Guide to How Firewall-as-a-Service Works: Learn the Basics

Firewall-as-a-service (FWaaS) is a cloud-based firewall security system that provides network access protection, control, and monitoring for a company’s next-generation firewall. The FWaas offers firewall security to avoid network attacks.

Using a cloud-based and cloud-scalable firewall-as-a-service (FWaaS) enables companies to extend the benefits of unified threat management (UTM) and next-generation firewalls (NGFWs) beyond the local network to encompass a modern, dispersed IT architecture.

See below to learn all about how FWaaS solutions work:

Guide to Firewall-As-A-Service

• How Does FWaaS Work?
• What Are The Core Functions Of Firewall-As-A-Service?
• What Are The Features Of Firewall-As-A-Service?
• What Is The Technology Behind Firewall-As-A-Service?
• How Does Firewall-As-A-Service Fit The IT And Cybersecurity Environment?
• What Are The Differences Between Firewall-As-A-Service And Traditional Firewalls?
• Firewall-As-A-Service Vendor Example
• Firewall-As-A-Service Market
• Bottom Line

How Does FWaaS Work?

Firewall-as-a-Service filters network traffic for the security of a company’s network both inside and outside cyberthreats. FWaaS uses many tactics to ensure network safety including packet filtering, network monitoring, and internet protocol security (IPsec).

FWaaS Tactics

• Packet filtering: inspects each packet based on security rules to decide whether or not a company should allow it to pass or prevent it from passing
• Network monitoring: a firewall that is constantly monitoring a network for security threats including slow traffic or vulnerabilities
• Internet protocol security (IPsec): protocols that are used to set up encryption between business devices and tools to help data that is sent over public networks secure

FWaaS, like next-generation firewalls, is between a company’s network and internet connections. As traffic attempts to travel through the network a FWaaS solution examines traffic to find and address cyberthreats or vulnerabilities.

See more: How Does Firewall-as-a-Service Work?

What Are The Core Functions Of Firewall-As-A-Service?

FWaaS sits between the internet and everything else on the organization’s network infrastructure: local networks, cloud resources, remote users, and SaaS applications. FWaaS provides the following core functions as a global network-encompassing firewall:

• Allows safe remote access between all users and all connected resources, regardless of their location or deployment
• Inspects traffic to detect and address threats
• Filters destination IP addresses to block malicious locations
• Provides insight into threats against the organization through consolidated observation of attacks and traffic patterns
• Consolidates and standardizes management of firewall security and deployment for consistent security and compliance
• Simplifies deployment and cost management for a scalable, global resource

What Are The Features Of Firewall-As-A-Service?

When selecting a FWaaS solution, organizations should seek various key features, such as:

Security Functions

• Alerts automatically sent to security teams and tools by SMS and email
• Advanced threat protection (ATP) and malware detection features
• Automated responses to common threats detected by the tool
• Identity access management (IAM), federated identity, and other customizable user group management for network segmentation and access management
• Intrusion detection system (IDS) and intrusion prevention system (IPS) to catch malicious network traffic and flag performance issues
• Network traffic inspection and monitoring capabilities, including inbound, outbound, and between network segments

Compliance Functions

• Consolidated reporting of users, devices, and incidents
• Security and compliance reports available for back-end and application testing and security

Operations Capabilities

• Clear reporting and visibility for traffic statistics, events, anomalies, and network performance
• Cloud speed and scalability for deployment
• Ability to defend multiple and geographically dispersed networks
• Ability to defend cloud application and resource deployments, such as IaaS, PaaS, and data lakes
• Ability to provision or deprovision services as needed
• Proxy-based architecture

Bonus Features

• Machine learning (ML) or artificial intelligence (AI)-guided capabilities
• Free trial or demo for no-cost assessments
• Programmable APIs or integration with third-party tools for policy management, risk assessments, and compliance audits
• Integration capabilities with other modern security services and strategies, such as:
  • Cloud access service broker (CASB)
  • SASE
  • Software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN)
  • ZTNA

What Is The Technology Behind Firewall-As-A-Service?

Organizations will be familiar with most of the technology behind FWaaS because FWaaS builds off of traditional firewall, UTM, NGFW, and cloud technologies.

FWaaS cloud and IT technologies

The FWaaS IT architecture and cloud-based technologies provide inherent advantages:

• Virtual architecture: As a cloud-based resource, vendors build FWaaS offerings to take advantage of cloud-based virtual architecture. FWaaS can scale memory, cores, firewall deployments, and bandwidth as needed to handle the needs of the organization.
• Proxy-based architecture: Many FWaaS technologies act as a proxy. They create a flow of encrypted communication between the FWaaS and the requesting endpoint as well as a second flow of encrypted communication between the requested resource and the FWaaS.This design allows for dynamic inspection of traffic for users, applications, devices, and locations. The FWaaS holds the encryption keys to decrypt and natively inspect Secure Sockets Layer and Transport Layer Security (SSL/TLS) traffic at scale to detect malware hidden in encrypted traffic as well as enable granular firewall policies.
• Centralized management: With the ubiquitous reach of the internet, FWaaS can deploy standardized firewalls in different data centers that are configured and monitored through one software window and centralized expertise. FWaaS delivers equivalent protection to dispersed users, on any device, from any location, and to any resource.

FWaaS firewall technologies

FWaaS deploy a range of basic and advanced firewall, NGFW, and UTM functions at scale to provide added security and protection. These technologies include:

• Deep packet inspection (DPI)
• Device security
• Domain Name System (DNS) security and control
• Firewall rules
• Internet Protocol (IP) mapping
• IP whitelisting
• Network monitoring
• Packet inspection and filtering
• Port and protocol filtering
• Secure connections
• Advanced IT architecture
• Precise user segmentation
• Secure access service edge (SASE)
• Software-defined wide area network
• Zero-trust architecture

See more: 6 Top Firewall-as-a-Service Providers

How Does Firewall-As-A-Service Fit The IT And Cybersecurity Environment?

FWaaS deploys in IT architecture with a similar philosophy to local firewall appliances: Place the security between the uncontrolled environment, usually the internet, and the controlled environment, such as a local network, cloud resource, or remote user.

FWaaS broadens the capabilities of local appliances and expands the type of resources that can be protected by the firewall capabilities to include cloud resources like SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS as well as multiple geographically dispersed local networks and remote users.

Is FWaaS setup difficult?

FWaaS simplifies deployment by eliminating all of the hardware configuration, setup, and hardening for firewall appliances, virtual machines, or software. Organizations can proceed directly to the steps of managing the firewall settings for security features, network traffic management, and connecting devices to the firewalls.

To connect devices to a FWaaS generally involves changing router settings or remote access IP addresses to direct traffic to the FWaaS. Traffic automatically flows through the FWaaS provider and from there to the required resources.

The deployment is much easier than deploying multiple hardware appliances across multiple branch office local networks. Some specialized configurations may be required for specific environments like data centers and cloud-based applications, but these configurations can be standardized and centrally managed by the firewall experts managing the FWaaS deployment.

Is a FWaaS necessary with firewall appliances?

Replacing local network firewalls will not always be necessary if an organization has:

• A small number of local networks
• A small number of users on the local network
• Local firewalls that can provide all of the needed security features without exceeding memory, CPU usage, or network bandwidth
• A local firewall capital expenditure (CapEx) that is paid-off but not yet obsolete

The local firewall will have very low latency for local devices connecting to local resources, and a paid-off firewall appears to have very little costs from the perspective of the CFO.

However, the organization should verify the true costs and capabilities of the local firewall are accurate. For example:

• Paid-off firewalls tend to be older and may lack capabilities or sacrifice performance.
• The labor needed for constant updates and patching of firewalls needs to be allocated to the expenses associated with the firewall to accurately capture their ongoing costs.

Fortunately, FWaaS can be inexpensive to test. An organization can deploy a FWaaS instance for a local network and verify improvements in performance, security, and maintenance time. If the performance does not meet their expectations, they can cancel their subscriptions and switch the routers back to internal hardware.

Is a FWaaS necessary with ISP firewall services?

Internet service providers offer firewall services, but keep in mind their offering is generic and meant to be a lowest common-denominator applicable to all of their customers. Most customers can achieve much more effective security by taking direct control over their firewall and customizing the settings to match the needs of the organization.

What are the advantages of FWaaS for PaaS, IaaS, SaaS?

In the shared security model, organizations deploying PaaS and IaaS must deploy firewalls to protect their infrastructure and applications deployed to the cloud. SaaS does not necessarily require firewall protection, but SaaS tools generally do not screen traffic for unauthorized devices, access from malicious or unknown IP addresses, or unusual behavior like credential stuffing or multiple concurrent logins.

Adding a cloud-based firewall specifically for a PaaS or IaaS environment protects only that environment. Additionally, these cloud-based local firewalls often will introduce the same weaknesses as other local network firewalls compared to FWaaS:

• Resource constraints for packet inspection
• Less features
• Most inconsistencies in rules and settings
• More maintenance time required to keep the devices current
• Less centralized information on threats and attacks in progress

Deploying FWaaS provides a centralized location to manage firewall settings, observe threats across all environments, and improve firewall performance.

What are the downsides of FWaaS?

FWaaS tools do present some trade-offs compared to local networks.

• Increased local network latency: If all traffic routes through FWaaS solutions, devices that used to connect through a local network connection without any monitoring might experience increased latency if the traffic reroutes through a FWaaS with packet inspections. Organizations might need to consider which has priority: security or speed.
• OpEx increase: Shifting from CapEx hardware to OpEx services can be seen as increasing costs compared to local hardware. Organizations need to accurately assign labor costs for maintenance and updates for local firewalls to accurately compare costs.
• Single point of failure: Companies that used to have many different local firewalls, may find themselves sending all of their traffic through a single, cloud-based service provider.

Whether this increases the risk or decreases the risk depends upon an accurate comparison of local risks, such as inconsistent settings and an inability to keep up with packet inspections, versus FWaaS risks like possible company shutdown with FWaaS failure or possible breach of all traffic with FWaaS hack. The risk probabilities and the organization’s ability to control the consequences should be honestly evaluated and compared.

Further benefits and downsides:

See more: Firewall-as-a-Service: Ultimate Guide & Definition

What Are The Differences Between Firewall-As-A-Service And Traditional Firewalls?

As with other cloud and as-a-service offerings, FWaaS technology isn’t new, but it takes full advantage of the scalability and reach of the cloud.

Any computer, server, router, or application faces the burden of processing traffic received from the network, filtering out harmful traffic, and continuing to communicate with other devices. Firewall solutions relieve these devices of some of that burden and protect a resource from unauthorized users, traffic, and threats, such as malware.

While firewalls can be deployed directly on devices, with host-based firewalls or network address translation firewalls or in front of specific applications, with web application firewalls (WAFs), FWaaS primarily replaces traditional network security firewalls.

Placing a firewall as the first point of contact at the edge of a network enables an organization to protect against unsecured external networks, such as the internet.

Firewall-as-a-service is a natural outgrowth of several technologies: firewall; unified threat management (UTM); and next-generation firewall (NGFW).

Traditional firewalls typically have been deployed as dedicated physical appliances, virtual appliances, or as software on servers. These traditional deployments only cover the local networks behind the firewall, and the firewall license, the hardware connected to the firewall, and the local network bandwidth act as hard capability limits for the firewall’s capabilities.

These constraints limit the capabilities of traditional firewalls in significant ways:

• Limited processing cores and memory cap the capacity.
• Limited network bandwidth caps the amount of traffic that can pass through the firewall without delay, which limits the resources a single firewall appliance can protect.
• Limited overall capacity limits what features can be enabled or licensed.

Moving to the cloud enables FWaaS providers to deploy functionally-unlimited cores, memory, storage, features, and bandwidth. With limits removed, customers can now determine the security features they need and can deploy it across as many resources as needed worldwide.

As a caution, be aware of the difference between cloud firewalls and FWaaS. While the term isn’t standardized, cloud firewalls typically act as a traditional local-network firewall with the usual resource and bandwidth limitations, only installed into a cloud environment’s virtual network.

FWaaS Vendor Example

Many different vendors offer FWaaS solutions, but most offer FWaaS as an integrated feature for zero-trust network access (ZTNA) or secure access service edge (SASE) solutions. However, some vendors offer stand-alone FWaaS solutions, and we examine Cloudflare’s Magic Firewall as an example.

Cloudflare Magic Firewall provides the cloud-based foundation for Cloudflare One, a SASE solution. However, Cloudflare also offers Magic Firewall as a stand-alone service with various features, such as:

• Ability to allow or block traffic based on bit field match, packet length, protocol, and source or destination IP and port
• Configured rules that deploy globally in < 500 ms
• Embedded distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) protection for IP subnets
• Geo-blocking based on user location by country
• Managed threat intelligence IP lists
• Single dashboard to manage firewall and network configuration

Cloudflare’s FWaaS builds on its distributed global network that provides access and protection for websites worldwide. The established security and DDoS protection transfers seamlessly to improve firewall protection and reach for global entities and their users.

Operating from data centers in 200 cities worldwide enables Cloudflare Magic Firewall to provide low latency and scale to widely dispersed users and offices. However, while the capabilities are global and widespread, the control remains centralized, simple, and visible.

Firewall-As-A-Service Market

The global firewall-as-a-service market had an estimated value of $1.8 billion in 2021, and it is projected to reach $15.6 billion by 2031, according to Globe Newswire. The compound annual growth rate (CAGR) is estimated to reach 24.6% between 2022 and 2031.

The firewall-as-a-service has grown due to cybersecurity measures needed around the globe and due to the demand for cloud-based firewall service needs.

Bottom Line

The adoption of FWaaS solutions continues to revolutionize the IT landscape. Organizations continue to enjoy increased financial flexibility as they offload CapEx expenses and their associated maintenance and integration requirements.

FWaaS is no exception. Organizations that adopt FWaaS can enjoy the full functionality of firewall security with possible improvements for costs, consistency, performance, and security. Any organization looking to replace or upgrade their current firewall solution should consider FWaaS as a potential solution.

See more: 5 Top Firewall-as-a-Service Trends