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Developing Your Firewall Skills
Firewall Skills
In a technology-driven era, hiring cybersecurity professionals with firewall skills is no longer negotiable but key for businesses looking to protect their information. By hiring these experts, businesses can monitor inbound traffic at computer entry points to help prevent potential attacks.
Professionals with firewall skills typically work on network threat defense, access validation, and the control and management of network traffic. Developing firewall skills can offer you a strong foundation in cybersecurity because you will be able to safeguard networks, prevent unauthorized access, and protect sensitive information. Learning firewall skills can be a great starting point for qualifying for many roles in the fast-growing field of cybersecurity.
This guide will define firewall skills, discuss their examples and benefits, and explain how you can learn and use them.
What Are Firewall Skills?
Firewall skills are extensive knowledge needed to protect a computer system against cyberattacks. With this skill, you’ll monitor and control incoming and outgoing network traffic to help businesses and organizations secure sensitive data.
A firewall is a security device that continuously checks, filters, and controls inbound and outbound network traffic. Firewalls are the first line of defense in network security, and they determine whether to allow or block network traffic based on a business's defined security policies.
Why Are Firewall Skills Important?
Firewall skills are a prerequisite for monitoring and strengthening hardware and software security protocols. Monitoring your security protocols helps in protecting your network system against unauthorized access or malicious network traffic.
Here are various reasons why firewall skills are important:
- Network security: A business or organization uses a network to share and receive data. You can implement security protocols that protect your network against cyber threats.
- Data protection: If you handle sensitive data, you can develop strategies to secure how data is collected, used, and stored. Protecting data prevents financial losses and helps companies adhere to legal and regulatory requirements. Data breaches can lead to significant financial loss and reputational damage for the company.
- Compliance and regulations: Businesses can configure firewalls to control access points, prevent intrusions, monitor traffic, and establish a secure environment that safeguards sensitive data. They avoid regulatory violations and potential data breaches.
- Confidentiality: You can determine and implement the best security measures to ensure unauthorized parties do not disclose or access personal and proprietary data.
- Mitigating DDoS Attacks: Organizations can leverage firewall tools to protect their network system against potential distributed denial-of-service attacks that can disrupt its normal traffic flow.
- Prevention of data leaks: You can help businesses encrypt their data, evaluate, and validate access permissions, or implement data loss prevention protocols to prevent data leaks.
What Are the Benefits of Having Firewall Skills?
The U.S. lost $9.05 million to cybercrime in 2021. With data breach cases projected to escalate, companies are adopting firewall tools to avoid becoming the next cyberattack victim. Firewall skills can diversify your portfolio and prepare you for new opportunities in developing and upholding data privacy and integrity.
Below are the benefits of having firewall skills:
- Cybersecurity expertise: You can help companies protect their network systems by configuring access points, preventing intrusions, and monitoring traffic. You can respond to incidents using firewall logs and integrate threat intelligence to prevent emerging threats.
- Security consultation services: You can offer security consultancy services and help organizations enhance their security measures to protect their assets and data from cyber attacks, physical breaches, and other vulnerabilities. You can analyze potential computer, network, and software systems vulnerabilities and provide viable security solutions to protect companies against attacks.
- Contribution to research and development: You can join recognized research and development organizations or independently work on improving existing security protocols or design new configurations to mitigate the rising cybercrime cases.
- Skillset diversification: Firewall certification and training options for skill enhancement make you a well-rounded person in the IT field. You’ll become a valuable multi-purpose asset, creating new opportunities to earn additional income.
- High-demand careers: Your competence in firewall skills will make you a valuable asset across most, if not all, industries. Companies are always looking to hire talents to leverage firewall configuration best practices for network security. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects 56,500 openings by 2031 in information security-related roles.
Examples of Firewall Skills in the Workplace
In the modern workplace, possessing adept firewall skills empowers you to assist businesses and organizations to optimize their network security through firewall configuration and intrusion prevention.
Here are examples of how you can use firewall skills in the workplace:
Firewall Configuration
Companies using firewalls to protect against cyber threats and data leakage must be configured properly. They configure their domain name and IP address with security protocols that allow or block access to their network.
Intrusion Prevention
Organizations can continuously monitor their networks for potential threats by setting up firewall devices to report, block, or drop any malicious attack. These devices ensure networks remain secure and perform optimally.
Threat Intelligence Integration
Cybersecurity teams can integrate data collection, prevention, detection, and response to get precise intel on where the attackers are and how they are attempting to breach the network.
Identify Patterns of Unauthorized Access
Security experts can analyze computer and network systems for vulnerabilities like outdated software exploitation, weak passwords, and social engineering. These are the common patterns attackers use to gain unauthorized access to network systems.
Web Application Security
Many companies today use web applications to run their businesses. Considering the risks of running on apps, security experts use web application firewalls, two-factor authentication, and user validation to protect their proprietary and customer data against cyberattacks.
Data Loss Prevention
Cybersecurity specialists can detect and prevent data leakages, exfiltration, or destruction of critical information in an organization. They prevent losses by monitoring and securing the endpoints’ data in motion, use, and rest.
Cloud Security
In the recent past, businesses have been migrating their digital assets to the cloud, necessitating cloud security. Security experts use the best firewall practices and other solutions to protect businesses' data against external and internal cyber threats.
Network Performance Optimization
Businesses can use various security tools, techniques, and practices to analyze their network systems, identify bottlenecks, and troubleshoot issues to achieve optimal network performance.
How Can I Use Firewall Skills?
With the spike in technology advancements and the need to protect sensitive data against theft, certified firewall experts are in high demand.
You can develop firewall skills and prepare for exciting career opportunities in the field of information security. Here are some of the various ways you can use your firewall skills:
- Network engineering: As a network engineer, you can develop and monitor computer networks for your clients. You ensure the network systems are secure and functioning optimally. With your expertise, you become valuable in helping clients choose firewall configuration best practices for network security.
- Identifying patterns used for unauthorized access: You can filter through the network system to identify patterns cyber criminals may use to access the network illegally. For instance, checking your clients’ system password strength and software vulnerability may reveal security loopholes.
- Network operations: You can monitor network traffic to continuously evaluate system performance, perform data backup and storage, prevent intrusion, analyze threats, and respond to attack alerts on behalf of your clients.
- Troubleshooting: Firewall skills are a prerequisite for analyzing network systems, identifying bottlenecks, and troubleshooting network devices to restore normal operations. You can also install and update new software to comply with government regulations.
- Information and communication management: As an information and communication manager, you can develop holistic approaches to secure all communication channels for your clients. You can encrypt all data in transit, rest, or use it to reduce the risk of data leaks and breaches.
- Making informed decisions: As a network security analyst, you use security risk analysis and network performance reporting to support decision-making in your company. These reports give real-time intel on a company's security position and network processes, revealing whether or not the company is at risk of a cyber attack.
How Can I Learn Firewall Skills?
WGU’s College of IT offers specialized programs like a B.S. in Cloud Computing, B.S. in Data Analytics, and a B.S. in Network Engineering and Security. These degrees are designed to equip you with the best firewall practices, preparing you to take up opportunities in networking and security.
With our IT-related degree programs, you’ll be equipped to:
- Configure firewalls and other network security devices.
- Configure firewalls to mitigate attacks.
- Configure network security groups, firewalls, and web traffic zones.
- Configure physical firewalls.
- Implement protective measures for network connectivity points, including zone and device firewalls, whitelists, and other applicable measures.
- Protect networks with a dedicated firewall.
- Resolve complicated firewall configuration issues.
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes, certifications are given after completing a program like Network Engineering and Security to validate your firewall skills.
Certifications like Cisco DevNet Associate, CompTIA Infrastructure Specialist, Cisco CyberOps Associate, and CompTIA Secure Cloud Professional demonstrate your competence in firewall skills, showing your competence for the job market.
As a cybersecurity specialist, you can use firewall skills to monitor incoming and outgoing network traffic to prevent potential cyber-attacks.
You can also research and develop new firewall security protocols, update firewall software, or troubleshoot network systems to restore normalcy.
Java, Python, HTML, C and C++, Javascript, SQL, Shell Scripting, Ruby, PHP, and Power Shell are the popular programming languages to write and understand firewalls.
The network and security applications concept is also relevant in learning firewalls. It equips you with relevant skills to identify security threats, attacks, and vulnerabilities, and develop and implement effective security solutions for hardware, applications, and network systems.
