Infographic: 25 years of the firewall

This month the firewall turned 25, and McAfee is celebrating with an infographic that creatively depicts its lifetime. Click on the image below to download the complete version.

If you take a moment to scan the infographic, you’ll notice the firewall’s introduction and evolution coincide with certain security events:

  • 1995: WM/Concept first virus to spread through Microsoft Word
  • 2000: First denial-of-service attack discovered
  • 2008: Conficker infects 9-15 million Microsoft systems.

Its greatest development and growth occurred with each security breach discovered. These events triggered security developers to react with more advanced firewall technology:

  • 1998: Evasions researched
  • 2009: Native clustering for high availability and performance introduced
  • 2012: Software enabled security introduced, making blade technology obsolete.

Pat Calhoun, Senior Vice President & General Manager of the Network Security Group at McAfee, provides more insight for Help Net Security readers in this article.

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