Hardware Security: Fire Walls

Hardware Security: Fire Walls

As mail servers are linked to WANs or the Internet, a new security threat emerges, that of a hacker accessing the mail server via the Internet link. Although SSL prevents unauthorized users reading or capturing messages, it does not prevent someone gaining access to your mail server or gateway. To combat this threat you will need a fire wall.

A fire wall is a hardware device or software application that looks at all the raw data transferred to your server from the public Internet. You can configure the fire wall software to look for particular types of data; for example, commands that should not be run on your Internet server. You also could configure the fire wall to block any data that originates from a particular user or country.

When a user?either friendly or malicious?tries to access your Internet server, he or she sends commands to the server to ask it to carry out actions. If a user wants to view a Web page, the client?s Web browser sends an HTTP command to the server asking it to send back the data for a particular page, which it then can display. Normally, a user doesn?t see this transfer of data, and if your Internet server is accessed only by friendly visitors, there would be no need for a fire wall.

A hacker will try to see what other data files you have stored on your Internet server, not just the Web pages you want to show...

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