After the anti-virus protection has been installed in an organisation, the firewall is the next piece of the jigsaw puzzle that needs to be in place to secure a network from outside threats. Any organisation that has a 24x7 connectivity to the Internet –eg leased line, DSL, cable, ISDN etc – needs a firewall to secure its private, trusted network from the untrusted public Internet. A firewall is thus a “guard at the door”, installed at your organisation’s gateway to the Internet. IT Secure provides two kinds of firewall Solutions

(1) the appliance based Sonicwall range of Firewall/VPN solutions that are suitable for Small and Medium Enterprises and for Distributed Large enterprises

(2) Software based Firewalls for Centralised Large Enterprises – such as Checkpoint’s solutions or SEF (Symantec Enterprise Firewall). These software solutions can be installed on standard hardware or on dedicated appliances such as Nokia (for Checkpoint) or Symantec SGS (for SEF)

A Virtual Private Network (VPN) functionality is often runs parallely on firewall solutions. VPN allows an organisation to connect its geographically dispersed offices to each other, in a secure manner, over the public internet. Data is encrypted before transmission on the Internet, and decrypted at the receiving end, so that unathorised persons cannot access the data when it is flowing on the public Internet. The USP of VPN is that is does not require dedicated leased lines connecting all the locations, so the secure connectivity is achieved at the fraction of the cost.

A basic white paper on firewalls can be found at
http://secinf.net/windows_security/General_Firewall_White_Paper.html

A case study on the implementation of a Firewall/VPN solution at an Indian corporate with eight offices all over India can be read here – pl see attached Sodexho.doc

Sonicwall, Inc, based in Sunnyvale, California is one of the leading providers of security appliances which are based on ASIC technology. Sonicwall is a $100+ million dollar company with an installed base of over 300,000 appliannce worldwide. Sonicwall has a range of products some of which are used by Small and Medium Enterprises and others by distributed Enterprises. Firewall, VPN, and basic Bandwidth Management are built into all Sonicwall Appliances. Content Filtering, Managed Antivirus are some of the optional value-added services that can be built into Sonicwall. The fourth generation of Sonicwall Appliances provides high end features such as Dual ISP Support with Load balancing and Failover, support for Zones, Objects, Groups etc.. Sonicwall has recently opened an office and call centre in India to provide better support to local clients..

Checkpoint is one of the pioneers in the firewall field and with their Next Generation and Express product line, are extending their reach to both the Enterprise Space and the SME space. . Extending the power of the Check Point solution is its Open Platform for Security (OPSEC), the industry's framework and alliance for integration and interoperability with "best-of-breed" solutions from over 350 leading companies. Check Point solutions are sold, integrated and serviced by a network of 1,900 Check Point partners in 86 countries. Checkpoint Solutions are available as pure software – or they can also be run on dedicated appliances such as Nokia.

For more information, click here checkpoint

Symantec products in this area

1. Symantec Enterprise firewall – a hybrid firewall that supports proxy technology for maximum security. The product is both EAL 4 certified and ICSA labs certified
2. Symantec Gateway Security – a truly integrated appliance, that can be configured to offer all or any of the following functionality - full inspection firewall with protocol anomaly and signature-based intrusion prevention and intrusion detection, award-winning virus protection, URL-based content filtering, anti-spam, and IPsec-compliant VPN technologies
3. Symantec Client Security – the first solution to deliver integrated security for laptops and remote desktop clients. It is a desktop firewall with support for content filtering, IDS and centralised management of policies.