Rita C. Summers provides the following definition of a firewall in her book, Secure Computing: “A firewall is a collection of components placed between an inner network and an outer network to achieve the following goals:

- all traffic must pass through the firewall.

- only traffic that is authorized by the inner network’s security policy is allowed to pass.

- the firewall can not be penetrated.” (506)

In simpler terms, a firewall acts to keep intruders out and allow only authorized users in. In achieving these goals, a firewall protects computers from hostile intrusion that could compromise confidentiality or initiate lost or corrupted dat

One benefit to having a firewall installed to a network is to provide controlled access among the legitimate users and their access to various external and internal databases and applications (Klander, p. 75). A firewall can be set up to only allow a limited amount of access to certain individuals based on the context or nature of their job. It may be designed to restrict access to information belonging to other departments or branches of the company.

A second benefit to installing a firewall to a network is enhanced privacy (Simonds, p. 263). A firewall keeps vital data inside the organization. A firewall prevents the rest of the world from accessing your private network and the data on that network (Klander, p. 80). A firewall filters the incoming and outgoing traffic and allows entry or exit based on criteria or protocol originally incorporated at the time the firewalls was put in place.

Firewalls are an important part of an organizations security policy. They act as a boundary between the private and public network. Firewalls strive to keep intruders out as well as only allowing authorized users in. Firewalls can be used to control the access among individual users based on the need and characteristics of their

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