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I wanted to know if having two firewalls is usefull at all.

I'm an apprentice in a company and the I'm the only one in my company who knows little about networking. We have a cisco firewall and each computers have a kaspersky anti virus solution with a firewall. I have total control over it, however I'm rethinking about the utility of two firewalls.

At this moment, I didn't desactivate anything since the firewall was left on by an informatic company and since windows "want" a local firewall on each computers.

Hansel F.
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Some of the relevant theories/considerations are:

  • defence in depth: rather than relying only on the fence around your property (the perimeter firewall) to keep all your belongings safe, you also store your valuables in a locked safe, lock the door to your office and close front door.

  • multiple vendor: a security vulnerability in one product won't compromise everything

  • The DMZ and other security domains should be separated to facilitate the separation of duties

HBruijn
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  • Interesting! Thanks. However, this doesn't answer my question. All these type of protections are currently used in my company. So here is the question of a double firewall. – Hansel F. Sep 08 '17 at 09:06
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    Defense in depth, multiple vendor, separation of duties can apply to the double firewall. If one is faulty or someone made a mistake, you have another, independent level of network security. Whether or not this is necessary is a different question. – John Mahowald Sep 08 '17 at 12:40
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if you have two firewalls, it will increase your security level. Specially Hardware firewall is designed for Control network access. But Kespersky is an Antivirus program and it will be able to detect unwanted and unreliable programs like Viruses, Trojans...etc more accurately the than Hardware firewall.

Currently for We use hardware and software firewalls in our company.

user434673
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  • Hum.. Ok. I meant to desactivate the firewall only of the anti-virus. Interesting to know you use both two. However, is the software firewall active on your anti-virus? – Hansel F. Sep 08 '17 at 09:11
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The main difference between hardware and software firewall is that a hardware firewall protects you from external attacks, and a software firewall protects a specific system from other internal systems.

If someone tries to access your system from the outside, you hardware firewall will block them. But if you click on a virus - laden email that's already in your system, your software firewall may stop it from infecting other computers in your office network.

Since you are the only one in your company that knows about networking, consider using a network testing service like Ixia that includes security testing, network infrastructure and wifi testing.

Oron Zimmer
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  • Oh ok! Now, that's the answer that clears it out the best. And thanks for the advice about testing my network. – Hansel F. Sep 13 '17 at 16:20