Nowadays, Ransomware and cyber-attacks have become common threats on the internet. Based on a recent security breach survey by the government and conducted by PWC in 2015 shows that

​ 90% of large organisations and 74% of small businesses had a security breach, this is an increase on the 2014 and 2013 figures

 the average cost to a large organisation started from £1.46m and from £75 on average for a small business

These figures only show how important it is to be protected against these continuous evolving cyber-attacks and anti-malware. It is crucial to any business having a sophisticated Anti-malware software working in conjunction with a resistant firewall.

However choosing the correct firewall has been a time consuming and tremendous challenge for anyone especially small businesses, decisions on which infrastructure to take, resources to invest and so on – Welcome to the cyber jungle!

How can a firewall help?

Firewalls can be either soft or hardware based or both. A Hardware firewall is typically found in a network/ broadband router and includes firewall features. Software firewalls are personal firewalls, which protect a single PC however some enterprise firewalls have both.

 ​   Blocks or prevents unauthorized access to a network

    Barriers to keep critical elements out of a network

    Works as filters for your network traffic by blocking incoming packets (small chunks of data) of information that are seen as unsafe

    Control traffic flowing in and out of networks through packet filtering, which is filtering and analysing chunks of data

What is important to know when it comes to decide for a firewall?

    Ensure your business is protected and has got the appropriate up-to-date anti-virus in conjunction with a resistant firewall

    Your type of business: Are you a small to medium sized company or an enterprise?

    What is your market: For example a financial company needs extra comfort and security and therefore may need latest and top of the range firewalls

    Is your staff working from home or other locations outside the office and uses VNP connection or cloud products?

    What features are you looking for from within a firewall? Will you require UTM features? Unified Threat Management is a category of security      
        appliances such as anti-virus, email security, application filtering, web filtering?

  Have a short list of rules for the firewall to implement for the applications, i.e. block video in Google+ hangouts however allow videos in Skype
  Choose a firewall with accurate random access memory RAM
  Be aware of Network address translation choices (NAT) choices when choosing your firewall

   Ensure that your employees understand the companies’ security policy when working from outside the office or with their own device 
       Bring Your Own Device 'BYOD')