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Excuse my ignorance as I am not form a networking background. But our employees (from PC's joined to our network) access a 3rd party application hosted in another organisations network. This isn’t public facing app and there must be some form of link between our network and theirs (and their application server). What role does our firewall play in establishing the link to their network / the app server? What would you look for from a security angle to ensure the link is secure, i.e. data sent to/from our clients to the app server cannot be easily intercepted? &nbsp;Please keep answers simple / management friendly?
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Excuse my ignorance as I am not form a networking background. But our employees (from PC's joined to our network) access a 3rd party application hosted in another organisations network. This isn’t public facing app and there must be some form of link between our network and theirs (and their application server). What role does our firewall play in establishing the link to their network / the app server? What would you look for from a security angle to ensure the link is secure, i.e. data sent to/from our clients to the app server cannot be easily intercepted?  Please keep answers simple / management friendly?

WAN security / firewall role

Network security consists of the policies adopted to prevent and monitor authorized access, misuse, modification, or denial of a computer network and network-accessible resources. Network security involves the authorization of access to data in a network, and covers a variety of computer networks; conducting transactions and communications among businesses, government agencies and individuals. Networks can be private, such as within a company, and others which might be open to public access.

Network Security

Software firewalls, also known as host-based firewalls, provide a layer of software on one host that controls network traffic in and out of that single machine. Most operating systems now include firewall software, but many available software firewalls include central distribution, antivirus systems and disaster recovery.

Software Firewalls

Hardware-based firewalls provide more sophisticated protection for inbound and outbound traffic than the simple Windows software firewall or the basic NAT firewalls found in routers. These devices implement techniques such as stateful packet inspection, deep packet inspection, and content filtering; and may include built-in antivirus and anti-malware protection.