Managed Firewall Services: What Is Included and Why It Matters
Next-generation firewalls are powerful — application control, intrusion prevention, web filtering, VPN — but their protection depends on how they are configured and maintained. A managed firewall service puts that work in the hands of specialists who do it every day.
What a good service includes
- Design and deployment of zones, policies, VPNs and logging
- 24×7 monitoring of health, threats and VPN tunnels
- Change management: every change requested, approved, implemented and documented
- Patching: firmware and threat signatures kept current
- Rule-base reviews: regular removal of unused, overly broad or duplicate rules
- Incident response when an attack is detected
- Reporting for management and auditors
Questions to ask a provider
- How quickly are change requests implemented, and how are emergencies handled?
- Who has administrative access, and is it logged?
- How fast are critical vulnerabilities patched?
- What is reported, and how often?
- Can you keep ownership of the hardware and configuration if you change provider?
When it makes sense
If you do not have security engineers available around the clock, or your firewalls are spread across many sites, a managed service usually delivers better protection at a predictable cost.
See our Managed Firewall service or request a firewall audit.
