User guide

The Safe@Office Firewall
76 Check Point Safe@Office User Guide
• Large businesses have the funds and expertise to constantly enhance their
security and are therefore a difficult target for hackers. This makes small
businesses a far more attractive target for network attacks.
• The state's awareness of privacy and data protection is enforced through
legislation. For example, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability
Act (HIPAA) that was enacted by the U.S. Congress in 1996 gives patients
access to their medical files electronically, and therefore strictly defines the
requirements for protecting electronic confidential data.
Not only are small businesses more vulnerable to Internet attacks, but due to their relative
lack of technical and financial resources, they may suffer more damage than large
organizations and the recovery may be more difficult.
The Safe@Office Firewall
What Is a Firewall?
The most effective way to secure an Internet link is to put a firewall between the local
network and the Internet. A firewall is a system designed to prevent unauthorized access to
or from a secured network. Firewalls act as locked doors between internal and external
networks: data that meets certain requirements is allowed through, while unauthorized data
is not.
To provide robust security, a firewall must track and control the flow of communication
passing through it. To reach control decisions for TCP/IP-based services, (such as whether
to accept, reject, authenticate, encrypt, and/or log communication attempts), a firewall
must obtain, store, retrieve, and manipulate information derived from all communication
layers and other applications.