The name antivirus is now standard as almost everyone with a computer has undoubtedly heard the name before.
There may be times when your computer will start to act weird, and then when you send it to the technician, he will let you know after running some diagnoses that the computer has been infected with the virus.
And we know the next thing he will probably say is that you needed to install antivirus software on the computer to clean it all up, be it windows or any operating system.
However, most people do not know anything about a firewall. Both the antivirus and the firewall are mechanisms that are for protecting our computer systems.
However, there is a difference between the two of them. The significant difference is that the antirust protects the computer system from internal attacks from malicious software files.
The firewall acts like a wall or a barrier against traffic coming into the computer system, mainly from the internet, so it is considered network security.
The two function on different approaches towards the security of the system. The firewall focuses on traffic coming into the computer from outside and then prevents any private network unauthorized access.
At the same time, antivirus deals with malicious programs that are already inside the computer and the detection and removal of such software.
What Is A Firewall?
A firewall is a software used to protect local computers and their assets against malicious threats coming into the computer.
It is designed to filter out IP packets that gain access to the laptop from networks.
The firewall is effective in protecting the computer system against threats from the web.
Characteristics Of A Firewall
The firewall causes all external traffic to pass through it before it can reach the computer.
It only allows authorized traffic to pass through it
It uses a secure operating system that you can trust, which makes it effective against external penetration.
You can implement the firewall in both hardware and software, and it performs both monitoring and filtering tasks.
Firewalls are specifically designed to deal with external threats that may come into the computer from an external network.
It inspects packets coming into the computer from the web and can get countered through IP spoofing and routing attacks.
A firewall cannot do scanning operations to detect malware hidden in the computer. That is the task of antivirus software. A firewall instead monitors the traffic that comes to the computer and tries to filter out the malicious ones and deny them entry into the computer. Thus, firewalls are meant to deal with external attacks only and not internal attacks.
Firewall Types
Packet filters
Packet Filters are also known as a screening router, and it allows a packet entry after it applies some rules and makes a decision according to the outcome.
However, there is a chance that the packets can breach the firewall security.
Application Gateway
An application gateway is known as the proxy server, and it behaves like a proxy that decides the flow level of application traffic. It also hides the source IP away from the outside world.
Circuit gateway
The circuit gateway is a bit similar to the application gateway with an additional added functionality that can create a new connection between a remote host and itself. It can also change the source IP address in the packets.
Limitations of a firewall
The firewall cannot block attacks inside the computer by malicious software since it was designed to that effect.
Conclusion
A windows firewall is one of the security tools that any computer system must-have. It protects your computer system from malicious software whenever you download things from the internet.
Its firewall rules keep the traffic that comes into your system under check to ensure that nothing of hostile nature goes into the computer to infect it.
Although it is a security tool just like the antivirus, its mode of operation is different from that of the antivirus. If you did not know anything about the firewall software, we hope you do now.
