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[rev_slider alias=”360×280-blog-entenda-alta-disponibilidade-firewall”][/rev_slider] The technological advent offers many facilities for companies, enabling them to eliminate physical barriers and develop increasingly innovative strategies, seeking to gain space in a highly competitive market.
In this sense, the Internet occupies a privileged space in business. Relationship with customers and suppliers, as well as practically all the operational activities of the company, are linked to the use of applications that depend on the internet. Therefore, more and more companies, regardless of their size and segment, seek to improve the quality of this service, also aiming to increase the availability of the resource.
According to data released by Cetic.br in 2013, Brazil already had 96% of its companies connected to the internet. In recent years, this number has been increased, reaching close to 100%, confirming the representativeness of the Internet for the corporate public in the national territory.
Having a secure and available virtual environment is the desire of most companies, however, for this strategy to be implemented, it is important to evaluate a number of points, including current technology structure, investment capacity and business reality adherence.
The concept of high availability of firewalls has full synergy with the need to improve the availability of the business, this being the subject addressed in the continuity of the content.
What is high availability firewall?
The term high availabilityrefers to the ability to keep the firewall solution running uninterrupted over a long period, without failures and operating problems. This means that the service has to remain running regardless of the time, day or environment conditions.
“The highest goal of high availability is continuity of service without failures or interruptions”
The concept applies to any type of service, including internet, router, modem, and all other components that are part of the company’s network topology. In the case of firewalls, there are three application models for high availability. The activemodel refers to two or more connected firewalls at the same time, dividing the processing capacity.
In the passiveone can also mention the use of two or more firewalls, and the secondary structure will only be used in case of unavailability of the main firewall. In the hybridmodel, different platforms are used for structuring the cluster, for example: The active node is a physical device while the backup node is a virtual appliance, running inside some hypervisor.
The three models are part of the concept of high availability and can be applied according to the characteristics of each business.
High Availability Firewall: When to Apply and its Importance
This is probably the most relevant question for professionals and companies looking to enhance their understanding of the concept of high availability of firewalls. In this sense, it is important that technology professionals ask questions such as:
My company needs to be 100% of the time available on the internet!
If your company has internet dependent operation, then your business already has features that indicate adherence to the concept of high availability of firewalls. Internet dependence involves frequent use of software and applications based on the web/mobile platform, such as: instant communicators, applications for remote support, banking software and invoice generation, online ERPs, applications focused on productivity, used by employees in the work environment.
The availability of the Internet in companies that have a firewall is totally associated with the operation of this resource, and if the security solution becomes unavailable, inevitably, the organization will suffer with the unavailability of the Internet.
I need to ensure that security concepts are maintained, regardless of the circumstances!
Companies with this ingrained principle, have full adherence to the concept of high availability of firewalls. In scenarios where the security of corporate data is essential, not having a contingency structure can bring additional risk to the operation of the business.
In these cases, reestablishing the internet resource is not enough for the organization and all security settings, including firewall rules, web proxy, VPN and other services, must be maintained. It is worth mentioning that the concept of high availability of firewalls aims to make the process of reestablishing services transparent to the users of the company.
The maintenance of the operation of the service, without generating impacts to the organization, is one of the great benefits associated with the high availability of firewalls.
I have two internet links, do I need to apply high availability firewalls concept?
Companies that have two internet links in their structure typically use UTM firewall solutions to ensure resource availability. Having a solution managing the availability of the internet automatically (failover) brings great convenience to analysts and product administrators. Notices about drops or latencies in internet links, automatic exchange of links, e-mail notifications are some of the resources allocated to the high availability modules of the internet present in market solutions.
Therefore, to keep the environment available and secure, it is highly recommended that companies with two internet links apply the concept of high availability of firewalls, since manually managing Internet links and security equipment can be highly complex for technology professionals and at the same proportion risky for the business.
The principles associated with high availability, including the high availability of firewalls, will be increasingly present and accessible to companies, regardless of their size and segment. In any case, it is healthy for analysts and technology managers to realize this need in different ways, motivated by the characteristics of each business. However, it is imperative to state that this is not a reality applicable only to large companies, but to companies that recognize the importance of remaining highly available.
If you have been identified with this content, feel free to keep reading the blog post Learn how much your company loses with the unavailability of the internet resource
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