Firewalls – The First Line of Cyber Security For Small Businesses

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Cyber-attacks are becoming increasingly common and is featured in news headlines with increasing frequency. It is now common to encounter news reporting data breaches where thousands of usernames, passwords, confidential information and sensitive data are being compromised all around the globe. Large firms currently recognise the need for firewalls, as a proactive approach to securing their internal networks and IT infrastructure, however the small business owner, tends to ignore or are not aware of the consequences of not having his company’s network secured by a firewall.

One of the most notorious cyber security attacks occurred when the Shamoon virus entered Saudi Aramco and and RasGas Co Ltd ‘s Network in 2012, formatted and disabled over 30,000 workstations, servers and backup servers resulting in the erasing of all data and has been labeled as one of the worst cyber-attacks in history.

More recently, in December 2018 a variant of the Shamoon virus attacked the Italian oil company Saipem, disabling 300 computers on the company’s network.

Scenarios above, are every IT department and business owner’s worst nightmare. In a worst-case scenario, this type of attack can be devastating as a company may lose critical information, sensitive data and as a result cost the company significant revenue and resources to rectify and restore normal operations.

The first line of defense of for a network connected to the internet is not only the firewall, but a properly configured and secured firewall. To put it simply, a firewall is a software or a dedicated hardware appliance, that controls the traffic flow from the internet and prevents unauthorized access into a private network. They can reside either on a single computer as in the case of Avg Internet Security or as a dedicated hardware appliance like the Sophos Firewall appliances whose sole purpose is to secure the network and monitor network traffic. In addition to protecting the networks from malware, spyware, and viruses, modern firewalls are also able to deal with ransomware and exploit mitigation.

The revenue and resource cost, coupled with the downtime required to sanitize machines and recover data, clearly demonstrates that the return on investment of a firewall appliance is justifiable. In addition to the protection from external threats, modern firewalls are ensuring efficiency in the business by providing web filtering capabilities. For example, websites that may have profanity, be offensive or contain obscene content, can be disallowed resulting in the user being prevented access to such a site.

Even though we have just skirted the tip of the ice berg in this article with respect to firewalls, it is clearly evident of the benefits of these devices. Pc Expertz Ltd has significant experience with the planning, implementation and configuration of theses devices. Feel free to contact us if you would require a free consultation on such a solution.