Why Do We Need Firewalls?

Firewalls are vital for the reliability of the server. They are put in place to protect our network against cyber-attacks by blocking unnecessary connections and malicious or suspicious behaviour.

Sometimes, this may cause a false positive result where the intent may not be malicious. However, it gets blocked due to suspicious behaviour. The most common example would be email clients/devices trying to log in to the server with incorrect credentials.

Generally speaking, when we fail to log in due to incorrect credentials, we usually resolve the issue by the 2nd, 3rd or 4th attempt. Unfortunately, email clients and devices are not smart enough to stop this issue. When we enter data into an email client, it constantly attempts to connect to the server. Regardless of how many times it gets rejected.

Furthermore, this causes unnecessary strain on the server and problems for the user trying to gain access. The firewall will then block the IP of where those attempts are coming from to protect the server.

We have added a feature for clients to check if their IP is blocked. In addition, clients can now unban their IP using the Unban Centre via their MyDreamIT account.

Follow these steps to check if your IP is blocked/banned using the Unban Centre:

To proceed, you will need to retrieve the IP address in question. Firstly, go to whatismyip.com, which will automatically retrieve your IP address.  You can find your IP address under “My Public IPv4 is:”

Note down your IP address, as you will need it later.

1. Log in to your MyDreamIT Portal. You can log in to your MyDreamIT Portal via this link here

2. Once logged into your MyDreamIT Portal, click on the Services tab on the left-hand side, then click Check If Your IP Is Banned.

3. Enter your IP address in the text field option (by default it will prefill your current IP address) and click the Search button.

4. If it is banned, click the Remove Block button to remove it from the blacklist. It will also provide the time of the incident as well as brief description as to why it was block.