When it comes to a business' overall strategy in cybersecurity, the first thing that should come to mind in terms of network security and defense are your firewalls. They act as an integral part of your defense mechanism for your business security. Just as much as firewalls are important for your business, so also are the regular maintenance, monitoring, and management of your firewalls. In this article, we would take you through:
- What a Managed firewall is
- Benefits of a managed firewall for your business or organization
- The reasons you need a managed firewall
- The significance of Managed firewall services and Managed security services
Let’s get right into it.
What is a Managed Firewall?
In simple terms, a Managed firewall describes a service that is provided by MSSPs that are qualified. MSSP stands for Managed Security Services Providers. They are responsible for addressing any security threat and monitor your business' network traffic to understand the flow and usage so that threats can be easily identified and handled promptly.
A firewall is not a “one setting fits all” type of product. It requires regular maintenance and proper upkeep to ensure your business is protected all-round.
A managed Firewall ensures that:
- The firewall rules are clearly defined and followed to the letter; also, in a case of modification, there is a proper attestation to such
- Patches, updates, and policies are applied, managed, and updated at the best time
- Hands-on monitoring is in place with regular analysis, feedback, and reports on different network traffic patterns and possible threats
Recent and advanced models of firewalls can be very complex and complicated for most businesses. They would require the skills of an expert to install, get it functioning, and maintain it. Coupled with this, firewalls come with numerous updates to help mitigate threats. This is where a managed Firewall Service from an MSSP plays an important role. A managed firewall service uses a proactive approach to applying these updates and monitoring the firewall to make sure it is current.
With a managed firewall, your business much faster protection from threats from the hands of a specialist who is on the ground to monitor and potentially respond to activities from your firewall. On the other hand, businesses with unmanaged firewall won’t have the luxury of time to monitor the happenings surrounding the firewall, not to mention reporting and addressing concerns as they occur.
Benefits of a Managed Firewall
The benefits that a managed firewall holds for your business or company are numerous. A managed firewall service offers your business real-time assurance of a healthy firewall, blocking threats, and protection from network security threats.
If, in the case that IT is not your business niche, it can be difficult to create time to update and maintain your firewalls regularly. This becomes even more difficult when you do not have the resources as compared to firewall experts.
Employing a managed firewall service for your business ensures that threats are tracked, experts with the right skills are notified, and the threat is responded to immediately and stopped. Furthermore, a well-managed firewall can stop new zero-day vulnerabilities from the source before updates and patches are even available for such upcoming threats.
With the growing trend of businesses becoming more distributed, the need for managed technologies has never been more needful than now. This has a large role to play in the success of any business in this growing age and time. According to the President and CEO of SonicWall, Bill Conner, he addressed the need for such services “With companies forever changing how they operate with remote employees and offices, it's more important than ever to ensure the maximum performance of applications, traffic, and workflows. These additions will allow IT departments to focus on other issues at hand, reduce budget constraints, and finally address the shortage of critical cybersecurity skills”.
Reasons why your Business needs a Managed Firewall
As regarding the importance of a managed firewall to your business, here are the top reasons why you should consider opting for a managed firewall service.
Multiple Firewalls
Managed firewalls become important for businesses and organizations that make use of several firewalls, and they require proper and regular management, monitoring, and maintenance. This becomes more important when such an organization does not have sufficient firewall expertise or have issues retaining such a skill set. Moreover, having a managed firewall service makes it easier to install and configure new firewalls for multiple locations more efficiently and quickly as you already have dedicated accounts and resources.
Skills
No doubt maintaining a firewall, especially one for your business niche, requires a lot of skills to keep it current. This requires a person with the right set of skills and knowledge to be able to get it up and running as well as keeping it up-to-date. Managed firewalls are your best bet for their comprehensive tools and encompassing processes put in place to manage your firewall infrastructure.
Cost of staffing specialized IT personnel
Keeping a specialized IT on your staff roll can be very expensive, especially when you need them for just some task. A Managed Firewall service ensures that you pay for only the service you received while allowing your other IT resources major or focus on other business strategic sections of your IT infrastructure.
Leveraging new capabilities
There is always an evolving trend of firewall capabilities, including more features and configurations. With a managed firewall for your business, these features and capabilities would be considered and activated once the need arises. The only way your business can leverage such opportunities is by banking on a managed firewall service.
Firewall auditing and reporting
Businesses or companies that find it difficult to regularly audit or check their firewall configurations, rules, and policies would need the service of a managed firewall service provider. Managed Firewall service providers specialize in auditing your firewall regularly and get them up-to-date, up-to-standard, and maintained regularly. With such auditing and reporting in place, your business is sure of real-time assurance of all-round protection from threats and security concerns.
Meeting Compliance
For every industry and sector, certain compliance mandates must be met regarding managing data, IT infrastructure, and security. Employing the services of a managed firewall service provider ensures that your business is compliant with these rules, policies, and patch processes as they all require specific compliance requirements.
Managed Firewall services and Managed Security Services
The benefits of employing a managed firewall service are enormous and quite significant for your business growth. This includes network protection, hands-on monitoring and reporting, adequate policy compliance, and proactive response time to any activity on your firewall.
Businesses are now adopting the pathway of Managed Security Services to help fill the gaps in skills, achieve better coverage for security, and doing all this at a reduced cost. Following a statement by ResearchAndMarkets.com on managed security Service market analysis, they stated, "Rising security breaches and sophisticated cyber-attacks across enterprises are driving the overall growth of the Managed Security Services (MSS) market. The global MSS market size is expected to grow from USD 31,659 million in 2020 to USD 46,425 million by 2025.”
If you are not yet sure if a managed firewall is the right choice for your business or organization, a Sun IT Solutions offers a free firewall audit. We assign an expert to walk you through the different types of firewalls you may have installed and help in examining if you are protected properly from cyber and security threats.
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