Firewalls can damage your business

Firewalls protect corporate networks from dangers lurking in the outside world. With the rise of the Internet, they have become vital to a company's security strategy. But has anyone stopped to consider the disadvantages of firewalls?

The blanket approach often taken when installing firewall software means that valuable business tools like multimedia are barred along with the undesirables.

Often, firewalls are set up to block the flow of multimedia into a company to ensure that security and bandwidth needs aren't comprised. The result: employees cannot access the wealth of video and audio resources available over the Internet.

Bandwidth and security are important considerations, but shouldn't be over-emphasised at the expense of the competitive advantage that multimedia can bring.

Multimedia is clearly a growing source of mission-critical information. Yet, because of over-stringent firewall restrictions, many employees are unaware of the rich resources available to them via the Web. It's up to the IT director to make sure they don't miss out on them.