Managed Firewall
Services
Next-generation firewall protection with full Unified Threat Management, delivered through the Cloud Gateway platform. Your security policy, applied, enforced and managed on your behalf, with no hardware to own and no change backlog to manage.
What is Managed Firewall?
Managed Firewall is Cloud Gateway’s cloud-delivered managed firewall service: Unified Threat Management (UTM) applied to the traffic passing through the platform from your connected endpoints, with the rules defined by you and the policy applied, enforced and managed by us. You get next-generation firewalling, from essential Layer 3/4 filtering through to deep packet inspection, IPS/IDS and threat intelligence, without buying, housing or maintaining any hardware, and without carrying the operational burden of keeping it current.
Most organisations deployed their firewalls properly once, then left them to drift. Rules were opened for projects that ended and never closed. A patch was skipped and forgotten. The person who configured it left, and their replacement inherited an estate with no documentation and no ownership. Nobody did anything wrong, but the posture erodes, and the questions an auditor asks about change control and patching become hard to answer cleanly.
Managed Firewall replaces that pattern with a governed service. Cloud Gateway designs the configuration, applies the rules you define, manages changes through a controlled process, and monitors the service around the clock. The result is firewall protection that stays current and can be evidenced, rather than an estate that quietly falls out of step with the threats it’s meant to address.
For an explanation of firewall and UTM technology, you can find our firewall guides in the Knowledge Centre. This page covers what Cloud Gateway delivers.
Benefits of a Managed Firewall
Firewalling delivered through the platform rather than as appliances on your sites, so there’s nothing to buy, house, refresh or replace, and nothing physical to update as you scale.
You define the rules; Cloud Gateway designs the configuration, applies the policy and manages changes on your behalf, so protection is actively maintained rather than left to drift.
Layer 3/4 firewalling, DNS inspection, Geo-IP and IP reputation blocking, antivirus and anti-malware, IPS/IDS and deep packet inspection, with threat intelligence kept up to date.
Changes run through a governed process, so when an assessor asks who changed what and when, the answer can be shown rather than reconstructed.
Policy applied consistently rather than configured piece by piece, with one place to see traffic, utilisation and policy events.
Cloud Gateway monitors the service 24/7, on UK data centres and UK network infrastructure.
What's included
You define the firewall rules and which protections apply to each. Cloud Gateway designs and configures the service to those requirements, applies and manages the policy, provides access to the Cloud Gateway Portal, and monitors the service around the clock.
The service provides a full Unified Threat Management capability set, which typically includes:
- Layer 3/4 firewalling to control traffic against your defined rules.
- DNS inspection to filter requests by domain category, block known malicious domains, and apply your own allow and block lists.
- Geo-IP and IP reputation blocking to stop traffic by country of origin or from addresses with a negative reputation, using centralised threat intelligence.
- Antivirus and anti-malware drawing on up-to-date threat intelligence.
- IPS/IDS to monitor traffic against known threats and deny traffic matching a known threat profile.
- And deep packet inspection, which decrypts and inspects encrypted traffic so policy can be applied to what’s inside the packet rather than just its source and destination.
Managed Firewall is delivered through the Cloud Gateway platform rather than as hardware on your sites, and secures traffic to and from your connected endpoints. It’s a firewall service, not a SOC or SIEM: security monitoring, alert triage and managed detection and response sit outside it, as do Web Application Firewall and Secure Internet Access, which are separate components of the platform.
Our case studies
Organisations
we’ve helped
How Managed Firewall is delivered
The service is set up during platform onboarding and run from there.
01. Step one
First, we gather your requirements: the rules and IP routes you need and which policy protections should apply to each.
02. Step two
Second, we design and configure the service to those requirements, including the setup needed for deep packet inspection where it’s in use.
03. Step three
Third, we test and confirm the firewall service is working as intended before it goes live on your network.
04. Step four
Fourth, the service is monitored, with changes handled through a governed change process and traffic visible in the Portal.
Common questions about Managed Firewall
What is a managed firewall service?
A managed firewall service is one where the provider takes operational responsibility for your firewall: design and configuration, applying and managing the rules, change control, monitoring and reporting. You define the security policy; the provider applies and maintains it. With Cloud Gateway, that’s delivered through the platform, with no hardware for you to own.
What is Unified Threat Management (UTM)?
UTM combines multiple security functions in one service rather than as separate products. Cloud Gateway’s UTM capability set includes Layer 3/4 firewalling, DNS inspection, Geo-IP and IP reputation blocking, antivirus and anti-malware, IPS/IDS and deep packet inspection.
What's the difference between managed and unmanaged firewall?
An unmanaged firewall is something you own and operate: you handle configuration, patching, rule changes and evidence. A managed firewall is operated by a provider against agreed service levels, with changes and evidence delivered as part of the service. Organisations move to managed firewall to close the governance and patching gaps that build up when a firewall is left to drift.
Is Managed Firewall delivered as hardware on my sites?
No. Managed Firewall is delivered through the Cloud Gateway platform. It applies policy to traffic to and from your connected endpoints, with no appliance for you to buy, house or maintain.
What is deep packet inspection?
Deep packet inspection decrypts encrypted traffic so security policy can be applied to what’s inside the packet rather than just its source and destination. This makes the other protections more effective, since policy can act on the content of the traffic rather than an encrypted envelope.
Does Managed Firewall include security monitoring or a SOC?
No. Managed Firewall applies and manages your firewall policy and monitors the service itself around the clock, but it is not a SOC or SIEM. Continuous security alert triage, threat hunting and managed detection and response are separate capabilities. For how security fits across the platform, see Protect.
Related reading
Take control of
your firewall estate
A firewall left to drift becomes the thing you can’t answer for when the auditor asks. Cloud Gateway designs the configuration, applies your policy, manages changes with the evidence to show for it, and monitors the service around the clock, so your firewall protection stays current and defensible with no console for your team to run. One platform, one UK team, one point of accountability.