DSST Cybersecurity Fundamentals Practice Exam

Stateful inspection in firewalls operates by monitoring and managing the state of active connections. This means that the firewall keeps track of the state of each connection, whether it is in the process of being established, already established, or terminated. By doing so, it can determine whether incoming packets are part of an established connection or if they are unsolicited attempts to initiate a connection.

This process allows stateful firewalls to make more informed decisions about what traffic should be allowed or denied, as they can validate that packets belong to an existing session and apply rules that maintain the integrity of those sessions. It enhances security by ensuring that only packets associated with a legitimate and established connection are allowed through, thus protecting against various types of attacks.

In the context of the other options, while authorized connections being established relates to the concept of security, stateful inspection specifically focuses on tracking the validity of each connection. Logging of all traffic is more related to logging features of firewalls, and while encrypted connections are handled, stateful inspection doesn’t directly make them transparent; it identifies and allows or blocks packets based on their connection state.