What are they? How do they work? Examples?
Antivirus and Firewalls
Are you confused between the two terms: Antivirus and Firewall? You may already know that Firewalls help you control network traffic but what about protection from viruses? And Antiviruses detect malicious files and virus but doesn’t it monitor network traffic as well?
While both Firewall and Antivirus are part of the CyberSecurity methods that protect your system, there is a significant difference between how they operate and work. Today, I’ll give you some light on the differences between the two terms so that you can make well-informed decisions and purchase a suitable cybersecurity solution for your home or office.
What is an Antivirus Software?
What is an Antivirus Software?
An Antivirus software, also known as anti-malware, is a program or set of programs that are designed to scan, detect, prevent and remove any kids of suspicious files and software like trojans, worms, adware and malware. The Antivirus may prevent further attack by deleting the infected file, isolating it or monitoring the Internet traffic.
Is the most common Cybersecurity tool used in most personal PCs and offices. In addition to this, most traditional Antivirus include additional regular antivirus scan, vulnerability detection, and Internet traffic control.
What is a Firewall?
A firewall acts as a shield between your network and the world wide web. It monitors the incoming and outgoing traffic from the system and prevents the suspicious packets from entering/leaving the network.
You can implement the firewall as a software and hardware. Most common example of a firewall software is the Windows Firewall in Windows 7, and the firewall hardware is inbuilt in most routers you purchase these days. Most routers come with an inbuilt firewall to protect your network from the rest of the network (Internet).
Antivirus and Firewall, differences and how they work.
Firewall protection monitors the network traffic and thus prevents malicious data from entering your network thereby preventing viruses. However, a virus can also enter your system with a download, spam link click or from a CD or USB. Once the virus has bypassed your firewall protection, the role of an antivirus comes into play.
An antivirus runs the scan and detects the malware to prevent it from spreading further by deleting or isolating the file. We can also say that while Firewall stops the virus and malware from entering the system, it does nothing to remove the cyber threat that has already infected the system.
What is a proxy server?
Proxy server is simply but a computer act as an intermediate/bridge between the internet and user computer. It allows the user’s computer to make indirect connection to other network services. The proxy server is mainly used to hide the current location and iP of the user and share the internet connection between multiple users.
When we use the proxy server, client computers will first connect to the proxy server then send a request and the proxy server first look the cache to see if the request is made previously. If not a fresh request is send to the internet from the proxy server (here the client will be using the internet of proxy server).
How does it work?
Here the client try to access a website and the firewall (setup by schools or corporate office) block the access and send a access denied/resist notification to the user. In such case the proxy server comes in use as it will bypass the firewall rule and provide access to the website.
Here we can see that the proxy server will bypass the firewall by pretending the connection is requested from a different IP/User.
THAT WAS ALL… THANK YOU!
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