How to Configure Your Firewall for Stealth Mode
Firewall stealth: Hiding your firewall from hackers
Attackers are wilier than ever before. Every little morsel of information can be utilized by attackers to leverage their way into your network. Even knowing that you have a firewall is one more baby step towards cracking your defenses. In fact, bad guys take their recon so seriously that there's a term for these kinds of practices: Fingerprinting. Unless you take preventative steps, savvy hackers probing your network can find out key bits of information about your network and security posture:
- Firewall brand and model
- Which endpoint protection, if any, guards your end users
- What firmware version you’re operating on
- Which ports are in use or disabled
Networks should employ firewall stealth best practices to keep these hints secret.
Firewall stealth means limiting as much information, visibility, and accessibility to your firewall as is practicably possible. Enabling stealth on a firewall prevents your firewall from responding to fake requests that attackers send to probe your network.
What is firewall stealth mode?
A firewall in stealth mode answers incoming requests from authorized applications and traffic sources, but ignores unexpected requests completely. That means instead of getting a “no” response, hackers will get no response at all. This distinction may not sound like much, but it goes a long way to minimize every potential attack surface on your network.
How to get the most out of your firewall security
Managed security services conducted by certified, experienced experts is your express lane to a stable secure network. Managed security services include the configuration changes you’ll need to implement to hide your firewall from hackers. You’ll also receive event logs, reports, and periodic audits to help identify blind spots, bottlenecks, and not-so-obvious vulnerabilities.
If you insist on managing your network yourself, be sure to take the time to granularly configure your firewall settings from top to bottom. Almost all network breaches can be attributed to a misconfigured appliance. Taking the guesswork out of this huge vulnerability with managed security services gets you from comparison shopping to configured and shipping as fast as possible!
Peace of Mind Network Security
Still have questions about your firewall? Our team can help! The Firewalls.com Security Operations Center, located in our hometown of Indianapolis, is stocked to the brim with manufacturer-certified security experts who can resolve any firewall issue you may be facing! Offering custom configurations, premium support, and subscription-based Managed Security Services, our engineers take both the guesswork and legwork out of securing your network. Just let our team tap in, harden your defenses, and then we'll keep you up to date with event reporting, change documentation, incident response, and more.
Just give us a call at 317-225-4117 to learn how Firewalls.com Managed Security Services can make security, compliance, and network performance an absolute breeze!