| Battlefield Home - Network Security
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Firewall (continued):
Hardware Firewall Advantages:
» Fast - a hardware firewall is almost always going to be faster than a software firewall.
» Early protection - Your protection is on the "border" of your network, meaning that what ever nasty is trying to get in, it is stopped at the border instead of the inside of the network.
» More complex rule set - while not ALWAYS true, more often than not a hardware firewall has a more complex rule set allowing it to find and catch more nasties than a software firewall.
Hardware Firewall Disadvantages:
» Cost - A hardware firewall almost always cost much more than a software firewall.
» Complexity - While complexity gives it more ability to stop nasties, it also makes it much harder to setup, manage, and maintain.
» False sense of security - Many of us will just think "Hey I got a awesome firewall, I'm protected." and then may not be as diligent on other forms of protection.
Software Firewall Advantages:
» Cost - Software firewalls are much less (sometimes hundreds of dollars less) than hardware firewalls
» Ease of use - Most software firewalls are designed for an almost "plug-n-play" approach. They will ask you questions when installing them, and then will show a pop up with (sometimes) useful messages helping you to make decisions on what to block and what to allow.
» Integration - Many of the software firewalls are bundled with anti-virus & anti-spyware. This allows one interfaces for multiple applications and allows them to work with each other (hopefully making them better).
Software Firewall Disadvantages:
» Speed - These applications ARE going to slow down your system. You might never notice it on a modern system, but your computer will be doing more work.
» Barely in time protection - What ever nasty is trying to make it into your system, did. It is now up to the software to intercept it and stop it before it can actually do anything.
» Simpler rule set - Because it is being done on a multi-use system it can only do so much before it will noticeably degrade the performance on even the most advanced computer.
» May be disabled - Since software firewalls are getting better and better, "hackers" are actually finding ways to disable your firewall... and some of them work.
» You have to purchase a license (in the case of commercial software) for each computer you want to protect.
Now how's that for making your life simple? OK, so it didn't but at least now you know the basics (and I really really stress the bare basics) of firewalls, and the differences between a software and a hardware firewall let's take a look at some of the different firewalls you can get.
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