Your company’s network contains a gold mine of sensitive information that you need to protect at all costs. While it’s absolutely the case that you need to make network security a top priority for your business, thankfully, multiple aspects of your security can be covered easily enough by implementing a single, enterprise-level security solution.
As useful as the Internet is with helping a workforce complete their daily tasks, it is just as capable of having negative effects for your business. There is plenty of content online that has no place in the workplace, including plenty that serves as unwanted distractions. Fortunately, you can prevent your employees from lollygagging on the job with a fairly simple solution: web content filtering.
Every consumer-grade PC comes with a basic firewall. Enterprise environments, however, require that the base infrastructure has a stronger security solution that provides greater controls, above and beyond the basic firewall. One solution that provides enhanced firewall capabilities is the Unified Threat Management system.
Companies that do their business online experience threats from all sides. Therefore, a comprehensive security solution is required. Without one, you’re at risk from malicious websites, spam messages, ransomware, and much more. Designed with the security needs of enterprises in mind, a Unified Threat Management solution can protect your business from every side.
Firewalls are easily one of the most basic parts of any network security infrastructure, and they’re an important component that shouldn’t be taken lightly. The firewall is the first line of defense against any threats coming into your network, and it’s one of several essential components to prevent data breaches on your network. An enterprise-level firewall is an important investment for any serious business.
With all of the inappropriate content festering in the gutters of the Internet, you need a solution that will protect you, your family, and your office. Implementing a content filtering solution is a great start, but it’s not going to shield you 100 percent from what’s out there. In addition to having a content filter, you need to take an active role in monitoring who’s doing what on the Internet.
As a business owner, you depend on your network security solution to protect your assets. You trust it to do its job without your intervention, but do you know how it works? One of the most basic parts of network security is a firewall. These are the first lines of defense against threats which can potentially steal information or destroy it completely. In order to get the most out of your network security solution, it’s your responsibility to understand how a firewall works.
By Mark Waldstein, LiveSecurity Content Specialist, WatchGuard Technologies
[Editor's Note: In the March, 2008 edition of my podcast Radio Free Security: Firebox Special, WatchGuard's lead technical trainer Kyle Porter told our listeners all about Single Sign-On, a new feature in Fireware Version 10. It's available on any WatchGuard appliance that can run Version 10, including our e-Series Fireboxes and our Edge product line. I've summarized Kyle's descriptions here, for those who prefer reading to listening; or, for those who've heard the podcast and want some backup documentation. --Mark]
Single Sign-On should be seen as a part of the larger authentication setup on Fireboxes. Before SSO, users could authenticate to the firewall, either as a specific user or as a member of a group. The network administrator could restrict access to particular services, or apply particular WebBlocker rules, to users who were authenticated. You, the administrator, could also integrate that authentication with your existing domain controller (such as an Active Directory server), but there was a limitation: End users had to affirmatively authenticate to the firewall using a web browser. Whether or not they were logged onto their Active Directory domain was unimportant to the firewall; it still needed them to prove who they were by directing our web app to the firewall.
So, if you had a hundred users on your network, all one hundred of them had to know how to get to a particular web page, and what to type when they got there. (In most cases, they had to enter the same username and password they had already entered when they logged onto the network that morning.) This process also meant that you probably spent more time than you wanted in educating users how to do that. So, it was probably not our most popular feature. Admins really liked the results…but that first week could be a little painful for them.
