Firewall cannot operate properly without careful configuration. It is actually a device that help realize your company (or home)’s Internet Access Policy.

Who decides the Internet Access Policy? The information owner! Many people mistaken this to be done by the company’s system administrator. It is wrong. The administrator’s role is to help implementing the firewall policy as per company’s senior management’s intention. It is afterall not the administrator’s call whether a particular service is allowed or not during a particualr period of time.

Since firewall is the gatekeeper between your company’s internal network with the Internet, it should be an important device that you need to put resources to protect. If it is compromised, the intruder can potentially get the direct access to internal network.