All too often organizations think of a firewall as a single tool instead of a strategy.  Many use perimeter firewalls as the only protection for their environment. However a single solution of a perimeter firewall solution is insufficient.  Even if your environment only had PCs and Servers, what about the Smart Phones that connect to the Internet while they are in your office???

                Many IT staff just doesn’t want to mess with local firewalls on PCs and laptops because they are just too hard to manage. Each firewall needs to be configured individual, the end user can turn it off, there is no central management, and the list goes on of why a firewall isn’t used.

                With the LANDesk Firewall the IT staff can centrally manage one or thousands of firewalls on PCs and laptops.  Do you need different configurations?  Sales will need different settings from the Executives who will need different settings from Accounting and on and on. The centrally managed LANDesk Firewall can easily manage multiple configurations.  Additionally if the IT Staff needs to make a change, the need to personally visit the device is no longer needed; all the IT staff needs to do is make the firewall changes, then schedule the update to the devices.

                Whether you use the LANDesk or Windows Firewall the LANDesk agent is the place to start, just put a check in the box, and then update the agents. The LANDesk Firewall can be used it on Windows XP, Vista, 7, Server 2003 and Server 2008.  Some of the key features are:

· Automatic / Background switching

· “Learn” allowing current configurations and trusted applications to continue to run

· Allow or Deny access to in and / or out bound applications

· Allow or Deny access to in and / or out bond ports

· Ability to lean and trust “current” subnet (rather than the administrator having to enumerate each machine’s subnet)

· Log Firewall violations

· Settings and Configurations can be integrated into the Agent Configuration, and can lock-down the client User Interface

· All of the Core Server’s trusted networks are automatically added to the list of trusted IP ranges.

Location-Awareness has got to be one of the coolest features with the LANDesk Firewall.  Inside your office your IT staff has strong defenses to protect the user’s device, so you can relax the local firewall settings. But what happens when the Sales associate travels?  Without any action by the IT staff or the end users Location-Awareness knows it’s no longer attached to a trusted network and turns up the security features to protect the device.

The bottom line is we need to protect the devices that connect to networks or the Internet.  The LANDesk Firewall is a strong start for complete Endpoint Security.  Take a look at it, if you have any questions let me know.

Andy