Firewall Security
Link to National Institute of Standards and Technology's Special Publication 800-10 "Keeping your site comfortably secure: An introduction to internet Firewalls"
A network Firewall is like the moat that keeps intruders out of your castle or domain, and in today's networked community it's extremely mandatory that you have one if you have a permanent connection to the internet. By its very nature, a network is bidirectional, not only can you "see" resources on the other end of the wire, the other end can "see" you as well. This isn't really a problem on a local area network where everything in your office is within your control, but when you introduce the internet as a network resource, you have to consider that some of the folks "out there" don't really belong "in here" as it were.

A firewall is a sofware program that let's you go "out there" while regulating what's allowed to come back "in here" and thereby protecting your personal and or company data from inspection or attack from folks coming in from the internet. There are a variety of products that you can use for this level of security, though we only recommend two. Both of our recommended products are dedicated appliances developed primarily for this purpose:
Link to MultiTech's data sheet on the RouteFinder
MultiTech's RouteFinder combines a multitude of useful features, though tantamount is that it is a highly configurable firewall router. By default it gives you a very high level of protection, but it can be configured to open up holes in your firewall that will allow you to host your website, FTP site or telnet access on machines behind the firewall if you so choose.

PMA Consulting has chosen this product in part because of this high degree of flexibility and mostly because MultiTech is completely committed to the internetworking market and does a major portion of the R&D that we're all enjoying in this arena.

We've been proudly selling MultiTech products since their 2400 baud modems in the late '80's.
PMAco975seSandyBv, gotcha
And for those clients needing the ultimate in flexibility, we offer the Cobalt Qube internet appliance. Not only is it a world class Firewall appliance, it will host your website, FTP site, unlimited e-mail accounts and the web-based configuration tools that come with it are designed to let the end-user handle the majority of the administration without consultant intervention.

The Cobalt Qube is your entire Domain in a neat little 12 cubic inch package.
Link to Cobalt's Qube3 page



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