Special Edition Using® Solaris™ 9

Firewalls

Firewalls are among the most important tools in strengthening network security. A firewall performs two tasks. First, the firewall acts as a gateway for all the data traffic between two networks. Second, the firewall restricts network access for users without proper authentication and authorization. Typically, to access a network that is secured with a firewall, external users need to provide IDs and passwords to authenticate themselves.

You should consider the use of a firewall as a mandatory security feature for your network to protect it from attacks from external networks, such as the Internet. A firewall is effective even when there are multiple networks within a network. In this case, the firewall does not allow data transfer ...