What is firewall as a service (FWaaS)?

Brazil's Public Defender's Office for Human Rights is one of the many organizations that has jumped on the firewall bandwagon and it’s easy to see why. Thanks to its hybrid mesh firewall setup, the office faced 99% fewer suspicious emails and practically non-existent security incidents that once climbed to 500+ a year.

It's not just a one-off success story — firewalls have been our first line of defense against cyber threats since the 1980s and are still going strong, even with a flood of other cybersecurity solutions on the market.

But how do firewalls fit into today’s remote-first, distributed, and cloud-driven IT world where networks are constantly shifting, threats are more sophisticated, and data is sprawling across multiple environments?

The answer is firewall as a service (FWaaS)— a cloud-based solution that centralizes traffic inspection by combining next-generation firewall (NGFW) capabilities with unified threat management (UTM).

Traditional firewalls are built to handle traffic within physical office spaces. FWaaS moves your firewall to the cloud where it can scale up or down to fit modern IT needs. It also helps take a lot of the heavy lifting off your IT team's shoulders with built-in advanced analytics and real-time, granular visibility across multiple micro-perimeters.

It’s an approach garnering a lot of enterprise interest right now, with the global FWaaS market valued at $2.53 billion (£1.92 billion) by Grand View Research in 2022 and expected to grow to $12.2 billion (£9.27 billion) by 2030.

How does FWaaS work?

FWaaS directs all network traffic—whether from in-house systems, remote users, or cloud-based resources—through a cloud-based firewall.

Brian Soby, a former Salesforce security director and partner at Freefly Security raves about FWaaS, calling it a "Swiss Army knife" for security.

“FWaaS integrates intrusion prevention systems (IPS), firewalls, and virtual private networks (VPNs) into one powerful tool for improved threat detection," he tells ITPro . This all-in-one approach is a big selling point when you're talking to people about cybersecurity.”

The integrated firewall scrutinizes network traffic with deep packet inspection and creates a strong perimeter defense. Later, an IPS detects policy violations and protocol anomalies inside the network that manage to bypass those barriers, while the VPN ensures secure, remote access to employees over the cloud.

Unlike traditional firewalls that require individual configuration, FWaaS provides a unified console where IT teams can control security policies and enforce compliance across the entire network.

FWaaS also gatekeeps the IT network by employing a software-defined perimeter (SDP) for a dynamic and secure boundary around your internal resources. The idea is built on zero trust network access (ZTNA) where only authenticated and authorized users can access your network.

The benefits of FWaaS

Even though its still nascent, cloud native FWaaS is working its way into organizations' security setups, thanks to ease of management and dynamic threat protection.

One of the biggest long-term benefits of FWaaS is its ability to create a resilient and cost-effective IT environment. “FWaaS shifts IT from an OpEx to a CapEx model, making it more cost-effective,” explains Lloyd Hopper of AlgoSec.

This shift means IT admins don’t have to spend on physical appliances or deal with the headaches of repairs, and replacements. Oliver Page, CEO at CyberNut adds to this, noting, "The providers handle security updates and management, which translates to lower maintenance costs for us."

Here’s a look at some of the other benefits of FWaaS:

• Flexibility: FWaaS helps by breaking the network into smaller, isolated zones using micro-segmentation, each with its own security rules. This setup makes it harder for threats to move around within the network and handles the complexities of distributed and multi-cloud environments. Traditional firewalls, however, are usually built for a single, static perimeter and don’t offer this kind of flexibility.
• Deep integrations: FWaaS takes a flexible approach to network security by teaming up with cloud-native tools like Terraform. This means teams get automated security policy management, infrastructure as code (IaC) , and smooth updates across cloud environments.
• Hardware-free scalability: FWaaS can autoscale based on traffic load and sudden spikes without needing new hardware. It also handles auto-updates and integrates smoothly with cloud orchestration tools so IT teams can tweak security policies and settings in real-time, based on cloud capabilities and incoming traffic.
• Zero trust security: Unlike traditional firewalls, which rely on a static perimeter approach and assume internal traffic is safe, FWaaS enforces granular, policy-based access controls to continuously validate user identities, device health, and access requests.

Things can more smoothly as IT teams harness the power of AI . Page notes that FWaaS, when combined with AI and machine learning (ML) , can offer better prevention. This is because AI can analyze vast amounts of data and use it to detect and block threats, an advantage traditional firewalls cannot offer.

Where does FWaaS sit within SASE?

Secure access service edge (SASE) brings together FWaaS, WAN, SD-WAN , and security service edge (SSE) to secure distributed teams and remote users with a global firewall policy. IT teams can now break down security siloes by enforcing the same set of security rules consistently across all users, no matter where they're located.

“Both FWaaS and SASE are cloud-based and work well with other cloud services and applications to offer a cohesive, decentralized security solution,” explains Page.

FWaaS also offers edge -based deployment that aligns well with SASE’s principle of providing security closer to the network edge. Placing the firewall closer to users and devices allows it to inspect and regulate traffic at its source to enable secure communications right from the point of entry.

Alongside other SASE security tools, FWaaS can enable real-time, 360-degree visibility into network traffic and identify patterns, or anomalies that might make IT systems vulnerable.

Secure and seamless device experience

For example, FWaaS alerts the ZTNA system to temporarily restrict data access if any suspicious activity is detected from an employee's device. Or if it identifies a website that shows signs of a social engineering attack , the system notifies a secure web gateway to block site access for everyone on the network.

Another benefit of FWaaS is that it can dynamically learn from threats. By analyzing the data and feedback it collects from SASE-enabled tools, FWaaS can continuously improve its own detection algorithms and reduce the risk of false positives.

“FWaaS-SASE integration is valuable in today’s increasingly distributed and cloud-centric environments, providing effective threat prevention and data protection while supporting the dynamic needs of modern businesses,” says Hopper.