The Significance of Windows Firewall

If there were mosquitoes entering your house daily, what would you do? You would simple put a net around your balcony and prevent them from entering, right? The Windows Firewall works on a similar concept, and is a kind of application which protects your computer against malware and other malicious objects. Windows Firewall is really essential and you must have it turned on before going online so that there is an assurance that external agents such as viruses, malwares etc don’t enter into your system and corrupt it, there by rendering it useless.

How does it work?

The Windows Firewall has to be turned on by going into your control panel in order for it to be effective and working. When you open any website, there is a communication that takes place in the form of packets. Data from your computer get transferred to the host website in the form of packets and you receive a reply in the form of packets. Windows Firewall monitors this communication and prevents the computer from accepting any malicious object.

Also, whenever you open any website, Firewall opens up the port for your PC to receive traffic and thereby visit the website you want to. You can set the level of Windows Firewall security to high, medium or low depending upon the kind of website you want to surf. Further, for purposes such as gaming and networking, it is advisable to leave all those ports open which you want to specifically select. Else, firewall will block those web pages and won’t allow you to access them.

Advantages of Windows Firewall

Windows Firewall offers the following advantages:

1. For corporate companies, Firewall provides core machinery for security which can prevent hackers from accessing their secure data. It is the core around which an entire security system can be built.

2. Apart from the external threats, it also minimizes the risk of any kind of internal problems.

3. You might want to modify the firewall filters and include some most commonly used protocols such as the TCP-IP, HTTP, SMTP, FTP etc.

4. You can manually block port numbers and allow port numbers.

Setting up a Firewall

Setting up a firewall is not a difficult task at all. You need to click on your control panel, and go to ‘system and security’ option. Once there, you can click on ‘Windows Firewall’ and check whether the green mark is visible. If not, you can click on ‘Turn on’ and you can see the green mark visible.