Technology

Outside in and inside out

Firewalls have been keeping out the bad stuff for years. Are they now being used to keep employees honest, or is it about controlling them?

30 March 2020

The original idea of a firewall – a physical barrier that prevents fire from spreading – emphasised its protective function. That concept, now more usually used in a computing context to describe a system protecting a network, still retains the notion of protecting users and information from outside attacks.

However, from the outset, firewalls also had another purpose, says Arthur Goldstuck, founder of World Wide Worx. “They hark back to the early years of the internet when bandwidth was scarce. Companies used firewalls to closely guard their connections in order to preserve their bandwidth resources.”

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