What Are Distributed Firewalls and How Do They Work?

A distributed firewall deploys firewall solutions across multiple points in a network. Instead of having one singular ingress and egress point for traffic, a distributed firewall embeds security at several points in a network, often within each virtual environment. A decentralized approach to managing traffic allows businesses to construct granular defenses, improving traffic filtering while allowing for more advanced network security practices.

Key Takeaways

• Traditional firewalls construct a network defense at the perimeter of a network, monitoring all traffic.
• Distributed firewalls deploy at the edge of individual network components, embedding into several network environments.
• Distributed firewalls are more scalable, flexible, and granular than traditional firewalls.
• Large-scale businesses that work across multiple hubs or digital platforms absolutely need to turn to a distributed approach.
• Businesses can couple distributed firewalls with other network monitoring systems to enhance their cybersecurity posture.

How Does a Distributed Firewall Differ from a Traditional Firewall?

Traditional firewalls date back to when enterprise networks were completely centralized. When a business only had on-premises architecture, it made sense to consolidate the protection of all network resources to an external perimeter. By closely monitoring what came in and out of that perimeter, security teams could essentially maintain complete visibility over their attack surface.

The major problem with a traditional approach is that business networks are no longer centralized. Especially with the mass movement toward data modernization, there are now more businesses than ever before relying on cloud services, using SaaS applications, or working with third-party providers for various services. When data is structured across many of these smaller surfaces, a centralized security perimeter no longer effectively protects every environment.

A distributed firewall aims to fix this issue, deploying across multiple environments to ensure cloud environments, remote access points, and every single network segment are properly protected. The distributed approach also allows businesses to configure the exact security architecture and policies they put in place at every one of these perimeters.

This new approach to firewalls also extends the capabilities of traditional systems, working off the assumption that a threat may already be present in the system. Instead of focusing almost entirely on the potential for external threats to attack the perimeter, distributed firewalls also search for anomalies within internal data to identify existing threats.

Across the board, the use of distributed firewalls better aligns with modern business IT infrastructure and allows companies to scale their businesses horizontally without worrying about an inflexible perimeter protection strategy.

How Distributed Firewalls Work: Features and Capabilities

Distributed firewalls have a range of features that work together to provide holistic protection across multiple network environments.

Below are some of the main features and capabilities that allow admins to manage distributed firewall security:

• Centralized Management: Although distributed firewalls deploy across multiple environments, security teams manage them from one centralized platform. First of all, this allows admins to write baseline blanket security configurations and have them apply to all perimeters in the network. For example, if a specific security configuration is mandated within a compliance framework, businesses can easily apply that policy across the entire network. Secondly, the centralized management system ensures that when it comes to making granular configurations, admins know exactly where to look to address and modify the security settings of different environments. Keeping management centralized improves auditing, compliance reporting, and visibility.
• Individual Host Protection: Another central component of distributed firewalls is their ability to protect specific workloads. By having multiple protections across a network, any malicious actor that does gain access is still limited in their ability to move horizontally through your system. Restricting free movement with these multiple-layered forms of security creates a more effective baseline level of protection for your organization.
• Real-time Updates and Monitoring: Distributed firewalls monitor network activity around the clock, providing admins with complete visibility into company systems. With real-time updates, any emerging security threat reported by a connected threat analysis system will automatically update the firewall. Over time, this means admins will have to spend less time monitoring systems and can instead focus on responding to high-priority events. By referencing providers within the Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEVs) database, businesses can see which firewall providers have the strongest product integrity when it comes to maintaining vulnerability-free software throughout update cycles.
• Flexibility and Scalability: The distributed part of these modern firewalls makes them extremely effective at scaling with your business. Whenever a company adds a new system or cloud workload, admins can simply add a new instance of the firewall to protect it. Instead of having to redesign any security architecture, this distributed approach allows businesses to scale their security provisions alongside any internal expansions.

The Importance of a Distributed Firewall in an Enterprise Environment

While all businesses stand to benefit from using distributed firewalls, nowhere is this more the case than within enterprise environments. Organizations with over 500 employees, especially those that span across several global hubs, will have sprawling and deeply complex network architecture. From drawing upon cloud compute and storage to using a litany of SaaS tools to keep employees connected, enterprises need a solution that scales with their business and meets their network demands.

Here are a few reasons why enterprises are set to reap the most benefits from moving to a distributed firewall architecture:

• Securing Multi-Branch Organizations: Organizations with multiple branches often have numerous hubs across the world through which traffic flows. Instead of routing all traffic potentially through high-latency pathways to consolidate traffic into a singular firewall, a distributed approach allows for low-latency, high-connectivity transmission. Additionally, the distributed model allows organizations to apply granular security configurations to meet any local security compliance frameworks for that particular region. This approach is significantly more adaptable and allows businesses to secure their networks without sacrificing performance.
• Strengthening Remote Worker Security: The movement to remote working has dramatically increased the total attack surface that security admins need to contend with. Especially for companies that embrace BYOD, employees now exist completely outside the traditional network perimeter. Switching to a distributed approach allows businesses to apply enterprise-grade security to these devices, giving employees the security they need to function no matter where they are in the world. By deploying firewalls at the edge, businesses can achieve complete visibility into these remote connections while applying granular security controls to remote workers.
• Safeguarding Cloud-Based Services: Businesses often use hybrid cloud environments to balance their need for flexible and scalable resource access with security control. With more companies modernizing by embracing the cloud, distributed firewalls that can integrate directly into this infrastructure are becoming more necessary. Using these firewalls helps companies to keep track of incoming and outgoing traffic into their cloud environments, monitoring and detecting any cloud-based threats as quickly as possible.

Who Should Use a Distributed Firewall?

Any organization that routinely uses or engages with distributed services, from cloud systems to SaaS solutions, should absolutely consider moving to a distributed firewall system. While traditional systems have worked for many years, they’re now incompatible with the average IT infrastructure that most businesses use.

While a singular perimeter worked well with more limited and location-specific network models, the modernization of IT has led to a misalignment between this system and the needs of businesses. A distributed approach to firewall deployment affords businesses the same level of protection by bringing that defense closer to individual services.

This at-the-edge approach for individual services allows for granular, workload-level policy enforcement and continuous inspection of traffic, completely eclipsing the need for a rigid outer network perimeter. By securing assets based on context, individual location behavior, and identity, businesses can create stronger firewalls at each site. As a result, organizations gain tighter control over how applications communicate, dramatically reducing the risk of lateral movement and internal compromise.

Another point to consider is that any business working in a highly regulated industry should absolutely look to distributed firewalls. Fields like tech, law, and healthcare would all benefit from the additional granular control over security settings that distributed firewalls offer. Their ability to contain threats and prevent lateral movement is essential for businesses where even a small data breach could be catastrophic for regulatory and customer trust reasons.

Protect Your Network with Check Point

As enterprises continue to distribute their workloads across different cloud systems, platforms, remote users, and branch offices, traditional perimeter-based firewalls can no longer protect entire company networks. Specialized and distributed firewalls are essential to modern security, by operating across each of these network environments and protecting different environments, rather than only operating at the network edge.