Firewall
Every organization needs to
understand the importance of effective security protection for their computer
system. In these days of low-cost 24x7 broadband Internet connections, your
organization is open to attack all day, every day. It is vital to ensure that
no-one can gain access to your internal IT resources.
InterLinx uses the NetFilter
IPtables technology that is part of the Linux 2.4 kernel. Linux is an
open-source project and as such the firewalling software is open to public
inspection by the entire Internet community. This creates firewalling code that
is made secure though openness whereas, with a proprietary firewall, you have to
rely on the manufacturer telling you it is secure.
InterLinx is a stateful
(connection tracking) packet filtering firewall. This makes it very secure. By
default the firewall blocks everything and lets the administrator open just the
services they need.
Managing a firewall is often a
complicated and daunting task. InterLinx attempts to make the process
easier by offering a set of pre-defined rules that are appropriate for most
organizations. The administrator then simply enables the rules he needs for his
network.
A simple web-based management
interface allows for the addition of new firewall rules.
InterLinx includes firewall
support for so-called De-Militarized Zones. A DMZ is a network that has a
publicly addressable IP range however it is conceptually behind the InterLinx
firewall. This means that you have a great deal of control over the protocols,
ports and networks that have access to your DMZ. A DMZ is commonly used to host
web servers, database servers for e-commerce transactions and application
gateways.
Port Forwarding is a technique that
allows services offered by internal servers to be presented to the Internet on
the external side of the InterLinx firewall. This can be used for all
manor of services, examples include Microsoft's Outlook Web Access front-end for
Exchange, general web sites, etc.
Click here to read about InterLinx VPN functions....