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What is a cloud firewall?

A cloud firewall is a security product that, like a traditional firewall, filters out potentially malicious network traffic. Unlike traditional firewalls, cloud firewalls are hosted in the cloud. This cloud-delivered model for firewalls is also called firewall-as-a-service (FWaaS).

Cloud-based firewalls form a virtual barrier around cloud platforms, infrastructure, and applications, just as traditional firewalls form a barrier around an organization’s internal network. Cloud firewalls can also protect on-premise infrastructure.

Introduction of a firewall

As you know A firewall is a security product that filters out malicious traffic. Traditionally, firewalls have run in between a trusted internal network and an untrusted network – e.g., between a private network and the Internet. Early firewalls were physical appliances that connected to an organization’s on-premise infrastructure. Firewalls block and allow network traffic according to an internal set of rules. Most firewalls allow administrators to customize these rules.

The border between a trusted network and the Internet is called the “network perimeter.” However, with the growing popularity of cloud computing, the network perimeter is mostly gone. Thus, cloud firewalls that form a virtual barrier between trusted cloud assets and untrusted Internet traffic are increasingly important.

Is firewall-as-a-service (FWaaS) different from cloud firewalls?

Firewall-as-a-Service, or FWaaS for short, is another term for cloud firewalls. Like other “as-a-service” categories, such as software-as-a-service (SaaS) or infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), FWaaS runs in the cloud and is accessed over the Internet, and third-party vendor updates and maintains it.

Why Do we use FWaaS?

Banks have a lot of physical security in place. Most brick-and-mortar banks will include security features like security cameras and bulletproof glass. Security guards and bank employees also help stop potential thieves, and cash is stored in highly secure safes.

But imagine if, instead of being kept in one place, each bank branch’s cash was stored in different safes all over the country that was operated by a company specializing in safe maintenance. How could the bank be sure that its money was secure without deploying additional security resources around its scattered safes? This is akin to what cloud firewalls do.

The cloud is like a bank with scattered resources, but instead of money, the cloud stores data and computational power. Authorized users can connect to the cloud from anywhere and on almost any network. Applications that run in the cloud can be running anywhere, and that also applies to cloud platforms and infrastructure.

Cloud firewalls block cyber attacks directed at these cloud assets. Deploying a cloud firewall is like replacing a bank’s local security cameras and a physical security guard with a global 24/7 security center that has a centralized staff and security camera feeds from all the places where a bank’s assets are stored.

What are the main advantages of using a cloud firewall/FWaaS?

• Flexible Deployment: The potential deployment locations of a physical firewall appliance are limited by an organization’s geographic footprint. FWaaS, as a cloud-based resource, does not share the same limitations.
• Simplified Deployment and Maintenance: Purchasing, deploying, and configuring physical firewall appliances can be a complex process and requires specialized knowledge to ensure that all systems are installed and set up correctly. With FWaaS, many of these setup steps are eliminated as these firewalls are implemented as virtualized appliances in the cloud.
• Improved Scalability: With physical firewall appliances, security scalability can be limited by the available hardware. FWaaS offers greatly improved scalability since the pool of available resources can expand and contract as an organization’s needs evolve.

• Malicious web traffic is blocked, including malware and bad bot activity. Some FWaaS products can also block sensitive data from going out.
• Traffic does not have to be funneled through a hardware appliance, so no network choke points are created.
• Cloud firewalls integrate easily with cloud infrastructure.
• Multiple cloud deployments can be protected at once (as long as the cloud firewall vendor supports each cloud).
• Cloud firewalls scale up rapidly to handle more traffic.
• Organizations do not need to maintain cloud firewalls themselves; the vendor handles all updates.

And In the following let’s learn the differences between a cloud firewall and a next-generation firewall.

The difference between a cloud firewall and a next-generation firewall (NGFW)?

A next-generation firewall (NGFW) is a firewall that includes new technologies that weren’t available in earlier firewall products, such as:

• Intrusion prevention system (IPS): An intrusion prevention system detects and blocks cyber attacks.
• Deep packet inspection (DPI): NGFWs inspect data packet headers and payload, instead of just the headers. This aids in detecting malware and other kinds of malicious data.
• Application control: NGFWs can control what individual applications can access, or block applications altogether.

NGFWs can run in the cloud or as on-premise hardware. A cloud-based firewall may have NGFW capabilities, but an on-premise firewall could also be an NGFW.

How Does Firewall as a Service Work?

Firewalls work by enforcing the custom rules that IT administrators set, and by blocking things on the network that they don’t want people to see.

When someone on the network tries to access something that is potentially dangerous, or if someone potentially dangerous tries to connect to the network, the firewall blocks this connection and displays the appropriate message.

This is similar to a legacy on-premises firewall but instead of being physically installed as an appliance connected to internet routers, it is offered via a third-party Firewall as a Service service provider and hosted on one panel in the cloud.

To implement rules in the firewall, IT has an administrative panel available via the internet where they can whitelist or blacklist URLs, block IP addresses and entire geographical areas, and otherwise create access rules for those inside and outside the network.

Configuring the firewall as a service feature is relatively simple, and generally involves changing your router settings and little else. Once the router is connected to the Firewall as a Service provider, internet traffic is routed through the provider instead of your own system.

How is possible for the FWaaS to fit into a SASE framework?

Secure access service edge, or SASE, is a cloud-based networking architecture that combines networking functions, like software-defined WANs, with a set of security services, including FWaaS. Unlike traditional networking models, where the perimeter of on-premise data centers has to be protected with on-premise firewalls, SASE offers comprehensive security and access control at the network edge.

Within a SASE networking model, cloud-based firewalls work in tandem with other security products to defend the network perimeter from attacks, data breaches, and other cyber threats. Rather than using multiple third-party vendors to deploy and maintain each service, companies can use a single vendor that bundles FWaaS, cloud access security broker (CASB) services, secure web gateways (SWG), and zero-trust network access (ZTNA) with SD-WAN capabilities.