Windows Firewall – no laughing matter

Let's play a word association game. I will say something, and you say the first word that comes to mind.

"Network Security"

Did you say "Firewall"? I think I would have. When we think of securing our devices at the network level, we think of perimeters. Those perimeters are defined and protected by firewalls, mostly at a hardware level with a specialized networking device made to handle that particular task in our networks. Today we are here to talk about another layer of firewalling that you can and should be utilizing in your environments. Yes, we are talking about the Windows Firewall. Stop laughing, it's rude!

It is easy to poke fun at the Windows Firewall based on its history. In the days of Windows XP and Server 2003 it was pretty useless, and caused way more headaches than it solved. In fact, these feelings were so common that I still today find many companies who completely disable the Windows Firewall on all of their domain-joined systems as a...