With the invention of the internet and its widespread use, several complexities also emerged mostly involving security, and with those increased security threats, the invention of the firewall took place in 1980. It is software that acts as a first-line defense mechanism for your network. Your business is susceptible to outside viruses and hackers that can potentially cause damage to the privacy of your data but hey you do not have to worry about a single thing because a firewall is capable of securing your business and data from these threats. It acts as a gatekeeper between the business and the electronic threats roaming around you. You can easily save yourself from spending a lot on preventing viruses and hackers’ attacks by combining powerful anti-malware software with a firewall. A firewall is a barrier between your system and your network to the world wide web. If this barrier is missing, then your system is nothing less than an open playfield for anyone to trespass. Your system becomes vulnerable and allows access to treacherous third parties to exploit your sensitive information for their gain. To upscale your business’s growth, securing your data and protecting your sensitive information is a very crucial step because you can not let your competitors have it. A firewall enables you to restrict unauthorized access and filters out the threatening incomers. It is also capable of logging the data and keeping a record of traffic passing through your system. Apart from alerting you of external threats, Firewall also monitors the outgoing connections that are capable of damaging your network security. It alerts you before malware could breach your network security and cause any productivity, or monetary damage to you.

Protection and security of your important data, sensitive information, and business details are not any less important than a powerful marketing strategy for the basis of a successful business. For this reason, we have gathered the list of 6 top free and open-source firewall software that will ensure maximum protection to your network without costing you an arm and leg.

Iptables

Iptables also known as Netfilter is the perfect solution for your security needs that is a popular command line-based software and is the first line of defense for the Linux server. It is mostly used by administrators to fine-tune their security servers. The packets in the network stack are filtered inside the kernel. Pocket filter ruleset contents are listed by Iptables. It works like the speed of light because only the packet headers are monitored. It empowers you to alter the packet filter ruleset and add, remove, or modify it. It enables the restoration and backup of files.

Get it now from https://www.netfilter.org/projects/iptables/downloads.html

IPCop Firewall

IPCop is free, open-source software that enables you to tailor the tool according to your needs. The tech team working behind this powerful tool is continuously on their toes to make IPCop a more secure, stable, flexible, and highly configurable application for users. It is a perfect tool for the small business and locals PCs, because of its well-managed, easy, and friendly user interface. It gives a better user experience by keeping the most frequently used information. You can easily monitor the Network throughput, Memory, disk, and performance graphics for GPU, through its color-coded web interface. You are also in control of monitoring and autorotating logs. Also, it supports multiple languages. Ads and plugins that are provided to users are easily implementable and make this software more secure, and flexible.

Get it now from https://www.ipcop.org/download.html

Shorewall

It is another free, and open-source software that is quite popular among Linux users. It is based on the Netfilter system built and supports IPV6. This tool provides stateful packet filtering by utilizing the Netfilter’s connection tracking. It is adaptable to plenty of gateway applications, routers, and firewall applications. It provides support to multiple ISP, a centralized administration, masquerading, port forwarding, VPN, and a GUI interface.

Get it now from https://shorewall.org/download.htm

IPFire

IPFire is a powerful, open-source, Linux-based tool that works both as a firewall and a router. It is mostly used in home office environments and for small businesses. This tool is developed as a Stateful packet inspection firewall and designed with high flexibility and high scalability. It has an inbuilt intrusion detection system and enables you to filter the content. It has high adaptability with other tools like KVM, Xen, VmWare, chats, forums, and Wiki. Apart from all these features, it can be utilized as a VPN gateway, proxy server, and of course a firewall.

Get it now from https://www.ipfire.org/download/ipfire-2.25-core157

SmoothWall

This Linux-based open-source software has become the firewall of choice for plenty of users because of its amazing features. It has a highly configurable web-based interface known as the Web Access Manager. It is freely available for users with the name of SmoothWall Express including many notable features like real-time content filtering, backup, and restoration of files, and HTTPS filtering. It also extends its support to different proxies, LAN, DMZ, and internal networks. SmoothWall manages and monitors the traffic stats, visit basis, interface, and firewall activity.

Get it now from https://sourceforge.net/projects/smoothwall/

Uncomplicated Firewall

This software is the default firewall for the Ubuntu distros and as the name suggests, it provides a user-friendly interface and avoids unnecessary complexities so that newbies can easily get along with it. It provides users with features like status monitoring, an extensible framework, an extended logging option, and integration with different applications. Apart from these, you can easily modify rules as per your requirements.

Get it now from https://launchpad.net/ufw/+download

Closing Remarks

We have selected the top 6 free and open-source firewall tools for you that are capable of fulfilling your security requirements. These tools made it to our list because of their intuitive interface, stability, speed, and flexibility. We also made sure that we select those applications that are timely updated with changing security demands and provide users with active official support. We hope that this selection will aid you in selecting the right tool and help you save time, money, and energy that would rather be wasted dealing with viruses and hackers.