7 Signs That Your Firewall Might Be Putting Your Business At Risk

One of the challenges that comes with advancing technology is that security threats evolve just as quickly. From ransomware and phishing attacks to increasingly sophisticated malware, businesses can no longer rely on traditional firewalls alone. To stay protected, organisations need security solutions that can adapt to modern threats. Here are seven warning signs that your customers’ current firewall strategy may be leaving them exposed.

1. How Easily Can You See What’s Happening on the Network?

Visibility is critical for network security. If your customers can’t see who or what’s going on than anything could be happening. If the threat cannot be identified then what they are doing will remain in a significant blind spot. In order to counter this issue, it is important to have thorough visibility into network activity.

2. Keeping Security Up to Date Is Becoming a Burden

Another problem with evolving technology is that cyber threats are evolving at a daily rate meaning there is a constant need to review and update the software. For many businesses they are still relying on old ways to keep the threats out. Tech teams having to manually prevent threats is time consuming and tiring. Having to spend large periods of time managing updates, reviewing security rules or responding to emerging threats, their firewall may be creating extra work for the team when in smaller teams especially, they are already tight on capacity. The more modern platforms help to reduce the load and instead make a lot of the processes automated allowing the tech teams to focus on other projects more.

3. Supporting Remote and Hybrid Work is Complicated

With the shift to enable more remote access to the central database, it adds an extra level of security necessary to prevent hackers infiltrating. Before it was easy to ring fence all of the network as everyone would work out of the office building so any external activity could be blocked.

Now however with employees attempting to access information from external locations, it leaves a chance of vulnerability with security gaps emerging. Customers need solutions that make the connection secure so that it keeps it simple for both administrators and end users as well as maintaining strong security.

4. Firewalls Are Only Performing Basic Traffic Filtering

As was mentioned before, a lot of the traditional security firewalls were designed to keep threats out as if it were a gate and fence. With modern security, simply denying traffic is no longer suitable for security against the ever more sophisticated attacks out there. In today’s world, businesses need malware detection, application awareness and web filtering as well as other elements which without, can leave critical security gaps.

5. Managing Multiple Sites Is A Complicated Task

It could be a whole host of different environments which use multi-site networks. For instance, shopping centres, warehouses or branch offices. For administrators, they have to firstly configure and then manage the security policies individually across every location. The issue with that is the inconsistency that can arise – making sure everything is the same can be a very precise task and not very time-efficient. This not only increases operational overhead but can also expose security weaknesses from issues such as configuration errors. The way a team should operate in a modern environment is centralising the policy management and visibility.

6. More Features Running Means Dips In Performance

An old complaint from customers who don’t have modern setups is that when they try to add features to make their security stronger that it makes the whole network slower. That would be down to high demand on the network to maintain everything operating. However, this is not something that should be compromised, if the throughput is struggling then instead of reducing features to improve the performance, investing in updating the firewall platform should be looked at instead.

7. Compliance Conversations Are Becoming More Difficult

As compliance requirements continue to evolve, customers are increasingly being asked to prove their security controls are effective. Whether it’s Cyber Essentials, GDPR, cyber insurance, or customer audits, access to clear reporting and security visibility is essential. If gathering evidence is time-consuming or complicated, it may indicate their current firewall is no longer fit for purpose. Modern firewall solutions help simplify compliance by providing centralised reporting, policy management, and audit-ready insights.

WatchGuard Can Protect and Prevent

If any of these warning signs sound familiar, it may be time to review your customer’s security infrastructure. Modern cybersecurity challenges require solutions that go beyond traditional firewall capabilities. WatchGuard Firebox combines advanced threat protection, network visibility, secure remote access and centralised management within a single platform. This helps organisations identify threats faster, simplify administration and maintain consistent protection across users, devices and locations.

The Firebox can help reduce many of the operational burdens associated with older security infrastructure. Just by having a system whereby users can access the network from remote locations in a secure manner is a massive step up from what used to be the norm. It’s not just remote access that modern WatchGuard is capable of, multi-site management, supporting compliance initiatives and providing detailed reporting are all very much accessible with WatchGuard’s Portfolio.

If you’d like to discuss how your customers can modernise their firewall infrastructure, our team is here to help. Contact us at security@purdi.com to start the conversation.