Most people associate firewalls with the function of controlling which applications gain access to your network, but they are a tool that can do much more for your small or medium business. Here at Robinett Consulting, we believe in getting the most value out of the security features you implement for your business, so here are a few key features you will want when choosing how to upgrade your business’ firewall.
Modern Firewall Protections for Small Businesses
First and foremost, your firewall should do much more than simply guard the edge of your network. You want one that allows you to monitor threats that appear across your users, network, and IT infrastructure, so you have increased awareness of what attacks may be approaching your business. The earlier you can get a sense of how malicious actors are targeting your business, the more prepared you can be to prevent any sensitive information from being stolen. When that threat becomes a real attack, your firewall should also have the ability to detect and actively monitor malware situations so that you can quickly and effectively secure your business.
Easy to Use Features
The most useful firewall for your IT environment will always be one you can easily interact with. Understanding which access rules your firewall uses should be simple, and anytime you need to access it, it should provide a user experience that is visually appealing and helpfully informative. If you need to interact with your business’ firewall, then you should be able to make changes to its access policy or view risk summaries with ease. It may also be beneficial to your business to purchase a firewall from a vendor that will help you set up and maintain it, so you can focus on running your business with peace of mind.
Time and Cost-Effective Protection
Since small and medium sized businesses have fewer resources available than enterprise companies, an ideal firewall will reduce the amount of time employees need to work on investigating security threats. Features such as automated tuning, threat correlation, and robust analytics will point your IT specialists where they need to go quickly, so they spend less company time tracking down threats and respond to problems faster.
Summary
No business should go without all the security tools they need because malicious actors will target small and medium businesses with a lot of the same attacks they do larger ones, and having the right tool in place will make you less of an appealing target for hackers. Upgrading to a next-generation firewall will not be a difficult process if you have the right partner for the job, and we here at Robinett Consulting pride ourselves on ensuring our partners get the solutions that are as unique as their needs.
