In large network architectures, NAT is not enough. Hiding a company's IP address is certainly not enough. Therefore, the use of firewalls is important because firewalls stop or at least attempt to prevent any malicious threats from entering the network. Unlike the basic task of NAT, the firewall actually examines possible vulnerabilities in incoming traffic so it can prevent them from entering further. A perfect example of the proper use of firewalls is the important role they play in VPN connections. The user can send any type of information between this secure tunnel without any worries because this information is properly encrypted. There are different types of firewalls available today that can be quite expensive, but Cisco offers the best solutions so far, in my opinion. Unfortunately, firewalls are quite expensive for larger organizations because they have to protect larger assets based on the number of users who will be using the network (Stewart, J..