Enterprise-Grade Firewall Protection — Delivered From the Cloud
Firewall-as-a-Service (FWaaS) provides cloud-delivered next-generation firewall capabilities — eliminating the need for physical firewall hardware at branch locations while providing consistent security policy enforcement for all internet-bound traffic regardless of where users and devices connect.
What RLM Delivers on Firewall-as-a-Service
FWaaS is a core SASE component that replaces the data center backhaul model for branch security — but inspection quality, policy migration complexity, and latency impact vary significantly across providers. RLM advises on FWaaS platform selection and the migration from hardware firewalls.
How We Approach Firewall-as-a-Service
A structured path through the Firewall-as-a-Service decision — current-state discovery, shortlist and benchmark, commercial negotiation, then support until it is actually working.
Firewall Architecture Assessment
We document your current firewall architecture — rulesets, inspection policies, network segmentation, and the traffic flows that determine FWaaS requirements — establishing the migration baseline.
FWaaS Platform Evaluation
We evaluate FWaaS platforms — Palo Alto Prisma Access, Zscaler Internet Access, Cato Networks, Check Point Harmony Connect — against your inspection requirements, policy complexity, and geographic coverage.
Policy Migration Planning
Migrating firewall policies to FWaaS is often the most complex part of the transition. We design the policy migration approach — policy rationalization, translation methodology, and validation testing.
Performance & PoP Architecture
FWaaS latency depends on proximity to inspection PoPs. We evaluate PoP coverage for your user locations and design the traffic routing architecture that minimizes inspection latency.
Firewall-as-a-Service Evaluation Criteria
Before committing to any Firewall-as-a-Service platform, these are the points worth forcing a straight answer on.
Inspection Depth
FWaaS inspection capabilities vary significantly — SSL/TLS decryption, application identification, threat prevention, and URL filtering quality differ across platforms. Evaluate inspection depth against your security policy requirements.
Policy Complexity Migration
Complex hardware firewall rulesets don't translate directly to FWaaS policies. Evaluate the effort required to rationalize and migrate your existing policy to the FWaaS model before committing to a platform.
Latency Impact
Cloud-delivered inspection adds latency. Evaluate PoP proximity to your user locations and the measured latency impact on your latency-sensitive applications.
Private Application Traffic
FWaaS handles internet-bound traffic; private application access requires ZTNA or SD-WAN integration. Evaluate how the platform handles split-tunneling between internet and private application traffic.
Logging & Compliance
FWaaS must provide the traffic logs required for compliance frameworks. Evaluate log retention, log forwarding to SIEM, and the completeness of connection-level logging for your compliance requirements.
Cost vs. Hardware Firewall
FWaaS licensing costs must be modeled against hardware firewall CapEx and support costs. Evaluate the multi-year TCO including hardware refresh cycles, support contracts, and operational overhead.
"RLM gave us an objective view of our network options that no single vendor could. We replaced aging MPLS across 40 locations and came in 28% under our original budget."
The benchmark comes first. Without a baseline, “savings” is just a number a vendor gave you.
Where This Matters Most
Sector-specific considerations we see repeatedly in advanced networking engagements.
A Sample of the Advanced Networking Providers We Evaluate
RLM is vendor neutral. These are among 600+ providers in our evaluation set — inclusion here is not an endorsement, and we are paid by the provider you choose, not by any provider in particular. How that works →
Thinking About Firewall-as-a-Service?
Start with a no-cost conversation with an RLM network advisor — vendor neutral, no agenda, just clarity on the right path forward for your environment.
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