Explain the firewall and its types and activate it on your site to get complete protection

When we talk about protecting your site, the firewall (or Firewall) is a necessary and indispensable measure of protection, as the firewall protects your site from many malicious attacks that may harm your site.

In this article, we will explain to you a comprehensive explanation of the firewall, starting with getting to know it and exploring its types and how it works, and how to activate it on your WordPress site using one of the easy plugins to help you enhance the security of your site comprehensively.

Explain Firewall and how it works

A firewall is one of the most important tools of cybersecurity, information and network security, and it monitors incoming and outgoing internal and external network connections based on a set of basic rules in filtering those connections that you can control personally to set some extra security standards or Some special exceptions, after which it allows the passage of connections that comply with the security rules, and immediately blocks connections that it feels to threaten the network and do not comply with the security rules.

If we try to simplify the concept more, it is more like a filter that filters all communications that take place on the network, allowing secure communications to occur and prohibiting malicious communications. The following video explains how Firewall works in an easy and understandable way.

Firewall is divided into two main types as follows:

• Software Firewalls : These are separate programs that are installed on your computer to secure the network, such as Online Armor and Comodo Firewall.
• Hardware Firewall Tools : These are external tools that are plugged into a network to secure it.

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The importance of a WordPress firewall

There are many reasons that show you how important it is to activate a firewall to protect your site data, including the following:

• The firewall scans all outgoing and incoming connections to external and internal networks to secure you from all malicious attacks.
• Protecting your website from hacking. If someone hacked your website, he may access the data of all customers and control them silently, or cause the site to be completely destroyed.
• The firewall blocks access points from your device from a distance, as some hackers currently rely on controlling your device completely by accessing those points and they move and delete files unattended and will only stop them from disconnecting the network from the device and fixing those points with separate protection programs.
• The role of firewalls is not limited to spyware only, but also works to stop viruses from reaching your device, and most firewalls can successfully stop the famous ransomware virus.
• Firewalls secure the connection points that most modern online games rely on.
• The firewall also secures the data of your bank accounts and all the sensitive accounts that you rely on on your site.

The firewall may consume part of the server resources, causing slow network and data transmission, but the minor damage caused by these types is much less than the damage that you may suffer when a hacker succeeds in entering your device and spying on it or controlling it, so we never recommend turning off a firewall Protection as some recommend.

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Types of Firewall

There are 5 basic types of firewall, and all of them work to prevent malicious attacks, but each type differs in its configuration and the way you block malicious attacks. Thus, the types can be divided into the following:

1. Packet Filtering Firewalls

This type is one of the oldest types of Firewall, and one of the best types that you can rely on for its speed and quality in examining connections, as it forms an external checkpoint, which collects all information from the server from the IP number, connection type, access gateway number, and more.

Then it compares them against its own security standards, and if they pass this analysis, it allows direct communication, but if they do not pass this analysis, the contacts are prevented from completing the network connection.

2.Proxy Firewalls

Proxy Firewalls also come from old types of firewalls and is known as an intermediate firewall, which is an intermediary between internal and external networks and the Internet as the name suggests.

For example, if you search Google for the meaning of firewall, your device will request information from the Google server directly, but when you use Proxy Firewalls, it will get this request and redirect on the basis that it is from it and not from the device directly, so the Google server cannot Knowing your device’s real identity or geographical location or collecting any information about you because the information that it will obtain will be from the fake medium.

3.Next-generation Firewalls

Next-generation Firewalls It is known as the second generation firewall and stands for it in most references in short (NGFW), and it is one of the best firewalls that many major companies rely on.

This protocol examines incoming and outgoing connections from the Internet more deeply, as it scans all incoming connections from the server, and contains some modern technologies such as IPS technology that protects you from viruses and malicious attacks and automatically filters spam.

4.Circuit-Level Gateway

Circuit-Level Gateway is a traditional and very fast firewall that does not consume a large part of the basic device resources when working, as it depends on the formation of gates that examine the TCP protocol, a protocol used to transfer data across networks and ensure that they comply with its security standards.

5.Stateful Inspection Firewalls

Stateful Inspection Firewalls Known as an inspection firewall, it is a type of traditional firewall as well, which monitors incoming and outgoing traffic and automatically filters it based on security rules preset by the user, but is characterized by monitoring the connection from the first moment of connection until closing the site fully.

This method relies on filters resulting from old connections to the same server to prevent new connections, so it must be updated continuously, and it checks the TCP protocol as well, so it constitutes a very strong protection, but it consumes a large part of the basic device resources when scanning, which causes slow performance. Transfer of data over networks.

Read also: How to install WordPress and launch your site – 3 different ways

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Enable Firewall on your WordPress site 

There are many plugins that can be installed on your WordPress site in order to put a strong firewall that protects you from malicious attacks, and one of the best of these plugins is the addition of All In One WP Security & Firewall because it constitutes a large group of protection tools that combine the firewall among them.

In order to install the plugin on your site, you will go to your WordPress dashboard, then go to the Plugins tab and choose Add New , then type in the search box: All In One WP Security & Firewall in the search box, then choose the tool and click Install Now .

The plugin will be installed within seconds and then you press the activate button , ( Also read: How to install a WordPress plugin )

Then after installing the extension, you will find a new tab called (WordPress Protection) in the side menu, which you need to click on and choose the firewall, as shown in the following figure:

After that, you will enable the option to enable basic firewall protection which in turn will block access to htaccess and wp-config.php file and this will not affect the operation of either file.

After that, it will automatically apply a maximum file upload limit that does not exceed 10 MB, but you can modify it by controlling the Max File Upload Size box, and the basic unit is megabytes.

The third step is to activate the option to completely deny access to XMLRP and the option to disable the Pingback alerts function in XMLRPC because the xmlrpc.php file contains many security holes such as the XML-RPC API that hackers rely on to hack sites and copy files from the site automatically, which increases Click on the site server.

Then activate the option to deny access to the debug.log file, as this WordPress automatically saves the debug log in this file, which can contain some important information that hackers can exploit.

The last step is to click on Save basic firewall settings to save all previous options.

questions and answers

There are some questions that may come to your mind when using Firewall, from which we review the following:

• Which is better, Hardware Firewalls or Software Firewalls?

Hardware Firewalls are better than Software Firewalls for two reasons:

• Hardware Firewalls are set up once over the entire network and do not need to be installed and setup on a networked device independently like Software Firewalls.
• Hardware Firewalls do not consume a portion of RAM or CPU, unlike Software Firewalls that consume a portion of both.

• Can more than one firewall be used at the same time?

Yes, it can, but it is better for you to use more than one firewall at the same time. It is like forming a line of defense behind another line of defense. If the first line of defense is breached, you find the other line of defense that protects a network from malicious attacks.

Thus, we have come to the end of our article in which we explained the explanation of Firewall and its most important types and mechanism of action to secure your website, and how to add Firewall to protect your WordPress site in a simple way. on your site and protect it from any hackers or vandals.

If you have another question or problem related to the use of the WordPress firewall, write it in the comments section, and we will answer it as soon as possible, God willing.