The term firewall has seen limited use since the late 1980s to describe a device to block unwanted network traffic while allowing other traffic to pass. The first published description of a "modern" firewall including use of that name was in 'Practical Unix Security' written in 1990 and published in 1991. The first description of a firewall, although not by that name, was also in 1990, in a paper by Bill Cheswick. A few of the industry pioneers …showed first 75 words of 458 total…

…showed last 75 words of 458 total…company, is not justifying the expense or effort, but convincing management that it's safe to do so. A firewall provides not only real security - it often plays an important role as a security blanket for management. Lastly, a firewall can act as your corporate "ambassador" to the Internet. Many corporations use their firewall systems as a place to store public information about corporate products and services, files to download, bug fixes, and so forth.