Anatomy of a firewall

Once again we meet on this information superhighway that we call the Internet. Many of you who are reading this have most likely stumbled upon it and are curious or have specifically searched for it, either way, welcome. Surely many of you out there have been using the Internet now for many years and it is basically like an extension of you right? A second-nature if you will. You get up in the morning and before that first coffee is in you, you are already scrolling down the list of your email.

This is a scene that plays itself day in and day out all over the world and that is because, as stated, the Internet is now an extension of ourselves. Now that i have probably freaked many of you out we will get to the heart of today’s discussion. Today we are learning about what a firewall is and what exactly it does for us. We might even touch on a few questions that you might have about the firewall (the one that protect your computers against hackers) that you currently have installed on your machine. Many of us who work in big companies have heard this sentence over and over, “ my firewall won’t let me onto this site!” Well, this is a good thing, that means that it is doing its job.

So to give you an idea of just what exactly a firewall is and what its specific functions are we will give you a quick rundown. A firewall is a wall (virtually speaking) that a program will put up to keep any bad things like viruses, adware, spyware, phishing attempts and hacking. Think of this as the real deal, a real fire wall will protect your home in the event that the house next to you goes up in flames right? This is the same deal. This will stop any viruses or hackers in their tracks and will immobilize it so that it can’t go any further into your system, sort of like a club on the steering wheel of your car.

To be more specific, the firewall itself is basically a piece of hardware or a software program that will watch and sift through all of the information that is going out as well as coming into your computer by way of the connection that you have to the Internet. Think of this, each bit of information is called a “packet”, and your firewall has eyes to watch everything that comes in, just like a security guard. So, if it notices that a packet is trying to come in that is not right or is shown to be harmful to your computer then it is escorted right back out the door!

Just think, if you didn’t’t have a firewall and you were connected to the Internet, there are millions of people who will exploit your system. Hackers can come in and take whatever information that they wish and you wouldn’t’t even know that they were there. Here is hoping that you have found the information in this article to be helpful and that you have learned a few things about firewalls in general. Surf Safe!