What is Firewall

Firewalls are a type of cybersecurity tool used to filter traffic on a network. A firewall can be used to isolate network nodes from external traffic sources, internal traffic sources or certain applications. Firewalls can be software, hardware, or cloud-based, and each type of firewall has its own pros and cons.

The main purpose of the firewall is to block malicious traffic requests and data packets while allowing legitimate traffic.

Different Types of Firewalls

Types of firewall

Firewall types can be divided into several categories depending on their overall nature and how they work. Here are 8 types of firewalls.

packet filtering firewall

Circuit level gateway

Stateful firewall

Application-level gateway (i.e. proxy firewall)

Next generation firewall

Software firewall

Hardware firewall

cloud firewall

Note: The last three bullet points list how to provide firewall functionality, not the type of firewall architecture.

How do these firewalls work? Which is best for your cybersecurity needs?

Here are some brief explanations:

Packet filtering firewall

Firewall architecture type

Packet filtering firewalls, the most "basic" and oldest type of firewall architecture, create checkpoints on traffic routers or switches by default. The firewall performs a simple inspection of data packets from the router. That is, it checks information such as destination and source IP address, packet type, port number, and other surface level information without opening the packet and examining its contents.

If the information package does not pass inspection, it is dropped.

The advantage of these firewalls is that they are not resource intensive. However, it is relatively straightforward, with no significant impact on system performance. However, it is relatively easy to bypass compared to firewalls with more robust control capabilities.

circuit level gateway

Another simple type of firewall, circuit-level gateways work by resolving Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) handshakes to quickly and easily grant or deny traffic without using significant computing resources. This TCP handshake check is designed to verify that the session from which the packet was sent is legitimate.

Although very resource efficient, these firewalls do not check packets on their own. That is, if the packet contains malware, but a valid TCP handshake, it passes directly. Therefore, circuit-level gateways alone are not enough to protect your business.

Status Check Firewall

These firewalls combine packet inspection technology with TCP handshake verification to create a higher level of protection than only one of the previous two architectures can provide.

However, these firewalls also put more strain on your computing resources. This can lead to a slower legitimate packet transfer compared to other solutions.

Proxy Firewall (Application Level Gateway / Cloud Firewall)

The proxy firewall works at the application layer to filter incoming traffic between the network and the traffic source, hence it is called an "application-level gateway". These are provided through firewalls, cloud-based solutions or other proxy devices. Instead of allowing the traffic to connect directly, the proxy firewall first establishes a connection to the traffic source and examines the incoming data packets.

This inspection is similar to a stateful inspection firewall in that it verifies both the packet and the TCP handshake protocol. However, the proxy firewall performs deep packet inspection to verify the actual contents of the information packet to ensure it is free of malware.

When the verification is complete and the packet's binding to the destination is confirmed, the proxy sends the packet. This creates an extra layer between the "client" (the machine from which the packet originated) and the individual devices on the network, preventing these devices from creating additional anonymity and protection for the network.

One disadvantage of proxy firewalls is that extra steps in the data packet transfer process can cause significant slowdowns.

Next generation firewall

Many of the most recently released firewall products are being touted as "next generation" architectures. But there isn't much consensus on what makes firewalls truly next-gen.

Some common features of next-generation firewall architectures include deep packet inspection (checking the actual content of data packets), TCP handshake inspection, and surface-level packet inspection. Next-generation firewalls may also include other technologies such as intrusion prevention systems (IPS) that automatically block attacks on your network.

The problem is that next-generation firewalls do not have a single definition, so this security

What is a security breach and how to avoid one

 

A security breach is any incident that results in unauthorized access to computer data, applications, networks, or devices. It leads to accessing information without permission. Usually, this happens when an intruder is able to bypass the security mechanisms.

security breach meaning

Technically, there is a difference between a security breach and a data breach. A security breach is an effective breach, while a data breach is defined as a cyber criminal escaping the information. Imagine a thief. The security breach is when he climbs into a window, and a data breach is when he grabs your pocket or laptop and takes it away.

Confidential information has an enormous value. It is often sold on the dark web; For example, names and credit card numbers can be bought and then used for identity theft or fraud purposes. Not surprisingly, security breaches cost companies huge sums of money. On average, the bill is around $ 4 million for the major corporations.

It is also important to distinguish between the definition of a security breach and the definition of a security incident. An incident could include a malware infection, a DDOS attack, or an employee leaving a laptop in a taxi, but if this does not lead to network access or data loss, it will not be considered a security breach.

Examples of a security breach

When a major organization has a security breach, it always hits the headlines. Examples of a security breach include:

Equifax - In 2017, a vulnerability in its website application caused the company to lose personal details of 145 million Americans. This included their names, Social Security numbers, and driver's license numbers. The attacks took place over a three-month period from May to July, but the security breach was not announced until September.

Yahoo - 3 billion user accounts were compromised in 2013 after a phishing attempt that gave hackers access to the network.

EBay experienced a major breach in 2014. Although PayPal users 'credit card information was not at risk, many customers' passwords were compromised. The company acted quickly to email its users and ask them to change their passwords in order to stay safe.

Dating site Ashley Madison, which marketed itself to married people wanting to have sexual relations, was hacked in 2015. Hackers continued to leak a large number of customer details online. The extortionists began targeting customers whose names had been leaked; Unconfirmed reports have linked a number of suicides to data breaches.

Facebook saw that internal software flaws resulted in 29 million users losing personal data in 2018. This was a particularly embarrassing security breach as the compromised accounts included the account of company CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

Marriott Hotels announced a security and data breach that affected up to 500 million customer records in 2018. However, the guest reservations system was breached in 2016 - and the breach was only discovered two years later.

Perhaps most embarrassing, being a cybersecurity company doesn't make you immune - the Czech company Avast revealed a security breach in 2019 when a hacker managed to compromise an employee's VPN credentials. This breach did not threaten customer details but instead aimed to introduce malware into Avast products.

A decade or so ago, many companies tried to keep news of security breaches secret so as not to destroy consumer confidence. However, this is becoming increasingly rare. In the European Union, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) requires companies to notify relevant authorities of any breach and any individuals whose personal data may be at risk. By January 2020, the GDPR was only in effect for 18 months, and indeed, more than 160,000 separate data breach notices were sent out - more than 250 per day.

WHY SERVICE DESK IS IMPORTANT?

Service Desk is a ticket management system that allows enterprises to implement strong and effective work-flows for internal and customer-facing support departments.

IT Help Desk Services

The Support Ticketing Management System (also called as Service Desk or Help Desk Ticketing System or Remote Help Desk Support System), enables MSPs (though administrators and help desk staff) to keep track of tickets raised by users, attend to them, reassign them to appropriate department or organizations, and generate reports and more.

ITarian is a fully-featured cloud-based ticket management system that is a part of ITarian - a complete, scalable central IT management platform that includes Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM), Service Desk, Patch Management, Mobile/Endpoint security management, and other essential IT management tools for MSPs in a single, easily navigated console.

IT Help Desk Software

The ITarian Help Desk Ticketing System provides enterprises with a single point of contact for meeting communication needs of all departments- internal as well as customer-facing. A company, its customers, employees, business partners all would converge at the Help Desk and a strong and effective workflow would thus be maintained.

MSPs will be able to gain real-time visibility as issues develop and generate detailed reports based on a project timeline, assets, costs, ticket type, and staffing. Further, MSPs will be able to easily define service level agreements and configure ticket due dates, warnings, and billing to match. It also allows the administrators to set up auto-responder, knowledge base articles, and automatically assign tickets to departments/staff based on specific criteria

The Checklist for Managing a Help Desk for Business

Productivity and Accuracy — Ultimate Combo 

IT Help desk Services

A fruitful assist work area with encountering depends innovation as well as the nature of it's operators. While handling a call, an operator must be set up to comprehend and dismember an issue rapidly. The objective is to convey a proficient and precise reaction to fulfill the client's needs. The devices accessible to the specialist just as their preparation are basic to manufacture these significant abilities. 

Concentrate on Solving the Problem 

A specialist can encounter numerous circumstances during a call. This can make it simple to dismiss the first issue should have been explained. From the beginning, the specialist ought to pose inquiries to completely comprehend the issue and how the client needs it settled. Keep the issue to be tackled top of brain all through the call. This will improve the probability of an effective call and thus an upbeat client. 

Settle on Choices and Solutions Clear 

For an accomplished specialist, the decisions and arrangements can appear to be extremely clear. In any case, for somebody inexperienced with the ramifications of every decision, this can turn into an upsetting circumstance. While giving arrangements, the operator should spread out the procedure and results of every choice. By giving the client all the data, they feel all the more piece of the procedure and ready to settle on a more clear choice. 

Recap the Call 

"What simply occurred?" This is the exact opposite thing you need a client thinking when they hang up the telephone. Prior to completing a call, recap the bring in a short yet complete synopsis. Give the first issue they were calling about and the arrangement you gave. End by inquiring as to whether they have any inquiries. On the off chance that there is supporting data like a ticket number, give that to future reference. 

The Checklist for Managing a Help Desk 

This agenda may appear to be simple and that is the point. Your care staff can follow this simple agenda to guarantee an effective assistance work area experience. For exceptionally prepared operators, this agenda is natural for them. Be that as it may, regardless of whether you your group is running great, it is critical to search for help work area improvement thoughts. Ask your group how to improve help work area execution or improve administration work area proficiency. Specialists can be an extraordinary wellspring of new thoughts for IT administration work area. 

Regardless of your methodology — keep the principle objective top of psyche; giving a superior client experience. 

About Unicom Teleservices 

Unicom highly esteems giving top preparing to its live operators. Explicitly managing specialized assistance work area calls expects operators to be learned all parts of an item or administration's abilities. Our operators experience a half year of preparing before taking care of help work area calls. Our assistance work area redistributing administrations offer live operators 24/7/365. We never close. What makes Unicom extraordinary is our capacity to work inside an association's assistance work area stage. Rather than driving an organization to utilize an alternate arrangement, we effectively incorporate into theirs. 

We are a 24-hour replying mail organization situated in Chicago, Illinois. For a long time, Unicom has worked with organizations huge and little organizations. Basically demand a replying mail quote. Together we can decide whether there is a solid match to deal with your assist work area with calling calls.

4 Benefits of Help Desk Outsourcing

40% of help work area positions in the financial business are held by help work area re-appropriating administrations. Around 55% of clients are probably going to get pulled in towards great client assistance. 85% of the clients are prepared to pay more for overhauled help work area experience. Re-appropriating cost achievement rate for help work area is 74%. 

IT Help Desk Services

(Source: credit jackass, PC financial aspects) 

Above insights demonstrate help work area re-appropriating market is becoming higher at a CAGR of over 6% during the year 2016 to 2020. Help work area administrations are answerable for giving purchasers brilliant specialized help in their period of scarcity. Tragically numerous associations' spending limit don't permit them to have an in-house help work area answer for help clients. This is the prime motivation behind why help work area redistributing is thought of. 

Following are the 4 brain passing up help work area redistributing: 

1.Availability- No association can furnish 24x7 assist work area with supporting with an in-house group. Help work area redistributing administrations has committed group of specialists working in various movements to convey 24x7 help to the end purchasers. Having no assist work area with supporting set up in the wake of working hours can prompt disappointed clients, expanded objections, and client maintenance. 

2.Expertise-In-house bolster delegates may come up short on the information or experience to carry all calls to a goals. Help work area redistributing administrations has all the fundamental mastery conveying brilliant answers for the clients. These specialists convey better call the executives and abilities in view of your administration level destinations. 

3.Response time-Help work area administrations incorporate assuming responsibility for a PC or record without genuinely being at that area. It spares work, transportation and material and permits quicker reaction time to identify and investigate issues. With most recent advances, it has gotten simple for help work area administrations to chop down reaction time by quick dispatch. 

4.Cost-Now that is the center explanation any association employs re-appropriated administrations. Help work area redistributing diminishes the expense of work, advancements, devices and client misfortunes. Poor assist work area with canning transform into poor brand devotion that can legitimately prompt perpetual loss of clients. 

Putting resources into help work area administrations, sets aside association's cash as well as makes time to put resources into customers and representatives. 

Suma Soft is one of the best 10 assistance work area administrations furnishing the customer with a solitary purpose of contact. Our administrations offer: 

• 100% call recording 

• 
  

• Nitty gritty MIS and revealing framework actualized with key SLAs 

• 
  

• First-call goals pace of brings expanded to over 75% 

• 
  

• By and large cost-decrease by half

Importance of Outsourcing IT Helpdesk

Total network care maintenance plan

Reduce downtime, increase profitability, and make your technology work for you.

Total Network Care is dedicated to keeping your technology investment running smoothly, so you can focus on your business. You can relax knowing that our association with your organization means that we take your IT personally and strive to keep your team productive with the tools necessary to power your business.

Change the way you think about IT with Total Network Care.

IT Help Desk Services

Think of us as your external IT department. We strategically optimize and protect your infrastructure while performing daily maintenance that prevents users from experiencing downtime.

24/7/365 proactive monitoring and maintenance

Detect and stop computer problems before they affect your results.

Preferred IT services are designed to meet all of your IT support needs, from your employees' workstations to servers and even other network devices necessary for the efficiency of your organization. By performing regular maintenance and monitoring your systems 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, we can significantly reduce your team's downtime. Our team is always attentive to your business and your goals and can help you meet your IT needs as it expands. Our proactive maintenance can keep your IT investments going, and our experienced support team can help your users resolve any technology-related issues.

The advantages of flat-rate IT

Finally, budget your IT expenses

Imagine finally being able to budget your technology. Imagine how many faster problems will be solved if your entire team can ask for help without increasing your monthly IT expenses. With Total Network Care, you and your team can be sure that you can focus fully on other business issues that need your attention, not your IT. In the long run, you will save money with less hassle, less downtime and no-surprise fixed costs designed to work in small businesses.

Complete your current internal IT

Benefit from the flexibility of Total Network Care

Already have an in-house IT department or on-site technical guru who handles most of your daily IT problems? Total Network Care does not exist to replace them, but we can certainly complement and assist your current in-house IT staff by providing 24/7 monitoring, maintenance and support. Take advantage of us as we strive to avoid downtime. If your current IT department is overloaded, Total Network Care is the perfect solution to reduce your workload and ensure the rest of your business continues to run smoothly.

Why Should We Consider Outsource Help Desk

Outsourcing the help desk is gaining popularity. Why should I outsource my help desk? While helpdesks are essential for businesses of all sizes, internal operations are not a central function of an organization.

In other words, if employees are busy solving technical and customer-related problems, they can avoid working on more strategic and innovative projects to develop their business.

In addition, as so many new and advanced technologies are emerging every day that allow businesses to innovate faster in a competitive world, businesses often have limited IT to keep up with the latest and the best. He only has resources. If your IT team is constantly involved in keeping abreast of common customer service issues, the other talents and values ​​that can bring to your organization will be eliminated. For this reason, companies should consider outsourcing non-core functions, such as help desk support to external service providers.

Why outsource technical support?

In general, many companies do not have the maturity of processes, tools, resources and experience to effectively perform their internal helpdesk. For example, you need the real-time voice or web chat features that today's customers increasingly expect. Most internal technical support teams do not have access to a knowledge base with valuable information about past interactions; therefore, employees have the information they need to quickly resolve problems and provide free support - service to their customers. . It was found to have been provided. Internal technical support platforms tend to lack workflow automation, service catalogs, configuration and asset management databases, remote access support, demand forecasting, and integration with other critical IT-related processes. Without these key characteristics, poor management of service levels and no way to track and measure the responsibility and cost of providing services within an organization. High-quality technical assistance outsourcing companies can provide all of this for a fraction of the cost.

Main benefits of outsourcing technical support

1. Reduce operating costs

Instead of paying per full-time employee (FTE), as in most technical support operations today, the outsourcing pricing model offers "pay per ticket" and is underused and expensive to reduce resources. When outsourced, there is no cost to train service personnel, purchase and deploy systems, offices, or software infrastructure to make everything work.

2. Decrease the volume

Outsourced technical support focuses on automation, self-service tools, predictive demand forecasting to reduce the volume of support tickets and identify training needs related to users.

3. Improve response time

Subcontractors are responsible for respecting specific service levels, in particular for responding to and resolving tickets. All tickets are tracked and measured and, if the SLA is not met, a correction plan will be implemented immediately. Subcontractors are responsible for providing SLAs to avoid fines and have incentives to satisfy their customers, so that they can provide referrals and long-term services to potential new customers.

4. Take advantage of existing experience

Technical support outsourcing companies are involved in the IT sector. So invest and keep your technical support team up to date with the best training, techniques and service management processes, technical tools and best practices. In addition, dedicated technical support professionals are often motivated to continue working, as they have career incentive plans that motivate them to grow in the IT service industry.

5 flexibility

If the demand for support is high or vice versa, companies don't have to worry about finding and training more people. Technical support subcontractors are designed to increase or decrease to meet changing demands, but only pay for the actual number of tickets processed.

6. Focus on the main mission of the company.

It is not uncommon for organizations to spend more time on nonessential activities when technical problems arise. When this happens, companies lose their strategic focus, resulting in lost revenue and productivity, and ultimately fail to satisfy customers. Businesses must focus on the heart and manage customer relationships using key and predictive metrics provided by technical support outsourcing partners.

Read More - ITHelp