Introduction to Firewalls

This course will demystify the operation of a firewall by explaining its purpose and how it operates. You'll learn concepts like network trust levels, TCP, access control lists, network address translation, and application inspection.

Firewalls are one of the oldest and most important security appliances in a network. In this course, Introduction to Firewalls, you’ll learn the purpose of a firewall, how applications/network traffic is allowed in and out of the firewall, and how next generation firewalls use application inspection to add additional protection to the network. First, you’ll explore the fundamentals of a firewall, learning how trust levels are used, and how the firewall passes traffic from trusted networks to untrusted networks. Next, you’ll discover how firewalls implement access control lists to filter traffic, as well how network address translation (NAT) is implemented. Finally, you’ll learn how next generation firewalls can add additional protections to the network by scanning for potential threats in application network traffic. When you’re finished with this course, you’ll have the skills and knowledge of firewall basics to better understand how this mysterious appliance operates in the network.