A Comparative study of ACL vs. Firewall
Access control lists and firewalls are used in file organization systems. Both are essential parts of network security and hence are very much necessary for a computing system. ACL can also be called as a type of stateless firewall, while firewall has its own set of properties. While both of them have the fundamental purpose of ensuring the security of a file or a network, their working procedures, and type of security provided by them are somewhat dissimilar.
Differences between ACL and Firewall
The primary purpose of using ACL and a firewall is the same: to ensure that the traffic flow within and outside the system is regulated (Alsmadi, 2016). While the purpose of a firewall is to monitor the traffic in a network, ACL can have many other applications apart from monitoring access. ACL carries out the stateless inspection, where it allows a packet of data. While the firewall also carries out inspections of the data, it is a different type of inspection where it checks the packet of data for proper encapsulation. It also checks multiple variations of the same data packet if available.
Firewalls also have their applications apart from monitoring traffic. Advanced network firewalls can also track down server addresses and match ports of a computer, while ACLs mostly check the permissions of the traffic, which is associated with a particular file type. ACLs can perform traffic check operations up to level 4, whereas firewall can offer up to level 7 security checks. That is why firewalls are preferred for a network over large scale system installations and applications (Mauricio, Rubinstein & Duarte, 2016). While some routers may not be designed to handle ACLs, firewalls are supported by every router universally. ACLs have offline applications like file management, SQL implementation (used to build relational database model), while the firewall is limited mostly to monitor traffic over part of a network.
Similarities between ACL and Firewall
Similar to ACL, a firewall is a device that checks the traffic going inside and outside a network. Both are used by networking systems to monitor traffic coming in and going out. ACL can be viewed as a first version of the firewall, with limited functions over the network. Both firewall and ACL compare the data coming in or going out with a set of predefined statements that are already programmed into them. Both ACL and firewall inspect data by quantifying them in packets, which are coming in or going out of the network. The absence of a firewall or ACL can lead to unwarranted traffic inflow and outflow in the system, which could contain harmful files that can cause internal damage to the system (Anderson & McGrew, 2016).
While ACLs and firewalls may look similar in terms of functionality and applications, a more in-depth look will reveal that they are very much different in terms of their security approaches. While ACL provides security for packets of data, a firewall is more detail-oriented than ACL, and performs full inspections of packets and checks them for encapsulation. However, it is imperative to note that both ACL and Firewall are useful in their own fields of application.
