What is Proxy Firewall? - Definition, Basics, and More

Table of Contents

Proxy Firewall Definition

In contrast to a packet-oriented firewall, a Proxy Firewall can monitor and filter communication at the application level.

It protects networks and their resources from unwanted or dangerous data traffic.

And also, It is called an application-layer firewall or application firewall for short.

It is a security system that can monitor and filter communication at the application level.

The Proxy Firewall acts as a proxy for a client who wants to gain access to a particular service.
This shields both services and clients from one another and prevents direct connections between the two communication partners.
If a client wants to establish a connection to a service, it first communicates with the proxy.
It forwards the data from the client to the server and transmits the data received from the server to the client.

There are two basic ways a proxy works. From the client’s perspective, he can work transparently or not transparently.
If the proxy is not transparent, the client must inform of its existence.
For this purpose, the client and its software receive a unique proxy configuration, which ensures that the outside traffic initially addresses to the proxy.
However, since this generally provides the only communication path to other networks and external communication.

Since the proxy firewall carries out all communication on behalf of the clients to be protected, it can analyze the transmitted data in great detail.
It checks whether the communication complies with the previously defined protocol rules and policies and allows or prevents the traffic.
Due to the address conversion taking place through it, the clients remain entirely hidden in the network to be protected.
Depending on the type, a proxy-based firewall supports one or more application protocols.

A Proxy Firewall offers a very high level of security due to the way it works at the application level.
Compared to packet-oriented firewalls, it can analyze the data traffic for the supported protocols in a much more detailed and more in-depth way.

There are also some disadvantages to these advantages. The proxy-based firewalls are not compatible with all protocols.
A suitable proxy instance must establish for each contract to be protected to enable firewall protection.