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Host-based Firewall

Host-based firewalls are software firewalls installed directly on individual devices, providing a layer of protection that network-based firewalls alone cannot deliver.

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About this video

A network-based firewall sits at the edge of a network and controls traffic entering and leaving from the outside, but it provides no protection against threats that originate or spread internally. Once an attacker compromises a single machine inside the network — through social engineering or other means — an environment that relies solely on a perimeter firewall is fully exposed. Host-based firewalls close this gap by operating as software running directly on each individual device, enforcing security at the endpoint level regardless of where a threat comes from. Unlike network firewalls that protect an entire network as a unit, host-based firewalls are specific to the machine on which they are installed, giving each endpoint its own independent layer of defense. This approach reflects a shift in modern security thinking: trusted internal networks are no longer treated as inherently safe, and every host is expected to maintain its own firewall. Enabling host-based firewalls across all devices is now a baseline security practice in any well-configured environment.

What you'll learn

What's covered

Host-Based Firewalls

Key terms

Firewall
A network security device that monitors and controls incoming and outgoing traffic based on predefined security rules.
Network Segmentation
The practice of dividing a network into smaller segments to improve performance and limit the spread of security threats.
Endpoint
Any device that connects to a network, including computers, smartphones, tablets, and IoT devices.
Social Engineering
A manipulation technique that exploits human psychology to trick individuals into revealing confidential information.
Host-based Firewall
A software firewall installed directly on an individual computer that monitors and controls network traffic to and from that specific host. Host-based firewalls provide a layer of defense that persists even when a device leaves the corporate network.
Network-based Firewall
A firewall deployed at the network perimeter to monitor and control traffic flowing between networks or network segments.
Perimeter Security
The outermost layer of a defense in depth strategy, using controls such as firewalls to protect the boundary between a trusted internal network and untrusted external networks.

Topics

Host Based Firewall Network Firewall Perimeter Security Defense In Depth Endpoint Security Cybersecurity

Transcript

At one point in time, it was common to turn off your host-based firewall on the local network, anything that was a trusted network. That's no longer the case. We want to make sure that our hosts are secure, and we need to enable our host-based firewalls.

In another lesson, I talked about firewalls — really what we were talking about is network-based firewalls. These are the firewalls that sit at the edge of the network that protect your whole network from the outside. The problem with this is that it doesn't protect inside of your network. So if somebody were to compromise a machine, like through some sort of social engineering, which happens a lot, then anything inside of your network is now compromised if there is no internal firewall or host-based firewall.

A host-based firewall is on the machine. It's software that's running on the machine that's protecting from the outside world. So it's just a firewall that's specific to the host of this machine, this end device.

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