If So, Your Critical Data Is At Risk.

No matter what type of business you have, security of your proprietary and confidential data is of top importance.  You, your employees, your clients, and your board members must be assured that your critical business data is protected and secure around the clock. If your Firewall is breached, or your Router is put under surveillance by hackers, you could be in trouble both financially and legally.  Plus your business reputation would be ruined.

Many small businesses today are trying to conserve resources in order to make ends meet. But when they make the mistake of purchasing consumer-grade firewalls and routers to save money, in the end they are actually risking the viability of their business. 

Consumer-grade firewalls don’t provide the intelligent scanning of incoming data that’s needed for businesses today.  With increasing cybercrime and attacks, using consumer-grade devices makes your data and network vulnerable to cybercriminals. These consumer-grade devices don’t scan everything that comes through, but even the least expensive, Business-Grade Firewalls do.  Even if a virus or malware was to penetrate your network, a Business-Grade Firewall would catch it.

Consumer-grade routers, like those made by D-Link, Linksys and Netgear, utilize simple network address translation (NAT) capabilities that aren’t protected once a hacker finds an open connection. 

If you had a business-grade firewall, this would be detected and stopped.  Without one, your data is being sent directly to hackers every time it goes through the suspect D-Links.  Plus if your router goes down, a business-grade firewall is alerted and remotely sends a message to your IT provider, so they can remedy the issue.

Business Grade firewalls also provide reporting of instances and allow monitoring and detailed information in real time on the applications you use on your network, as well as which apps using the most bandwidth. With this information your IT provider can make adjustments to provide the more important apps more bandwidth, instead of those that aren’t business related (e.g., Facebook, Online Gaming, Pandora, etc. that your employees may be using!).

Plus consider what would happen if your emails were compromised by malicious coding, which can happen if a computer virus gets through your consumer firewall.  Your business emails would be blacklisted, and rejected by your clients. This can take many weeks to repair.  In the meantime, you’re losing customers and bleeding money by the minute.  Having a business-grade firewall in place will prevent this.

So What Should You Do?

Don’t trust your business to consumer-grade firewalls and routers. Contact your IT provider for a complete assessment of your IT needs and for recommendations about what business-grade firewall and router is best for your business.