Firewalls fend off invasions from the Net

Whether a computer is in a corporation, government agency, university, small business, or at home, if it is linked to a network, hackers are a risk. The first line of defense against them is a firewall, provided it is set up correctly. Firewall technology is a set of mechanisms that collectively enforce a security policy on communication traffic entering or leaving a guarded network domain. The security policy is the overall plan for protecting the domain. Embodied in hardware, software, or both, a firewall guards and isolates the domain. Broadly, firewalls attempt to maintain privacy and ensure the authenticity of data communications that pass through their domain´s boundaries. Whether data is entering or leaving a domain, it is protected from eavesdropping (passive wiretapping) and change (active wiretapping). But only communication traffic entering or leaving a domain comes under the influence of firewall technology