Firewalls cover links coming from anywhere—from a branch office or even from a remote worker’s studio—and FWaaS (firewall as a service) does the same in the cloud, but how do they actually work, and are they better than standard firewalls?
What Are the Types of Firewalls?
Firewalls for personal electronic devices allow you to control the traffic to and from a destination, incorporating different rules and thus, ensuring that information arrives in the safest way possible and without the intrusion of third parties. To understand what an FWaaS is, you must understand how firewalls work and the types.
Generally speaking, firewalls are one of the most fundamental tools to protect laptops, computers, and phones adequately, and in the case of the cloud, FWaaS. The same happens with an FWaaS, they fulfill the same function, but they do it from the cloud. To understand this concept better, you can classify firewalls into three types:
Hardware Firewall
This kind of firewall is installed in routers used to access the internet; the firewall will protect only the devices behind the router. Most routers come with the firewall already installed.
Software Firewall
Software firewalls help keep your electronic device protected in public places as a program you install on your device will closely monitor network traffic to intercept malicious programs before they reach your computer. These are the most popular and come in all forms and shapes. You can either pay for one or get a free firewall like TinyWall, which is considered one of the best ones.
FWaaS
Firewall as a service (FWaaS, sometimes known as FaaS or cloud firewall) works the same way as the last two firewalls, but it’s cloud-based. An FWaaS will also allow customers to move security inspection partially or fully to a cloud infrastructure. This means that an FWaaS will set a tailored barrier between your cloud and all systems and networks connected to it.
One of the main advantages of an FWaaS is that it simplifies IT infrastructure by providing traditional firewall and next-generation firewall (NGFW) features. These can be Domain Name System (DNS) security, web filtering, intrusion prevention system (IPS), and advanced threat protection (ATP). Cloud NGFW is also a trendy alternative for cloud security.
How Does Firewall as a Service Work?
The nature of an FWaaS is to provide complete network security based on the cloud. This eliminates the care and maintenance associated with traditional network security appliances. FWaaS solves the problems other security solutions face by applying a comprehensive security policy to both internet-connected traffic and users in fixed and mobile locations.
How It Differs From a Cloud Firewall
Cloud firewall is a marketing term and not a particularly useful one since it can cause some confusion. There are many different types of cloud firewalls. For example, an FWaaS or an NGFW cloud refers to a cloud firewall. So, the short answer is that a cloud firewall and FWaaS are not necessarily the same thing; it’s simply a type of made-up category.
What Can You Do With an FWaaS?
Firewall as a service can come in handy for various organizations because of the following capabilities:
A well-configured and managed FWaaS will allow you to control your organization’s confidential data like a Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB) would. FWaaS will allow you to define a barrier between the cloud and connected devices keeping unauthorized users aside while also stopping attacks on the private network from other external networks. FWaaS will also monitor and record services used on the internet. It will control the security of your network and individual computers when any suspicious activity occurs. Finally, it will allow you to control internet use by blocking or unblocking inappropriate or appropriate material, just like with a traditional firewall.
What Are the Benefits of FWaaS Over a Firewall?
Scalability
One of the great benefits of FWaaS is the speed to be implemented and the flexibility to grow comfortably without the need to invest in expensive device updates.
Performance on Demand
Since it runs in the cloud, FWaaS allows performance enhancements to scale and expand based on allocated cloud resources. This helps with surges in demand due to high utilization or simply to the user base or traffic without compromising features and functionality.
Mass-Enforced Access Policies
FWaaS can uniformly enforce security policy on all traffic to and from all devices and locations, which allows the definition and application of policies throughout the network and their auditing.
Is FWaaS Better Than a Normal Firewall for Cloud Security?
Software and hardware firewalls are still quite popular and helpful for specific organizations and users, especially for companies without many different locations and many remote workers. In some cases, they might even have some advantages over FWaaS, like cost profiles. One of the main disadvantages of FWaaS is that they can be costly and will likely not get cheaper over time.
In conclusion, traditional software or hardware firewalls will still protect you as an individual, even from the cloud itself. Most people don’t realize that cloud applications can also present threats and download viruses to your computer; a traditional firewall will definitely help you in this case.
If you run a small business where you can easily install firewalls in all devices connected to the cloud, they also get cheaper over time and have lower latency. If you access the cloud from different sources, like a phone, printer, or someone else’s computer, you could infect your cloud. An FWaaS will prevent this scenario because the firewall is cloud-based.
It’s best to have a cloud firewall (hopefully an FWaaS) while you use the cloud and a regular hardware or software firewall for when you are just browsing the internet. These will likely overlap in security tasks but will block all threats from your system.
Who Should Get Firewall as a Service?
Not having an FWaaS is like not having an antivirus on your computer, so it would be advisable for anyone working in the cloud to get one, or at least a different type of “cloud firewall” since an FWaaS can be pretty expensive for some individuals.
Ideally, an FWaaS would be an excellent option for overloaded IT teams within large companies relying heavily on the cloud rather than single individuals using the cloud. Instead of wasting resources sizing, deploying, patching, upgrading, and configuring numerous peripheral devices with traditional software, it will focus on delivering actual security value to the business through early detection and rapid mitigation of risks with less monitoring.
