“Google has listed your server as a malware source! Its been hacked into, and is being used to spread malware!”

I’m sure this is a message that you never hope to get in your mailbox. But, how confident are you about your server security?

One of the most important mitigation steps against hacking attempts and malware attacks as proposed by Gartner technology research group is the use of firewalls.

The report shows the necessity to employ firewall as a security layer for our servers. Firewalls come in two broad categories: Hardware and Software. Making this choice is primarily a factor of what your requirements are and what your budget is.

Here I am presenting a quick overview on these two kinds of firewalls so that you can make an informed choice.

Hardware firewalls

Hardware firewalls are integrated into the router that sits between a computer and the Internet. They typically use packet filtering, which means they scan packet headers to determine their source, origin, destination addresses and check with the existing user defined rules to make an allow/deny decision.

Key advantages of hardware firewall.

1. Speed: Hardware firewalls are tailored for faster response times, so it can handle more traffic loads.
2. Security: A firewall with its own operating system is less prone for attacks. This in turn reduces the security risk and in addition, hardware firewalls have enhanced security controls.
3. No Interference: Since the hardware firewall is an isolated network component, it can be managed better, and does not load or slowdown other applications. The firewall can be moved, shutdown, or reconfigured with minimal interference to the network.

If you are using multiple servers for the hosting purpose, hardware firewall might be a better option, since it’s able to handle the traffic for multiple servers and can differentiate between which traffic is allowed to one server but not to another.

Some of the key features of a hardware firewall are:

1. Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) – The IPS monitors network activities for malicious or unwanted behavior and can react, in real-time, to block or prevent those activities.
2. AntiVirus/AntiSpyware/AntiMalware – The advanced Antivirus technology ensures real-time protection against a multitude of attacks at the network gateway.
3. Supports two types VPN (SSL, Ipsec or Site-to-site) with bi-directional content filtering.
4. Inspects all major protocols like SMTP, POP3, IMAP, FTP, HTTP.

Many of the firewall appliances, including Fortiner, Cisco ASA series and Juniper SSG series, provides advanced features and allows for further functionality like VPN access point.

In turn, it can provide access to an end-users internal network in a secure and reliable fashion, again taking more load off of the servers.

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Software firewall

Software firewalls are installed on individual servers. They intercept each connection request and then determine whether the request is valid or not.

Software firewall process all requests by using the server resources. Apart from performance limitation, the software firewall has numerous advantages.

Key advantages of software firewall.

1. Ease of use : While comparing with the hardware firewalls, software firewalls are easier to configure and setup.
2. Flexible : Through the software firewall, we can restrict some specific application from the Internet. This makes the software firewall more flexible.
3. Full control : The software firewall give users complete control on their Internet traffic through a nice user friendly interface that requires little or no knowledge.

In the case of Linux, ConfigServer Firewall is my preferred choice as it provides proven security via the control panels like cPanel, DirectAdmin and Webmin (Here’s how you can install CSF).

From there, it’s quite easy to modify the configuration files and stop, start and restart the applications. This makes configuring and managing the software firewall very simple indeed.

For windows, it’s better to stick on with the default windows software firewall because the third party software firewall will make the server overloaded and lead to poor server performance.

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Now it’s time for a comparison

In the game of hardware firewall vs software firewall, both technologies have their own advantages and disadvantages. So, both have it’s own role for online service provision. If you have both, then no worries at all. However, for the sake of comparison take a look at this summary.

Setup ease: Software
(Software firewall can be installed within a few minutes without downtime & hardware firewall needs around 4 hour downtime)

Networking: Hardware
(Hardware firewall provides a common interface to manage the whole network of servers)

Maintenance: Hardware
(Frequent maintenance is not required for hardware)

User Friendliness: Software
(Can be integrated with server control panels)

Cost: Software
(Hardware firewall can cost more than software firewalls)

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Conclusion

A variety of factors such as network complexity, threat perception, and cost need to be considered before you choose your firewall solution.

Here at Bobcares, we’ve helped hundreds of online service providers setup their security infrastructure, and for the vast majority of them, open source software firewalls provided adequate protection against hack attempts.

The choices in software firewall keeps increasing day by day, and it is worth while exploring all the options before you make your decision. Click here to know more..