Why You Need To Replace Your 3+ Year Old Firewall

Your IT support provider should insist on a good quality, modern firewall to give your business the best protection from intruders.

In all likelihood your business has at least one firewall (and if you don’t, you’re asking for all sorts of trouble if you haven’t experienced it already).  You know a firewall is one of those “must have’s” for a secure network, but do really know why it’s so important to your business?

A firewall is the device that bridges the connection from your internal network to the outside world.  Anything you do that connects to the outside world (e-mail, accessing internet directly or indirectly) goes through this firewall before your data reaches its ultimate destination.  Conversely, anything received from the outside into your network (e-mail, remote access, handheld communications) goes through this firewall before the data reaches your network. 

     How Your Firewall Keeps the Gremlins Out

Your firewall has a set of rules which, depending on how they are configured, allow communications in or out, or block them altogether.   Essentially, it’s the security guard that’s checking everyone’s credentials before authorizing access in or out of your network.  It’s intended to prevent unauthorized access to your network by ne’er do well hackers and scammers. 

     Old Firewall = Lowered Productivity in Your Business

An older firewall can cause slowdowns in all of your day to day business functions that rely on the internet (e-mail, accessing websites, handheld device usage, cloud / hosted applications) .  This is because the demands put on firewalls to perform their “security guard” jobs are ever increasing due to faster internet access, faster computers and companies’ increased reliance on the internet.   Think of one club doorman checking ID for 100 patrons a night 3 years ago, but now he has to check for 500 patrons – it’s going to take him a lot longer now to determine who is eligible to get through the door.

As your firewall ages, these slowdowns will become increasingly noticeable, affecting the productivity of those of your staff who rely on anything where the internet is involved.

      An Old Firewall Is Opening Your Door To Hackers, Inch By Inch

The software of the older models can’t provide the same level of security as the newer models.  Further, hackers are constantly finding new techniques to attack a network and these older firewalls have a harder time keeping up or may not be able to detect the latest attack on your network that could result in stolen data and disabling viruses.

4 Reasons to Upgrade Now

1.  Is the latest security against hackers and infections important to you?

2.  Is it important that your staff have the very fastest possible access to the internet (this would include
e-mail flow, downloading of attachments, access to hosted applications). 

3.  Are you paying good money to your internet provider for fast service?  If you want to get the most from your current internet service, you may be unable to due to the age of your firewall.  So if you are paying for 15mbps download (which is reasonably fast) this speed could be considerably compromised while your network is at its busiest because the older firewall hardware can’t keep up with demands.

Essentially firewall hardware gets faster concurrently with the processing power of computers.  So a computer built 3 years ago, is much slower than one built today.  Similarly, firewalls built 3 years are much slower than those manufactured today.

4  If your company relies on video via training or video conferencing, the load of these types of applications is quite intense and puts a lot of load on a network.  Video usage is where you’ll see a major improvement with an upgrade to a more recent firewall. 

Talk to a professional IT support provider today about what kind of firewall best suits the needs for your business.