Today here we will discuss what is firewall ? why firewall is there in our computing system ? Is it safe to keep firewall enabled ? All your doubts will be cleared here. So lets begin.
Use of FIREWALL in real life :
In real life firewall is used in many type of industries where highly combustible materials are used. Firewall is a wall designed & built in such a manner that it can be used to store highly combustible materials. These walls are designed in such a manner that if fire broke out in any of industry so these wall will protect these highly combustible materials from fire thus protecting that industry from great damage. Firewall also protect a industry when that highly combustible material caught fire by limiting it to inside of wall only thus whole industry outside this wall will be safe.
Thus a firewall provides two types of protection from out to inside & from in to outside. So by this you come to know the use of firewall in industry. From this example you may have gain a rough idea about firewall in computing system.
Use of FIREWALL in computing system :
Out – inside protection :
If your system is connected on any type of network then firewall ensures that only the type of data you require is allowed to enter in your system from that network. Thus it blocks all unwanted things outside your PC only like malware, spyware, adware, virus & spams.
Yes those unwanted data reach to your system but there is a wall which check all data in that location & allows only genuine data to travel further. Other unwanted data are killed there.
In – outside protection:
In the similar manner if your system is affected by any type of virus attacks & you are connected to a network then it will protect other system on that network from getting affected by your system. Thus it will block all those insecure data inside your system only preventing its widespread.
There are basically two types of firewall:
- HARDWARE based firewall
- SOFTWARE based firewall
HARDWARE based firewall:
Hardware based firewall nowadays are mostly seen in all kinds of router. Even specialized hardware for firewall is available in the market. So these device physically provide protection to all the devices which are connected to them.
For example if you have 10 devices connected to a single router having firewall fully functional. Then all those 10 device will automatically get protection.
Whenever you work on a network & you are sending some kind of data to the network so these data will go through these firewall enabled hardware. So this firewall will attach a network id to the data that you are sending after attaching id it will be allowed to travel further. As soon as your data reach the destination then it can easily read your network id & when again it will send you some type of data back then it will attach same network id to it. Thus again your firewall will receive this data it will check for the similar network id if it matches then it will be allowed to enter your system. So by following this protocol on a network the unwanted files which can not access your network id are not able to enter your system. Thus keeping your system safe.
SOFTWARE based firewall:
Software firewall is already there in most of the operating system nowadays. But software firewall is also involved in many of the third party anti virus software. These type of software also performs in the similar manner as the hardware based firewall do.
But only advantage is that in some occasion you can override the permission of software manually. For example if you are installing or playing a game from internet then firewall will block it & it will give you a popup whether to allow this file or not after this. So you can allow a specific file to run on your system by providing it special permission if you know that file is genuine and harmless.
A practical example that you may have encountered :
If you are a person using internet then definitely you may have encountered that a pop up use to come which says your device is heating up, running out of memory, clean junk files, affected by virus so all this popup asks you to download a software to fix it. If you are so innocent that you allowed to download it but firewall will block it and again it will ask your permission saying that this type of file can harm your system & if again unknowingly you allowed it to download. Then you are just a stupid nothing can save you if you not utilize your brain.
Firewall can also fail if you are a stupid but I don’t think any of reader is of that type. Frequent porn site visitors have great experience to tackle these types of popups
Should you disable firewall of your system ?
Answer is strictly no. You should always have a fully functional firewall whether it is software or hardware based. Firewall is must for your system as we all know internet is full of malicious & unprotected site. So if you disable your firewall then you will be definitely affected in this insecure cyber world. If you disable it & go to any site you will even not notice & many unwanted data will be loaded in your system.
I understand all those popups from firewall is really frustrating but don’t even dare to disable it . Keep on giving the permission to the data that you believe in & rest will be handled by the firewall.
Let me know your views and queries in the comment section below.