The Internet facilitates a great deal of business activity around the world by enabling communication and data exchange across network boundaries, effectively creating a global marketplace. However, transmitting sensitive information across the public Internet always carries a risk of exposure, which is why most organizations rely upon virtual private networks (VPNs) to create secure connections.
The firewall is an essential first line of network defense, filtering traffic and blocking malicious outsiders from gaining access to your critical systems. Businesses today commonly use multiple firewalls to create a system of protected network segments with varying security needs. In this post, we’ll take a brief look at five primary types of firewalls and the three main implementation models.