As more and more business need to share information with clients, business partners and remote workers the Internet presents itself as an ideal tool. The internet is boosting the efficiency of businesses, improving communications and providing an almost never ending source of data, so it is no surprise that more and more businesses are investing in broadband internet connections allowing always-on access.

Unfortunately these benefits are not without risk. The problems come when the realization that your companies connection is not only allowing access to the Internet 24 hours a day, but also anyone on the Internet has access to you! Your network is now part of the Internet and there are people who can roam around your files and records via the same tool that has enabled your business to grow.

It has be reported repeatedly in the press of high profile corporations falling victim to hackers, some of which just want to deface the corporate website with ‘cyber graffiti’, and there are other more damaging hackers that wish to damage or even steal the privileged information that you store on your computers.

Without the standard protection offered by security devices like a firewall then these unscrupulous individuals could cause you not only inconvenience when they crash your systems but thousands if not tens of thousands in lost data, files, clients and time.

Westlake Communications understands the need to protect your valuable data and we have researched the many solutions available so we can provide you with the correct recommendation for your needs. We have selected market leading, Best of Breed products that have proved them selves over and over again. Along with our highly trained engineers Westlake can provide you with a complete service to protect your network from the risks that many have fallen foul to already.

A firewall not only provides hacker protection and access control, it can provide other much needed tools to assist in the security of you corporate network. Although a firewall protects the data within the network, the data that you send to your business partners and remote workers is visible to anyone how wishes to look. This is the reason why Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) are now a standard feature on most firewalls.

The VPN feature on a firewall allows communications of highly sensitive data across the open Internet by encrypting from site to site. You can not only send data to other firewalls of the same make but to anyone using an IPSec VPN tool, allowing much greater potential for secure communications. Other features such as content checking of emails and websites is a regular option with some of the firewall solutions along with tools such as bandwidth management and antivirus.