Guard Yourself with a Firewall

When you connect to the Internet, you are making your computer vulnerable to malicious codes and intruders. Hackers can gain access to your system, gather personal or sensitive information, and use this for malicious activities. Nowadays, reports on data crime, identity theft, and hacker activities against corporate, government, or even personal networks are rampant. With these increasing threats to our internet privacy, it is important to know how we can prevent unauthorized access and how we can control the type of data that flows to and from our networks. This security measure is commonly done with firewalls. A firewall must be enabled in your computer or your network in order to protect your system from unauthorized external access and ensure that only permitted exchanged are done between networks.

There are two types of firewalls: the personal and the network firewall. An individual computer must have an enabled personal firewall at the very least. The type of firewall you need, ranging from basic to advanced, really depends on your internet activities. If your computer is running in an internal network, it is important that, apart from personal firewalls, network firewalls must be enabled. These come in different forms such as hardware devices, software applications, or combinations of both.

Hardware devices are external firewalls such as those built-in in most network routers . This is commonly used by people who use the internet through a broadband connection. These routers have the benefit of being able to share your internet connection with different computers in your chosen network while protecting it as well. Since these types of hardware have become one of the most demanded products by computer users, they are now readily available with prices within typical budgets.
Firewalls that come as software applications, on the other hand, are programs that run discreetly in your computer. They are designed to unobtrusively monitor the traffic of data exchange between your computer and other networks. This type of software application is often already built-in in operating systems. Some people are more comfortable installing free additional firewalls while some even feel the need to purchase the more advanced types that are available in the market.

Because even the most reliable programs do not guarantee the inexistence of weaknesses, it is crucial that you secure your computer with firewalls. You must remember that applications are written by programmers who are not near perfect. Like everyone else, it is easy for them to overlook faulty codes especially with the pressure imposed by the corporate entities they work for. Although firewalls cannot guarantee 100% effectiveness, enabling one or more is significantly better than nothing.