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Types of firewall

There are mainly three types of firewalls, such as software firewalls, hardware firewalls, or both, depending on their structure. Each type of firewall has different functionality but the same purpose. However, it is best practice to have both to achieve maximum possible protection.

A hardware firewall is a physical device that attaches between a computer network and a gateway. For example- a broadband router. A hardware firewall is sometimes referred to as an Appliance Firewall. On the other hand, a software firewall is a simple program installed on a computer that works through port numbers and other installed software. This type of firewall is also called a Host Firewall.

Besides, there are many other types of firewalls depending on their features and the level of security they provide. The following are types of firewall techniques that can be implemented as software or hardware:

-Packet-filtering Firewalls
-Circuit-level Gateways
-Application-level Gateways (Proxy Firewalls)
-Stateful Multi-layer Inspection (SMLI) Firewalls
-Next-generation Firewalls (NGFW)
-Threat-focused NGFW
-Network Address Translation (NAT) Firewalls
-Cloud Firewalls
-Unified Threat Management (UTM) Firewalls