Business Firewall

osborne16 · 3 Sep 2012 at 17:51

Hi everyone ..

Basically i run my own computer business for the past 4 years.

Lately ive broadened into businesses.

Ive been setting up a RAID server atm, and came to a brick wall. My clients store a lot of records for radio software etc, they also want to put sage accounts on the machine and run all there staff from it. Now ..

1. how secure is sage
2. Spec me a firewall (free or Paid)
3. Go down a hardware route , or a router ?
4. They run syscon on it and need to access it through LogMeIn, the problem here is that it will show all files and folders on the hard drive, as if you sitting infront of the machine. If someone was to hack in is there any way of him/her to not be able to see the files.

:confused:

JonJ678 · 3 Sep 2012 at 17:54

Are you distinguishing between hardware and software firewalls? The former can be much more secure than the latter. Comparing a software solution running under windows to something by Cisco is apples and oranges.

I don't know what syscon is. It sounds like you're giving the client administrative access to the entire machine, which is brave.

osborne16 · 3 Sep 2012 at 18:03

Syscon is DOS program that talks to a large mast for taxis on Black Mountain in NI#

Vince · 3 Sep 2012 at 19:58

Out of interest, which sage version and how many transactions? Also what level of raid are you running?

I used to work for a large firm of Interim Finance Directors and Line 50 performance with more than a few users was always a major gripe for clients. Line 200 is a lot better as it is SQL based whereas Line 50 has a flat (sequential) file structure. I did an install of line 50 for the nhs trust and they threw some serious hardware at Line 50, end result was still slow when loaded up with more than 5 or so users.

Oh and as for the firewall generally I would recommend sticking with a hardware firewall, simply because it would be quicker to deploy. How many users does the company have and what kind of firewall budget are you working with?

SoundsGood · 3 Sep 2012 at 20:05

Make sure you have the appropriate liability insurance

Vince · 3 Sep 2012 at 20:07

osborne16 said:
Hi everyone ..

Basically i run my own computer business for the past 4 years.

Lately ive broadened into businesses.

Ive been setting up a RAID server atm, and came to a brick wall. My clients store a lot of records for radio software etc, they also want to put sage accounts on the machine and run all there staff from it. Now ..

1. how secure is sage - Sage will only ever be as secure as your network infrastructure + the sage password, most companies ive worked with have a tendancy to leave the default user account active.

2. Spec me a firewall (free or Paid) - more on this below...

3. Go down a hardware route , or a router ? - Confused me here???

4. They run syscon on it and need to access it through LogMeIn, the problem here is that it will show all files and folders on the hard drive, as if you sitting infront of the machine. If someone was to hack in is there any way of him/her to not be able to see the files. - To be honest what you need here is a vpn/firewall solution, generally an ipsec vpn solution along with a correctly configured terminal services client can allow for the use of only the application intended and not full acess to the file system.

osborne16 · 4 Sep 2012 at 16:19

Im near sure its sage line 50.

I think its raid 0 as i didnt set up the server. Its mirrors the harddrie on to another.

Ive been told to look at a draytek router ? Any of you used or heard of these ?

If goign down the hardware firewall, what the set up process ?

Vince · 6 Sep 2012 at 10:45

osborne16 said:
Im near sure its sage line 50.

I think its raid 0 as i didnt set up the server. Its mirrors the harddrie on to another.

Ive been told to look at a draytek router ? Any of you used or heard of these ?

If goign down the hardware firewall, what the set up process ?

The draytek used to be a bt standard router. It comes with vpn functionality built in and could be used to create the VPN tunnel. It also offers basic NAT and firewall features. It should be enough to provide all the services you need as a one-stop-shop. i.e. firewall, vpn and routing.