The firewall, long considered the fundamental means of protecting a network perimeter, has become somewhat ubiquitous of late. As proof of this, I did a brief interview with my 10-year-old nephew, a recent 5th-grade graduate. I asked him if he knew what a firewall was, to which he replied with a reasonable definition. He then proceeded to explain that it was necessary to forward ports on a firewall to play certain online games.

Despite a large part of the population knowing what a firewall is, many organizations either don’t have one, or have one that is not implemented properly. According to a 2012 study by Symantec, 46% of corporate information resides outside of a firewall. While that number has no doubt improved, I suspect it is still unacceptably low.

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