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Firewalls help protect networks and devices from a wide range of security risks, namely unauthorized access from outside your customers’ networks. They can also inform you of potentially threatening attempts to connect from within customer networks.

There are several different ways security firewalls can monitor and regulate network traffic. These methods can include:

• Packet filtering. Packets are small amounts of data. When a firewall uses packet filtering, the packets attempting to enter the network are run against a group of filters. These filters remove the packets that match certain identified threats and allow the others through to their intended destination.
• Proxy service. These firewalls are incredibly secure, but they come with their own drawbacks. They work more slowly than other types of firewalls and are often limited with regard to the sorts of applications they can support. Instead of serving as a filtration system that data passes through, proxy servers function as go-betweens. By essentially creating a mirror of the computer behind the firewall, they prevent direct connections between the customer device and the incoming packets, protecting your network location from potential bad actors.
• Stateful inspection. Where static filtering examines the packet headers, stateful inspection firewalls examine a variety of elements of each data packet and compare them to a database of trusted information. These elements include source and destination IP addresses, ports, and applications. Incoming data packets are required to sufficiently match the trusted information in order to be allowed through the firewall. Stateful inspection is a newer method of firewall filtering.