Theoretical Firewalls Essay

Firewalls are devices used for network security protocols by monitoring incoming and outgoing traffic than taking action to either allow or block it stemming from security rules put in place. They do this by establishing a barrier between secure networks and unsecured networks such as the internet. Firewalls can either be software or hardware.

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A packet filter refers to a network firewall that monitors network addresses and blocks or allows passage based on the Internet Protocol (I P) address. The process works by inspecting ports of packets that circulate between computers on the internet. If a packet doesn't meet the packet filtering rules, the filter can eliminate it silently or reject it and generate a notification for the sender Vasiliadis, Koromilas, Polychronakis, & Ioannidis (2017). On the other hand, when a packet meets most of the packet filtering rules, it is allowed to pass. Depending on the way that a packet filter is configured, it can be of inconvenience to the user if the defined rules are too stringent. For example, when designed to accept only safe packets, some of the legitimate packets may be dropped. Consequently, if it's designed to drop only the packets that are unsafe and to accept all others, then it becomes the least secure while the option of asking the user how to deal with a specific packet produces too many dialog boxes.

Stateful Inspection firewall, also, dynamic packet filtering- works by monitoring active connections. It tracks each of these connections to establish whether the packet is the beginning of a new connection, the continuity of an existing one or not part of any connection. While static rules are still in use here, they incorporate the validity of a connection state as a criterion on which to best examine packets. As this firewall monitors connections, it also records the data, e.g., port numbers in a state table such that the action taken is also influenced by prior packets passed through it and thus more secure than packet filtering. An incoming packet can only request the opening of a particular port that's required because otherwise, ports remain closed.

An application firewall works by controlling accessibility, input and output of an application to take action against that which doesn't meet the designed specification of the firewall Cheminod, Durante, Seno, & Valenzano, (2018). It can control all network traffic, applications, and services with specificity unlike dynamic filtering which falls short in this area unless used with additional software. It functions in either passive or active modes whereby active firewalls examines all incoming requests against known vulnerabilities and those that are clean are passed to the application. It still examines weaknesses in passive mode but does not take action against requests when an attack is discovered. The advantage is that it gets such applications as domain name systems and can detect those trying to bypass the firewall through an open port. Given that it closes significant loopholes overlooked by other firewalls it is the most secure and recommended for usage.

References

Cheminod, M., Durante, L., Seno, L., & Valenzano, A. (2018). Performance evaluation and modeling of an industrial application-layer firewall. IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics.

Tseng, K. K., Lo, J., Liu, Y., Chang, S. H., Merabti, M., Ng, F. C., & Wu, C. H. (2017). A feasibility study of stateful automation packet inspection for streaming application detection systems. Enterprise Information Systems, 11(9), 1317-1336.

Vasiliadis, G., Koromilas, L., Polychronakis, M., & Ioannidis, S. (2017). Design and Implementation of a Stateful Network Packet Processing Framework for GPUs. IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking (TON), 25(1), 610-623.