Firewall Configuration

With the increasing use of Internet as a medium for communication, work, sales, banking and every other kind of transaction that is done online, it is very important to ensure that your system is completely protected from online threats like viruses, worms, spyware and phishing attacks. This is what firewalls do and many computer users are not even aware that they have a firewall working in the background!

Firewalls are filters that block any suspicious information passing from the network and pass the trustworthy data or emails into your computer when you are surfing the Internet. Many people believe that the firewalls are the first level of security and they are not far from the truth.

If you are using a computer at home or office, it is important to have a firewall to protect your computer from malicious threats like spam, malware etc. Most large organizations have very complex firewall to protect their computer and network server from malicious content. These firewalls prevent employees from sending out sensitive company data through emails and also prevent employees from accessing sites which could be harmful to the organization’s network. For this, the firewall should be configured properly.

Here are some guidelines related to the most important facet of firewall configuration to keep your computer safe from all kinds of malicious threats.

• Why does a Firewall need to be configured?
• Configuring your firewall software to avoid issues
• General Guidelines for Allowing Exceptions

Why does a Firewall need to be configured?

Although they are intended to protect your system and network from virus and spam, firewall can sometimes cause lawful programs on your computer to breakdown, because they are unable to determine whether the incoming program is a threat or not. The developers of firewalls do everything that is possible to ensure that important functions on your computer are not blocked by the firewall.

Some computer users think that disabling the firewall software is the only way to avoid issues, but although this can resolve the problem in the short term, it will leave your computer susceptible to online threats.
To avoid such susceptibility to security threats it is necessary for computer users to understand how to configure your firewall properly.

Configuring your firewall software to avoid issues

A firewall sets up limitations between the Internet and your computer and you will probably need to adjust some settings to permit rules or exceptions, to enable certain trustworthy programs to work on your computer. You can create an open path for these programs by adding them to a list of accepted programs within your firewall settings.

General Guidelines for Allowing Exceptions:

To make sure that you decrease your risk to security issues, you can allow exceptions only when you really need them or you can never configure an exception for a program you don’t recognize. You can also remove an exception if you are no longer using the program.

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