block the activity.

Firewalls use at least one of three methods to process the traffic that goes in and out of your computer network and they include packet filtering, proxy service, and stateful inspection.  A proxy service will retrieve and send info from your system.  A stateful inspection compares key pieces of the information being sent and received in your system.  If the comparison shows a reasonable match, the info will be allowed through.  A packet filter will analyze small chunks of data against a set of filters before it is allowed into your system or discarded.

You can customize your firewall with filters based on IP addresses, domain names, keywords, and many other variables.  Some firewalls will also route questionable connections over to a Honey Pot.  The Honey Pot is created to look like it’s full of important valuable personal data and it allows a black hat hacker in so it can gather information about the hacker to help protect the network from the hacker.

Install a firewall on your computer to protect your equipment from viruses, denial of service attacks, email bombs, macros, spam, operating system bugs, SMTP session hijacking, application backdoors, and remote logins.  Use Google to search for free open source firewalls or ask your favorite local computer guru to install a firewall for you and your computers will run happily ever after.

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References

Retrieved May 16th 2012

How Stuff Works; Firewall

http://www.howstuffworks.com/firewall.htm