Which of the following statements is true regarding stateful inspection firewalls?

Stateful inspection firewalls are designed to monitor the state of active connections using a state table, which keeps track of the status of connections, including whether they are new, established, or closing. This capability allows them to make more informed decisions about whether to allow or deny traffic based on the context of the connection, rather than just examining each packet in isolation as stateless firewalls do. By understanding the state of the connection, stateful inspection firewalls can enforce rules based on the state of the traffic, enhancing security since they are able to recognize established connections and allowing them to pass through while potentially blocking unauthorized access attempts.

In contrast, a statement about performing only deep packet inspection is inaccurate since stateful inspection firewalls may not perform extensive analysis on the content of packets but focus instead on the overall state and context of connections. The notion of not filtering based on connection state is fundamentally incorrect as stateful firewalls specifically rely on this mechanism for making decisions. Lastly, comparing their security to proxy firewalls, it is crucial to understand that while both have different approaches to filtering traffic, proxy firewalls often provide an additional layer of security through application-level filtering, but that does not inherently make stateful firewalls less secure; rather, they serve different