Firewalla’s Gold Pro Security Firewall Is Designed To Turn Home Networks Into Fort Knox

The Firewalla Gold Pro Security Firewall is like the bouncer on the door of a nightclub. Its job is to stop anything harmful from getting into a network. It also stops risky data from leaving a network.

FIREWALLA

The internet has changed our lives as fundamentally as the invention of the automobile, airplane, telephone and television. Those born since the Internet came of age will never know what life was like before Google, TikTok, X and instant messaging.

There’s a dark side to the internet, including inappropriate sexual material, viruses, malware and hackers. Internet fraud is the fastest-growing crime and yet, how many homes and businesses leave their cyber front door wide open so anyone can infect their computers and or harm their family?

Online security can be a bit of a dry subject… until it isn’t. If you’ve ever been hacked, had your bank or credit card cloned or had your identity stolen, you’ll know how violated it can make you feel. It can also be incredibly expensive to put things right. Leaving a network unprotected is as foolish as keeping your front door open and putting some cash on the kitchen table and leaving your keys in the car’s ignition.

How To Secure A Network

How do you secure the latest high-speed wireless networks so you can bank online safely, stream multiple movies and access all the good things the internet has to offer and still stay safe?

Firewalla is a company that makes both hardware and software for turning home or office networks into the cyber-equivalent of Fort Knox. The Firewalla Gold Pro is the company’s premium Security Gateway and it is designed to stop online attacks, phishing, hacking, spoofing and the countless other forms of cyber-attack that can expose families and businesses to genuine danger and financial loss.

The Firewalla Gold Pro is described as the world’s most affordable 10Gb smart firewall and it includes all the features that Firewalla’s security software has to offer. It’s easy to configure and use with the Firewalla smartphone app and there are no monthly subscription fees.

This security device features twin 10-gigabit WAN/LAN ports and it also has two 2.5G LAN ports for a future-proof setup that can handle the very latest generation of gigabit fiber internet connections that are now being rolled out.

Four Fast LAN Ports

Four fast Ethernet ports on the Firewalla Gold Pro have enough bandwidth to handle the internet traffic for an office, hotel, school or busy home. It is powered by a 64-bit Intel 12th-generation processor and the hardware has 10 gigabits of deep packet inspection. Firewalla also supports a two-Gigabit WireGuard VPN connection for fast, secure and anonymous connectivity that’s simple to use and very efficient.

But what exactly does Firewalla Gold Pro do? It’s like the security staff on the door of a nightclub; nothing gets in or out of your network without the Firewalla Gold Pro’s approval. It’s a device that’s intelligent enough to gain advanced insights into how you use your network and it can safeguard the personal and business data behind its firewall. It’s constantly on the lookout for threats by using dynamic content filtering.

However, not all threats come from outside a network. Danger can come from within when bad actors use social engineering to gain network access with something as simple as fooling someone into revealing a password. Weak passwords and unprotected devices are a weak point that can be easily exploited.

Constant Active Monitoring

To counter these threats, the Firewalla Gold Pro constantly monitors and controls how the network is being used. It can detect if a user is visiting an unsafe website or indulging in risky online behaviour. It will block unwanted ads and pop-ups that could contain Trojans and malware, such as key loggers.

For secure browsing, the Firewalla Gold Pro includes a built-in VPN server and client. At a time when governments are increasingly trying to control how we use the internet, VPNs are fast becoming an essential tool for organisations or individuals who want to use the Internet without constant age and identity checks.

Another safety feature Firewalla Gold Pro offers is Advanced Network Segmentation. This can quarantine or ring fence certain functions and can even put a network into lockdown mode should it detect or anticipate a cyber threat.

To ensure that all this massive amount of monitoring doesn’t slow the network down, Firewalla Gold Pro uses a feature called Advanced Smart Queue, which anticipates how the network is being used or how it could be used. This reduces the network’s latency and, if more speed is needed, multiple WANs can be aggregated to increase the data bandwidth for even faster throughput.

Packet Processing Engine

So how does such a compact device manage to monitor a whole network that’s handling such large amounts of data? Firewalla Gold Pro’s Packet Processing Engine is split into four stages. The first, Deep Insight, makes sense of the traffic on the network and can dig deep to gain a thorough understanding of how the network is performing and being used.

The second is Active Protect. This uses Intrusion Detection Services to watch out for bad actors or risky online behaviour. Active Protect can swing immediately into action and block a threat even before it strikes and causes any damage. The third is Behavior Analytics for analyzing the way the network is being used so that potential threats can be examined from a different angle. Finally, there is the Control Stage, where the network manager can tell Firewalla Gold Pro what to do by setting up and applying sophisticated rules that control data traffic flows across the entire network.

Firewalla Gold Pro can also watch over any IoT devices, such as smart speakers, baby monitors or security cameras. These days, many homes and offices positively bristle with IoT technology. These devices are useful, but they can sometimes be a weak point of a network that can be exploited by hackers. Firewalla sends automatic alerts to protect the network from these kinds of cyber threats.

Block Whole Countries

Although the Internet is largely borderless, some geographical zones represent more of a threat than others. Certain countries and governments use cyber warfare to disrupt their “enemies” by using disinformation, malware and other types of cyber-attacks. Firewalla Gold Pro can block network traffic from an entire country or range of IP addresses if necessary. It has the tools to actively stop hackers from remotely attacking a business or home network.

A network can be particularly vulnerable when a new device is onboarded. Firewalla Gold Pro automatically places any new or unknown devices into a special quarantine group where they can be monitored, protected with content filtering and subject to rate limit rules. It also addresses security risks across the entire network by watching out for any open ports and other threats like weak passwords.

It’s all very well having a home or office network protected with a ring of cyber steel, but what happens when a user goes outside the protection of the network? The chances are you may have to use a public Wi-Fi hotspot at an airport or cafe. It’s wise to be wary of accessing public Wi-Fi in countries where the internet is “filtered” or tightly controlled.

WireGuard And OpenVPN Servers

For these kinds of situations, when you are away from your network, Firewalla Gold Pro has WireGuard and OpenVPN servers built in. These VPN servers can run inside the home or business network and they don’t require payment of a monthly fee and they don’t throttle bandwidth.

With OpenVPN, you can access the internet with the same kind of safety you have on your Firewalla-protected network. The technology also bypasses any internet filtering and monitoring that is used in some countries. Firewalla Pro Gold supports both OpenVPN and WireGuard.

With Firewalla Gold Pro’s VPN Client, users can connect any devices using the network to OpenVPN, WireGuard and AnyConnect-based services. This means they can connect any of the IoT devices on the network — such as an Apple TV — to use a third-party VPN.

The VPN client can also remotely connect devices to another Firewalla Gold Pro situated in another place. This means two locations can have a site-to-site VPN connection with secure access in both directions, enabling them to access the network as if they were in the same building. Users can also use the system to connect and route multiple VPN services.

Parenting Controls Without Tears

Parenting is a tough enough job without the worry of keeping your kids safe from all the unsuitable content that’s on the internet. Firewalla Gold Pro includes comprehensive parental controls that can be turned on and off with a click of a button and which instantly restricts any device or app from accessing the internet.

Firewalla’s parental controls can also be used to block social networking sites, monitor a child’s online activity and issue alerts if the kids attempt to get around restrictions. Both malicious and adult content can be blocked and specific applications can be prevented from accessing the internet. All the rules and restrictions can be combined into automatic schedules.

Turning On Safe Search

Safe Search is a feature that can filter out adult content from any search results. If anyone on the network enters an inappropriate or suggestive phrase in the search bar, the results can be automatically filtered and offensive content removed.

Firewalla Gold Pro’s parental controls can be harnessed to protect valuable family time. There’s a Social Hour feature that can be turned on and then blocks all social networks in one-hour increments, giving families more time to spend together or for children to focus on their homework without the distractions of TikTok.

If necessary, certain applications can have time limits on individual devices or a set of devices. For example, the time spent on TikTok or Instagram can be rationed by the network administrator — otherwise known as mom or dad. Parents can see exactly when their children are using any app and they can set specific time limits for different activities.

Building A Better Network

Firewalla Gold Pro offers full control over a network and it has the power to block specific web pages, cut off access to individual devices or block adverts and pop-ups. Websites can be blocked by category types, such as gaming, social, video, porn, gambling and P2P. Individual domains can also be blocked by using wildcards, IP addresses and subnets. Individual ports can be blocked, with exceptions for suspending blocking rules for trusted individuals.

Regulating network traffic can also be handled in a smarter way using Advanced Smart Queue and Rate Limit features. Advanced Smart Queue prioritizes certain traffic and can reduce network delays because of buffer bloat when a network is feeling the strain. Bandwidth usage can be rate-limited for any device or activity, such as video streaming or downloading files.

Policy And Content-Based Routing

Traffic can be selectively routed based on a set of rules or the type of content accessed. For example, all video traffic can be sent to a VPN Client or all banking sites could be accessed using a different WAN interface for extra security.

For those worried about Internet usage limits or network performance issues, Firewalla Gold Pro’s Deep Insight provides a summary of hourly, daily or monthly internet usage, enabling a deep dive into how any device is being used or which IP or domain address is consuming the most bandwidth.

Finally, while most routers offer a basic firewall, the makers of Firewalla Gold Pro say their device can offer total control over a home or business network using the Firewalla smartphone app or the built-in web-based interface.

The Firewalla Gold Pro is not a cheap option, but the company has invested a small fortune in developing the sophisticated software that turns the Firewall Gold Pro into an advanced security system for a network and it costs about the same as a very solid front door. Firewall also sells a secure Wi-Fi system to go with the Security Firewall and I’ll be writing about that in a feature soon.

Pricing and Availability:

The Firewalla Gold Pro Security Gateway is available to buy now from Firewalla and it’s priced at $899.

Tech Specs:

• Speed: >10Gbps.
• Memory: 8GB.
• CPU: 64-bit Intel 12^th Gen.
• CPU cores: 4.
• Open VPN: 500Mbps.
• WireGuard VPN: 2Gbps.
• Site-to-site VPN: 20x connections.
• PPPoE Perf: Download 9000Mbps / Upload: 7000Mbps.
• Geo-IP filtering: Unlimited.
• VLAN: Unlimited.
• Network segmentation: Yes.
• Bridge mode: Yes.
• Router mode: Yes.
• Multi-WAN Yes.
• Wi-Fi: No.
• Console port: Yes.
• Dimensions: 217 x 165 x 43mm.
• Weight: 1,090g.