Hardware Firewall

The increased reliance upon Internet services unfortunately runs hand in hand with increased security threats, failing to protect your dedicated server or colocated server is something all companies should try to avoid - we help with our managed firewall service.

Your dedicated servers or colocated servers sit behind our hardware firewalls - multiple redundant firewalls in failover mode - we configure and manage the firewalls to fit with the requirements of your servers.

Some benefits of using our Managed Hardware Firewall:

• Packets processed before they reach your server
  Before the packets even come into contact with your physical dedicated server or colocated server, they are processed. Bad packets can't affect your server.

• Packets processed on dedicated hardware
  This leaves the resources on your dedicated server or colocated server free to carry out its own role.

• Packets processed on redundant firewalls
  We use multiple hardware firewalls, mirrored and in failover mode, should one require a major software update or fail for whatever reason, the other takes over automatically.

• Economical
  We've made the expense of setting up a highly reliable and redundant service, no need to setup your own expensive hardware with our great value service.

• Managed
  We manage the firewalls, we'll work with you to get a rule set in plain English from you - then configure the firewalls rules. You don't need to know the complexities of how to configure a firewall, just tell us what you need in plain English.

A small example firewall configuration for a dedicated server:

This rule set is a very simple 4 rule example of how your dedicated server can be protected. When a packet enters the network, before it reaches your server it runs through one of the firewalls. Packets destined for your server will flow through the rules we have devised for you.

In the above case you have a bad IP list, which enables you to explicitly deny access from certain IPs to your server. Great if you have someone trying to flood your server with requests (dos attack).

Then you specifically allow access to services which your provide (web pages, email, and FTP) to everyone apart from those on your bad list.

Your remote management ports which you use to administer your dedicated server is locked down to only your office IP address - thus stopping bad users even attempting to crack your password as they wont even be able to connect.

Then block any remaining traffic which hasn't matched a rule so far. This is a bog standard basic example of a rule set which could be used - we will work with you to create the rules you require.


Our hardware firewall can help to protect against:

• IP Spoofing
  Blocking hackers who are using forged (spoofed) IP addresses to attempt to attack or hack into your dedicated or colocated server.

• Denial of Service (DOS) Attacks
  A malicious user may be trying to flood your server with requests, brute force (repeatedly attempt to hack) passwords of email, ftp, and other services.

• Exploitable Port Ranges
  Locking down ports your dedicated or colocated servers can use, thus preventing hackers attempting to connect to malicious software or vulnerable software.

• MSSQL and MySQL Remote Exploitation
  Locking MySQL and MSSQL database's down so only specific IP Addresses can access them remotely.

• Remote Administration Tools
  Servers need to be remotely managed, by specifying the IP addresses that can access the management software adds another layer of protection to your dedicated server or colocated server even before a password prompt is given.

You can purchase the Managed Hardware Firewall service for your dedicated server or colocated server using the online order system when configuring your dedicated server or colocation order.