What is the difference between firewall and ips

In contrast, WAF's main purpose is to protect web applications. In case of web applications, communication control based on IP addresses and port numbers may not be able to prevent cyber-attacks. For example, in case of a web server, IP addresses and port numbers often 80 or are allowed access. However, attacks such as SQL injection and cross-site scripting, which use web forms and other forms to insert specific strings, cannot be prevented beyond the availability of access to the web server.

WAF is effective against such attacks. WAF checks even the contents of the web application, so it is possible to detect and block the kind of communication that seems to be an attack as described above.

IPS is more broadly defined as a system for the protection of communications that appear to be malicious on the network. Since WAF's specialties are limited to web applications, it cannot protect the OS, network, or software. In addition, you can choose between network and host type IPS, depending on the target you want to protect.

Therefore, it is not always safe to introduce only just either one of them. For example, a firewall is not enough to completely defend a web application, and a WAF is not enough to detect attacks on the OS itself.

You need to know how many servers on your system needs what kind of protection, and then implement the appropriate protection. All three of the above have the same goal of protecting against unwanted traffic, but the devices required to protect specific parts of the system are different. Placed at the network level and working closely with a router, it filters all network packets to determine whether or not to forward them towards their destinations.

A firewall is often installed away from the rest of the network so that no incoming requests get directly to the private network resource. If it is configured properly, systems on one side of the firewall are protected from systems on the other side.

Firewalls generally filter traffic based on two methodologies:. The type of criteria used to determine whether traffic should be allowed through varies from one type to another. A firewall may be concerned with the type of traffic or with source or destination addresses and ports.

A firewall may also use complex rules based on analyzing the application data to determine if the traffic should be allowed through. Every security device has advantages and disadvantages and firewalls are no different. If we applied strict defensive mechanisms into our network to protect it from breach, then it might be possible that even our legitimate communication could malfunction; or if we allow entire protocol communications into our network, then it can be easily hacked by malicious users.

We should maintain a balance between strictly-coupled and loosely-coupled functionalities. The way a firewall provides greater protection relies on the firewall itself and on the policies that are configured on it. The main firewall technologies available today are:. A hardware firewall is preferred when a firewall is required on more than one machine. A hardware firewall provides an additional layer of security to the physical network.

The disadvantage of this approach is that if one firewall is compromised, all the machines that it serves are vulnerable. A software firewall is a second layer of security and secures the network from malware, worms, viruses and email attachments. It looks like any other program and can be customized based on network requirements. Software firewalls can be customized to include antivirus programs and to block sites and images. A packet-filtering firewall filters at the network or transport layer.

The firewall examines these headers and uses the information to decide whether to accept and route the packets along to their destinations or deny the packet by dropping them. This firewall type is a router that uses a filtering table to decide which packets must be discarded. Packer filtering makes decisions based upon the following header information:.

The packet-filtering firewall is based on information available in the network and transport layer header. However, sometimes we need to filter a message based on the information available in the message itself at the application layer.

For example, assume that an organization only allows those users who have previously established business relations with the company, then access to other users must be blocked. Here, the proxy firewall came into light as a solution: install a proxy computer between the customer and the corporation computer.

When the user client process sends a message, the proxy firewall runs a server process to receive the request. The server opens the packet at the application level and confirms whether the request is legitimate or not. If it is, the server acts as a client process and sends the message to the real server.

Otherwise, the message is dropped. In this way, the requests of the external users are filtered based on the contents at the application layer. These firewalls analyze the application level information to make decisions about whether or not to transmit the packets.

An application gateway verifies the communication by asking for authentication to pass the packets. It can also perform conversion functions on data if necessary. For example, an application gateway can be configured to restrict FTP commands to allow only get commands and deny put commands. Application gateways can be used to protect vulnerable services on protected systems. A direct communication between the end user and destination service is not permitted.

These are the common disadvantages when implementing application gateway:. It forwards data between the networks without verifying it. It blocks incoming packets on the host but allows the traffic to pass through itself. Information passed to remote computers through it appears to have originated from gateway. Circuit-level gateways operate by relaying TCP connections from the trusted network to the untrusted network.

Firewall does not pay attention to the payload or traffic patterns. But what if there is a malicious data within that traffic. Here comes the work of IPS which monitors traffic patterns against database signatures.

IPS is more like an antivirus which monitors traffic patterns. One thing more. You can add IPS capability in firewalls too by using certain modules.

The firewall is a security device that enforces access control policies between security domains. These security domain are called zones. IPS is a security device that detect,classify and proactively stop malicious traffic threats from getting on to the network based on predefined set of signatures. We need an IPS because a firewall primary function is to enforce policies while an IPS can take action to sop mailicious traffic from getting onto the network.

The devices compliment each other to ensure a secure network. In a nutshell, the firewall has static rules. The IPS learns and creates rules or gets them added with updates from the manufacturer. I think of a FW, as the security guard at the gate. He can ask for an ID to be sure the packet is allowed in, or he can check an ID and look at a guest list. If you start to do deep packet inspection the FW is still following a specified set of rules, but now the guard may ask for a state issued ID and a passport and check the guest list.

You can add more layesrs of security but they are still defined by standard metrics.