Firewall for a Mid-Sized Manufacturing Firm

Firewalls in an Enterprise

Firewalls are essential regulatory devices in an enterprise that aids in identifying and averting illegal persons from retrieving resources which belong to a particular firm. The assets that firewalls protect include a company’s web, workstation structures, and other sensitive information. Also, firewalls regulate the movement of traffic by sifting the incoming and outgoing traffic on an electronic set-up network (Koponen, Zhang, Thakkar, & Casado, 2015). The system is grounded on established regulations that oversee how packages of data are controlled in a network.

Importance of Firewalls in Corporate Networks

In a corporate network like a medium-sized manufacturing company, a firewall can be instigated as a software-based or hardware-based structure. Any enterprise’s connectivity requires safety of its business network. Keeping the website secure ensures that there is close monitoring of internet interface from unsanctioned people (Page, 2014). Firewalls are deliberated to be essential in safeguarding against illegal entree to a company’s assets. Hence, it becomes necessary to have these devices even if a firm is considered to be relatively small.

Variety of Firewalls and the Best Choice for Medium-sized Manufacturing Industry

There are diverse sorts of firewalls materials which can be accessed by producers. An act of coming up with an accurate decision regarding a firewall for a business network is taken as a critical step in businesses (Koponen et al., 2015). In this situation, mid-sized manufacturing industry has workers who vary from 100-120 people. Therefore, this number of workforces enables the firm to be regarded as a mid-sized enterprise. Thus, an appropriate and effective choice of a firewall for this business could be Enterprise Software-Based firewall.

The Enterprise Software-Based Firewall

The Enterprise Software-based Firewall is a kind of firewall that contains several software bundles that have firewall software. Moreover, the available packages in the firewall are fixed on an existing functioning structure and hardware system channels. The system can as well be fitted on a server that is functioning on a company’s working system (Osuga & Page, 2017). It becomes vital for medium-sized firms to cooperate with a different application server like a web service provider to continue operating well. When such firewalls are installed, enterprises get an easy time of maintaining and administering the entire system.

Testing the Security of Software Programs

To test if a software program was secure or not safe, I would probably conduct a predetermined safety testing to establish the worthiness and consistency of the software program. The entire process would begin by checking any security inadequacies which might exist in the software (Page, 2014). The process would thereby expose any available open security loopholes. The primary reason for conducting a security analysis of the software would be ascertaining and eliminating any software imperfections that might cause anomalies. Such malfunctions can deter the business from attaining its set goals.

The Role of Penetration Tests

A security test that can be effective in determining any weaknesses during an evaluation process in a business is called Penetration test. This sort of safety trial incorporates an exercise of making scrutiny of a software application or supercomputer system to detect weaknesses that exist in the firewall (Koponen et al., 2015). Penetration tests are also known as the white hat attacks because ratified operators go through the whole system. Sometimes, it can regularly be executed using standard computer programs.

Steps to Ensure a Secure Firewall

Lastly, the best approaches to be taken on a firewall include assembling sufficient data on the system before conducting trials. Also, finding possible entry points, trying an attack, and creating a report of the finding is what managers should do in small firms that have firewalls. Thus, the procedure would assist to establish if a software application was safe or unsafe.

References

Koponen, T., Zhang, R., Thakkar, P., & Casado, M. (2015). U.S. Patent No. 9,015,823. Washington, DC: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Osuga, K., & Page, D. N. (2017). Qubit transport model for unitary black hole evaporation without firewalls. Physical Review D, 97(6), 066023.

Page, D. N. (2014). Excluding black hole firewalls with extreme cosmic censorship. Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, 2014(06), 051.