Firewalls can be configured to filter out inherently dangerous services, exposing the protected network to fewer risks. It provides crucial protection against attacks and intrusions from the outside for your File Servers and other devices on the network. This includes direct security attacks as well as the downloading of spyware and other malicious software.

Firewalls provide a single point at which security needs to be maintained, as opposed to a network where there are no firewalls and each network host must maintain its own security.  Firewalls enforce policy execution, in that while all Internet access passes through the firewall, it logs accesses and calculates the network usage.