The Internet, like any other society, is plagued with the kind of jerks who enjoy the electronic equivalent of writing on other people's walls with spray paint, tearing their mailboxes up, or just sitting in the street blowing their car horns. Some people try to get real work done over the Internet, and others have sensitive or proprietary data they must protect. Usually, a firewall's purpose is to keep the jerks out of your network while still letting you get your job done.

The Skybeam's firewall system acts as an armed guard at the door between our network and the Internet at large. Our customers can come and go at will, but access by those from the outside is strictly limited.

Our firewall is good, very good in fact, but nothing is perfect!   Like those that work inside a guarded building are relatively safe from outsiders, they do have access to other offices inside that building. Like any other Internet Service Provider, if one of our customers chooses to be a jerk, and had the appropriate advanced computer expertises, they could gain minimal access to our other customer's computers inside our system. The agreement all SkyBeam customers sign prohibits hacking, and if they do they will have their services terminated immediately. We watch for hacking activities, and will take any and all legal action against hackers, internal or external.

Trust but verify!   We trust our customers, but keep an eye on all suspicious Internet traffic throughout our system.

Two Locks Are Better Than One.   For the ultimate in Internet security, we recomend you install a firewall on your own computer. A very good personal firewall is Zone Alarm. This is a free product you can download and install on your computer.

Firewalls can't protect very well against things like viruses.   There are too many ways of encoding binary files for transfer over networks, and too many different architectures and viruses to try to search for them all. In other words, a firewall cannot replace security-consciousness on the part of your users. In general, a firewall cannot protect against a data-driven attack--attacks in which something is emailed or copied to you. The SkyBeam has a very good Anti-Virus filter in our email system, but like firewalls, Two are Better than One.

Viruses are like the Arms-Race. New viruses are unleashed on the Internet every day. Before an anti-virus product can block a new virus, it must know about it. The Anti-Virus companies keep up very well with all the new viruses, but there is a delay of a day or more between the time a new virus is released, and the time their product can detect and block it. Of the many anti-virus companies, one will always be ahead of the others in learning about a new virus, this is why we recommend each customer has their own anti-virus product. Having an anti-virus product from a company other than the one that does The SkyBeam's anti-virus system is even better. The SkyBeam uses an anti-virus product produced by McAfee & Associates. We recommend you use an anti-virus product from another vender. Our choice is PC-Cillin available from Trend Micro. This helps insure that if our anti-virus product misses a new virus, yours won't - and Visa Versa.