According to common computer terminology, a firewall can be defined as a certain software program/ hardware device which intercepts the communications between user computer and the outside network in a secured way. It carries out some processing on the network as well computer to block any sort of malicious or risky content or unethical connections.
Software firewall programs installed on user computers are often considered to be less effective in terms of providing protection over a large frame of networks. However, they offer loads of feature to work with. As per protection level is concerned, they mainly protects the computer they are installed on. However, they should be enabled in order to make the system totally protected. If they are kept disabled, then the machine will remain unprotected.
 |
As far hardware firewall is concerned, they are considered to be more dedicated in offering protection to the computer as well network section. They gets installed physically between the computer as well network. They never gets disabled and remains on since their installation stage. They are always said to be more effecting in protecting a network and panel of multiple computers. There is no chance of program crashing since these firewalls are not software tools. They are hardware devices that offers protection to the network and computers physically. However, these hardware firewalls are much expensive in price and can be afforded only by big corporate houses. For average domestic users, installing software firewalls tools in their PC system is always the best option to go for.
Firewalls might not be the absolute necessity for every computers, but their use is strongly recommended. These days, it is not difficult to find a good firewall software program through the internet. In fact, there are thousands of firwall software tools available. Most of these firewall tools will offer detailed scanning of the network that the user is connected to. They will try to detect the number of viruses affecting the PC as well SPAM sites being visited of late. It is totally impossible to find internet connections being totally immune to spamming and hacker attacks. However, there are certain ISP based modems that feature in-built firewall (obviously, hardware firewall).
According to modern day definers, firewall can be defined as a virtual wall that protects a computer from unwanted threats coming from outside (internet world). Some of these threats include viruses, trojans, hackers, spywares, etc. It is necessary to install a good quality firewall software into the computer to get protected against viruses and other networking threats.
Norton, Avast, AVG, Mcafee, etc. are notable developers of high-end computer firewall software programs. Hardware based firewall systems may not be commonly seen. They are installed in big corporate warehouses. Software firewall suits are more common nad can be seen in the computers of normal user, educational institutes, medical centers, etc. Zone Alarm is one of the most desired firewall options available these days. Microsoft Windows OS has its own set of free Firewall programs installed. However, it needs to be updated on a regular basis to enjoy the effectiveness.
