This article originally appeared on dfives.com

In its plainest definition, a firewall acts as the main security barrier for outgoing and incoming traffic on a network. Firewalls are made to perform multiple essential IT security functions that protect your network from security threats. They’ll do that by reading traffic details that are entering or leaving your network and determining if it is safe.

Different Kinds of Firewalls

There are four firewall categories today, each with their own unique cyber-defense and architecture specialties. Those options include:

• Packet filterers: These firewalls filter outgoing and incoming data packets against pre-programmed criteria in order to determine if they’re safe or not.
• Circuit-level firewalls: Such firewalls perform their work at the first networking level, or as two different devices try to communicate with each other.
• Proxy and stateful firewalls: Proxy and stateful firewalls do both the functions of circuit-level firewalls and packet filterers.
• Next-generation firewalls: These firewalls maintain the broadest variety of threat mitigation and traffic inspection layers.

Securing your business for remote work is easy with Fortinet FortiGate 40F, 60F and 80F firewalls.

So what makes securing your business for remote work is easy with Fortinet FortiGate 40F, 60F and 80F firewalls? Well, a FortiGate firewall functions by assessing the data which flows into a network and verifies whether it’s safe to pass through to a business. Typically, lower specification firewalls assess this data by information, like its source and location.

Factors to Help You Choose the Right Firewall

Determining what to seek while selecting a network firewall for your home or business is among the most critical IT decisions you will make. Ask yourself the following questions while choosing the proper network firewall to match your business or home’s unique security risks, maintenance capabilities, current business scale, budget, and much more:

1. What do your top security threats consist of?

All kinds of firewalls serve similar defensive functions: to observe network traffic and ensure only code it reads as well-intentioned is able to pass through for workers using the Web at your office.

Though, top security threats for businesses today need firewalls that do a lot more than follow perfunctory “bad” or “good” definitions. At a minimum, think about different kinds of firewalls made to increase the security of certain workplace applications — oftentimes those that are business-critical, like:

• Web-domain blocking, for security, in addition to general workplace productivity — yet with the transparency, as well as the consent of your staff members.
• VPN protections, or firewalls that have dedicated, specific tunnel layers that manage devices on your network in remote places.
• SSL encryption, especially if your business stores sensitive client or customer information and meets specific industry regulations around PII (personally identifiable information).
• Email spam filtering that has firewalls which have the ability to look at the whole string of packets that are involved in an outgoing or incoming email exchange instead of simply approving based on destination ports, source, or IP addresses.

You also will have to note the level of advanced features really necessary for your operations. For instance, next-gen firewalls are often installing sandboxing defenses that meet increasingly complex malware that is hidden in hyperlinks today.

When you or a staff member pushes a link, a sandboxed-enabled firewall will trigger a warning that allows you to open that link within a test virtual environment. At that point, the firewall assesses its packet behavior to figure out if it is safe and authentic before enabling you to move ahead with your link interaction.

2. How is your Interconnected Network Ecosystem?

Take close inventory of your full IT ecosystem by conducting an infrastructure audit. You should account for your complete variety of devices that are operating on your network within a typical workday, which includes:

• Switches, servers, routers and additional core computing hardware
• Database management systems
• Current operating systems
• Copiers and printers
• Teleconferencing equipment and VoIP phones
• Tablets
• Smartphones
• Laptops
• Desktops

Those equipment audits are a business best-practice, in addition to a critical first step in selecting a firewall for your business network — they’ll help in distinguishing between a manageable suite of hardware and software firewall types.

3. Are you planning on scaling?

Even if you currently have a limited IT ecosystem, you ought to consider if you plan to grow as a small business. If you have plans to add more devices, you will probably need a centralized solution within a hardware firewall.

The majority of software firewalls aren’t universally compatible with manufactured devices and operating systems, such as Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, and Chrome OS. Put plainly, every operating system, program, and device contain its own isolated software firewalls, which means you have to individually manage, configure, and program all the firewalls on all of your devices. If your workplace will eventually or soon have dozens of this type of technology, software firewalls easily can become cumbersome and time-consuming.

But that does not mean you should not use any software firewall options. There still are benefits to software firewalls, yet you will probably want to also depend upon a hardware firewall which automatically will safeguard new devices on a network.

4. Do you have employees who are telecommuting or remote?

In some capacity, 43% of employees in 2016 worked remotely, and this percentage likely has increased over the past couple of years. Some staff today only work from home, while other ones might telecommute as necessary.

Even infrequent remote work policies require that employers set up the proper infrastructure that supports safe virtual connections. One easy solution includes software firewalls; however, there also are methods of tying in your virtual employees’ firewall protection with your office’s firewall.

Virtual users get trafficked through your organization’s VPN tunnel. Robust Virtual Private Networks that have completely integrated firewalls manage virtual authorization, evaluating the out-of-network, original data packets for approved source patterns, and re-encrypting them securely back through the tunneled Virtual Private Network traffic gateway.

If Virtual Private Network security is a high priority for your organization, consider a primary or secondary type of hardware firewall with VPN gateways that are built into its architecture to save money and time setting up this component of your business’s network.

5. Are you able to cease distributed attacks?

In Q1 of 2019 alone, reported DDoS (distributed denial of service) attacks increased by 200%. Furthermore, DDoS attacks overwhelming servers at a rate of over 100 GB/ second increased 967% in that same year, with few indications of slowing down.

Because of that alarming traction, more attention is being turned to firewalls that have dedicated architecture against distributed denial of service threats. Specifically, firewalls that have advanced firewall features of monitoring integrated into routers may provide advanced alerts as servers initially seem to be unexpectedly bombarded — the tell-tale indication of DDoS — and trigger suitable mitigation measures.

6. Do you need firewall alerts?

A real-time alert identifies when the firewall prevents malicious traffic — yet additionally if an attack is presently underway. Pre-emptive detection assistance such as this is immediately routed over to network administrators and any additional approved user.

With real-time alerts, it’s possible to jump into action, and open firewall and router activity history in order to identify the attack method on your network and launch a targeted, quick response. Firewalls are frequently among the first layers that recognize any suspicious activity, so it makes sense to choose a firewall type that has advanced attack alert functionalities such as this for the fastest-possible mitigation turnaround.

7. Are you going to require ongoing support?

Even the most advanced, savviest internal IT personnel can benefit from technical support offered by firewall OEMs.

Before choosing the proper network firewall, ask about ongoing assistance from a manufacturer — inquire about:

• If their assistance goes beyond network integration or initial set up?
• What about firewall updates and ongoing configurations, especially for software firewalls, which, in most instances, have to be managed individually?
• Will you need a go-to support expert you may get in touch with for case concerns and miscellaneous inquiries?

All those customer support benefits will make all the difference in the functionality and lifespan of your firewall choice.

8. Is your bandwidth currently at capacity?

A software firewall — in addition to advanced firewall types, like proxy and stateful firewalls — may lead to choke points in the network. Those choke points are responsible for slow internet download and upload speeds, transaction lags, as well as server unreliability during critical work transactions and activities.

Those lags in bandwidth are complicated further while running too many devices in a workplace, or if you aren’t using the bandwidth system requirements suggested by the firewall manufacturer. So, if speed is vital for your business or your bandwidth cannot afford any more drain, you should pick a solution that will not slow your system down.

9. How much accessibility should individuals receive?

Consider the network’s actual users — i.e., your customers and employees across client-facing applications or portals.

Firewalls that have more granular authentication rules and accessibility controls might be appealing here. The capability of customizing certain access boundaries through the firewalls ensures that only the proper individuals can use and find the correct work applications at the proper time, in the proper locations.

In some instances, firewalls even can create accessibility rules in which users may interact with specific parts of an application yet not the whole, which creates more administrative peace of mind and logical case-by-case security.

10. What’s in your budget?

Lastly, you will need to consider the price. The most low-cost solution for individual users includes a software firewall; however, a hardware option is usually more cost-effective, so long as you have more than a couple of devices on the network.

Remember that equipping your organization with the proper firewall is an investment which easily can save you substantial quantities of money if it prevents costly data breaches. In that way, a firewall will pay for itself; therefore, it is shortsighted to choose sub-par protection for the sake of the budget.