Question 1091 - CISA discussion

A load balancer is a tool or application that distributes incoming network traffic among multiple servers in a server farm, so that no server is overwhelmed and the performance of the system is optimized1. A load balancer can help the agency to handle the large influx of traffic to a regional office by balancing the workload among the available servers and preventing service disruptions.A load balancer can also provide high availability and fault tolerance by rerouting traffic to online servers if a server becomes unavailable2.

A virtual firewall is a software-based firewall that protects a virtual network or environment from unauthorized access and malicious attacks. A virtual firewall can enhance the security of the agency's network, but it does not improve the performance of its servers.

A proxy server is an intermediary server that acts as a gateway between the client and the destination server, hiding the client's IP address and providing caching and filtering functions. A proxy server can improve the security and privacy of the agency's network, but it does not improve the performance of its servers.

A virtual private network (VPN) is a secure connection between two or more devices over a public network, such as the internet. A VPN can encrypt and protect the data transmitted over the network, but it does not improve the performance of the agency's servers.