BROADCASTS.com

b"

hello everyone my name is vijay kumar Devireddy and i am glad to have you back on my episode 13 today we are discussing about firewalls and we will be talking about them from a network perspective where they were dedicated pieces of hardware that sat at the edge of your network and controlled what went in and what went out. we're going to talk about personal firewalls.These are software based applications that protect just a single computer or server from unwanted internet traffic.Now these are also referred to as host-based firewalls.These firewalls work by applying a set of rules and policies against traffic that's attempting to come into or go out of our protected computer.For example, if there's a computer that's a web server then it should be accepting incoming traffic on port 80 and port 443 but if it's a desktop computer there's likely no need for these ports to be left open.Instead, the firewall should reject any inbound attempts to access these ports.Because we're talking about software based firewalls we also have to consider what operating systems are being used whether it' Windows, Mac OSX or Linux.With Windows we have the windows firewall.With OSX with have PF and IPFW firewalls.And with we Linux we have iptables.First, let's discuss Windows.In every version of Windows, there's its own software based firewall already built in and available.There's usually two types included.One is a basic version that's found within your control panel and then there's a more advanced version called the Windows firewall with advanced security.This advanced firewall can accessed by typing WF.MCS at the command prompt.The basic firewall is useful for most home users,while the more advanced version is well suited for businesses and systems where more in-depth configurations of you inbound and outbound traffic is required.Next, we have Apple's operating system, the OSX,which has a built in software firewall for Mac users.A basic version of the firewall is accessed through the system preference panel under the security and privacy panel.In addition to the graphic user interface based firewall there's also a command line version. This version is called PF for packet filter.It's available is OSX 10.10 and higher operating systems.Packet filter is the name because it's essentially what a firewall is designed to do.It filters packets.In older versions of OSX there was a different command line firewall used called IPFW, which stood for internet protocol fire wall,but that program was replaced by PF for most modern versions of the OSX operating system.Both PF and IPFW are also used in the free BSD operating system,which is what OSX is actually based on.Just like Windows and OSX, Linux has its own built in firewall too.In Linux systems, this program is called iptables and can be configured from the command line using different accept and reject rules based upon the type of network traffic that's expected and the port being utilized for that communication.Besides these built in firewalls for each of these operating systems many anti-malware suites also have their own software firewalls included too.For example, if you're using Windows,you may have a firewall from Symantec, Mcafee,or Zonealarm.Software firewalls, like all software,does need to be updated though.All software is vulnerable to attack and therefore you need to ensure your host-based firewalls are regularly updated with service packs and software updates to ensure that they remain safe and secure.Some users don't like using host-based firewalls though because they do end up using some of your computer's processing power.This has to happen so that it can check all of that network traffic against each of the rules and policies that it's been assigned,Because of this some organizations instead like to rely on dedicated hardware and network based firewalls as their first line of defense.