Many small businesses and also surprisingly some medium sized businesses aren't adequately protected from the Internet with some sort of a firewall. Most large sized businesses have an i.t. staff that implements this form of protection.

One of the misconceptions about firewalls is that they are exorbitantly expensive for small businesses to implement. This is simply not the case. While some solutions are out of the price range of most small business, still there are solutions which are just as secure as the pricier solutions for a lot less expenditure.

Another misconception is that small businesses don't need the same level of protection because the value of what could be taken isn't worth enough to warrant  a hacking attempt. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Hackers in China and Russia are more than happy to infiltrate small businesses. Aside from the loss of proprietary trade and customer data, also at risk are the good names and reputatin of the companies email as getting off automated spam sender lists can be difficult and time consuming.

The types of firewalls include hardware firewalls which are good, but these come with software and firmware upgrades which usually need a subscription from the manufacturer. These usually require some proprietary programming expertise as well. The second type of firewall is a separate server with two network cards running a hardened kernel of BSD Unix or Linux. These are also good and can be implemented with less upfront cost and with no licensing fees in many cases.

The other firewalls are software which runs on the top of a windows operating systems. These are safe to the extent that the windows systemi itself remains patched and secure. This is not as secure as a separate system which runs a hardened Unix or Linux kernel. The absolute last thing to consider for a business is a home user internet router NAT box. Many small businesses have this setup, and it is working. Keep in mind these are intended for home users and are not generally adequate for business security.

We would be happy to review your business security needs with you including a review of your current security along with ways this can be improved. Call us at 813-748-3055 to get stared.