Is your PC really protected? | Get the best from your Firewall

 As we are becoming more aware about our protection online,some doubts are popping up; Is my device really protected? Is there any way to make my defences of my PC stronger? Well, I think, they are more than legit doubts. So, let's try to shine a little light. If you write in google these questions, after a few antivirus add, one of the top results you are going to find are related to your host-base software firewall. 

 

Let's begin explaining what is a software firewall...

A firewall, it's a program pre-install on your device and/or computer that controls the incoming and out-going data on your host, blocking the traffic that it considered suspicious.A firewall is a must on devices nowadays. They are on charge of protect our devices from several security risks like: Viruses, Spams, remote logins, Macros script attacks and even prevent us from illegitimate backdoors be created on our PC.

A firewall uses a different techniques to filter the traffic:

• Packet filtering: Checks every packet of data and compares them with a pre-set rules that the firewall was configured. These rules are called Firewall Policy. It a packet matches with the any of the rules is stopped by the firewall.
• Proxy service: The computer makes a connection with a proxy. Then, initiates a new network connection, avoiding a direct communication and hiding the network addresses.
• Stateful inspection: Monitors and keeps track of the active connections. Stopping the connection as soon as it finds any non-valid packet.

It is important to mention that exist also hardware firewalls that are placed between the router and the internet, protecting the whole network rather than just a host. They have a higher level of security a configuration, but are expensive and need physical space to be installed. Also, for a user level are not necessary.

 

Now it's time to set up! 

As I mention before, mostly all the OS have a firewall include. As a general advise all the manufactures recommend not to manually set up and just keep the default settings. As they were designed to protect a device in most possible scenarios. But, in certain cases it can be interesting to change some preferences, like if we would like to use certain program and the firewall doesn't allow the traffic of this program go in or out.

Using the Windows Defender Firewall amusing that is the most common host-based software firewall, I am going to show how to make a few simple set ups like port number or programs.

To set up a new rule for a program or protocol you just need to follow a very simple steps: 

1. On the search window on the bottom left of your Windows type "Firewall"
2. Now a new window is open with the main firewall settings, on the left menu click on advanced settings.
3.  The advance security menu will pop up, now we can configure our rules. Manually you should configure the inbound and outbound rules independently. Selecting one of those options on the left menu and then, clicking on "New rule" on the menu of the right of the screen.
   
   
4. On the window that just appeared we can choose between different options like port of program set up.
5. Rather choose program or protocol the next step will be different. If you choose program you have to configure the path of the program and if you choose port, you should select the port number.
6. The next action will be to decide if you would like to allow the connection, block the connection, or allow/decline packets that respect rules like; Authentication, encrypted connections only and even decide if the packet must provide integrity or privacy.
7. The next step authorizes certain users or computer to be able to sent/receive packets.
8. To finish, we should choose in which networks  the rule should be applied, like public or private. We just have to give a name to the rule and save it.
   
9. Repeat the steps for the outbound rules.

I hope after reading this small guide of software firewall, some questions regarding the protections of our devices are answered and finally we know what is a firewall!