What is Firewall?
Cyber-attacks have seen a massive increase over the last few years, and businesses who fall prey to these tactics are often left paying a heavy price in remediation, data recovery, and pinpointing what went wrong in the first place.
You can prevent your business from being the target of a cyber-attack by equipping your network with a firewall.
While often confused with anti-virus and malware services, firewall is one of the most proactive tools that business owners can implement to prevent a cyber-attack in the first place.
Firewall is a network-based security method that comes in the form of hardware or software and detects and prevents any illegitimate, malicious or suspicious online traffic from accessing your computer.
Body Armor for Your Business
When your network is equipped with an effective firewall, it serves as body armor for your business, blocking outside threats from penetrating your network.
Last year, there was a 424% increase in new small business cyber breaches and 43% of all cyber-attacks target small businesses. More troublesome, 60% of small businesses that are victims of a cyber-attack go out of business within six months.
The statistics don't lie, every business should be concerned about protecting their company's data and systems. The unfortunate reality is that 47% of small businesses report that they have no understanding of how to protect themselves against cyber-attacks and 3 out of 4 small businesses say they don't have the personnel to address IT security.
Don't fall prey to cyber criminals. Implementing firewall service for business is one of the easiest and most effective ways to mitigate threats to your network by working 24/7, 365 to block any access attempts from bad actors.
Continue reading to learn more about how firewall can protect your business' network.
Make Your Network Work for You
An optimal firewall system can give you piece of mind when it comes to your business. Despite best practice and security training, human error accounts for many business network breaches.
Firewall programs account for this and proactively protect your computer from DDoS attacks, malware, botnet attacks, network intrusion, and data leaks.
The security benefits that coincide with using a firewall are just some of the ways firewall can help make your network work for you.
Productivity can be lost when employees use the business network to access social media platforms, online storefronts and other sites unrelated to their work. That loss in productivity can translate to a loss in revenue, and also open your business up to additional online threats.
Firewalls offer business owners a solution to this loss of productivity. Firewall can be customized to fit your unique needs, and you an create policies that block access to unauthorized websites. By programming your firewall preferences to prevent access to distracting websites like Facebook, you can ensure your employees are focused on productivity, and not unintentionally creating security concerns.
You can also manage bandwidth usage with firewall. Chances are, the more employees you have, the more bandwidth your network uses daily. When employees are using the network to watch videos, scroll through Instagram, or listen to music-it slows down the network speed for everyone.
Preventing this slowdown is easy by creating a firewall policy that limits the amount of bandwidth employees on the network are able to use for non-work related browsing.
A Security Solution for the Modern Workplace
The modern workplace is evolving and looks much different than the traditional, 9-5 office jobs of the past as more employees are opting for hybrid or remote work solutions following the coronavirus pandemic.
There are many benefits to this flexibility including increased productivity, but it has presented challenges for many businesses as they work to protect their network from threats.
Firewall solutions in the modern workplace continue to evolve to meet industry needs. Many businesses now utilize cloud platforms and cloud data backup to ensure employees working near and far have access to the network, data, and tools they need to effectively perform their duties.
Because the cloud is not a physical data source, it requires maintaining a strict firewall policy to avoid leaving sensitive information and data vulnerable to cyber-attacks. It is critical to find a trusted and experienced IT provider who can assist you in developing a strict firewall policy, strict remote worker connections, and thorough data checking capabilities to mitigate outside threats.
Bottom Line: Firewall is Critical in Protecting Your Business
When your business is armed with a firewall program and thorough firewall policies, you are protected 24/7, 365 from the cyber threats that you and your employees encounter daily. In conjunction with other services like malware protection, anti-virus software, and managed IT services (link to blog), you can ensure that your business is shielded from cyber threats.
Capital Office Products is a leading SC IT service provider with 25 years of experience. We offer Unified Threat Management Firewall to protect you from the most prolific and dangerous bugs on the Internet.
This coupled with our anti-virus and malware protection, periodic network assessments, regularly scheduled patch deployment and numerous other tool will assure that you rest easy at night knowing that you are well protected.
Our cloud-based platform uses context and reputations to stop never-before-seen threats before the competition knows they're there.
Call us today at 803-407-4321 or request an assessment to start building a unique and effective firewall to protect your business!