A firewall is a network security device, either hardware or software-based, which monitors all incoming and outgoing traffic and based on a defined set of security rules it accepts, rejects or drops that specific traffic.A firewall establishes a barrier between secured internal networks and outside untrusted network, such as the Internet.

History and Need for Firewall

Before Firewalls, network security was performed by Access Control Lists (ACLs) residing on routers. ACLs are rules that determine whether network access should be granted or denied to specific IP address.But ACLs cannot determine the nature of the packet it is blocking. Also, ACL alone does not have the capacity to keep threats out of the network. Hence, the Firewall was introduced.

How Firewall Works

Firewall match the network traffic against the rule set defined in its table. Once the rule is matched, associate action is applied to the network traffic. For example, Rules are defined as any employee from HR department cannot access the data from code server and at the same time another rule is defined like system administrator can access the data from both HR and technical department. Rules can be defined on the firewall based on the necessity and security policies of the organization.

From the perspective of a cooperate business, network traffic can be either outgoing or incoming. Firewall maintains a distinct set of rules for both the cases. Mostly the outgoing traffic, originated from the server itself, allowed to pass. Still, setting a rule on outgoing traffic is always better in order to achieve more security and prevent unwanted communication.