Firewall

A firewall sits between your office network and the internet and decides what gets through. The basic job is simple: allow your staff to reach the websites and cloud services they need, and block unsolicited connections from the outside. Windows also has a built-in software firewall on each PC that does the same on a smaller scale.

A business-grade or “next-generation” firewall does more than a home router. It can filter malicious websites, inspect traffic for known attacks, separate networks with VLANs, run a VPN for remote access, manage a backup internet connection for failover, and keep logs of what happened. It also needs regular firmware updates — an unpatched firewall is a favorite target for attackers.

For a small practice or office, the firewall is often the most important piece of network equipment you own, and also the most neglected. Common problems we see: the internet provider’s basic router doing the job, admin passwords left at the default, remote-management ports open to the whole internet, and firmware years out of date.

Example: a medical office replaces its provider-supplied router with a managed business firewall. Guest Wi-Fi gets its own isolated network, the phone system gets priority, a cellular backup takes over during outages, and firmware updates are applied on a schedule. A firewall is one layer — it works alongside EDR on each device and MFA on every account. See our network services.