One of the best things a business can do to improve productivity is to provide employees with reliable technology that doesn’t slow them down. A major piece of this (especially for companies with cloud based applications) is your internet speed.
Current provider speeds range from 20 MB/s to well over 200 MB/s compared to the old T1 speeds of 1.5 MB/s. Unfortunately, there are businesses who are paying for very fast connections from their providers but aren’t getting what they are paying for – and not because their provider is ripping them off. Many companies aren’t getting the performance they’re paying for because they’re using an old firewall.
The short explanation for a how a firewall works is this: when traffic comes into your network, it goes through your firewall first. The firewall takes it apart, makes sure it’s not malicious, puts it back together, and lets it into your network once it has been cleared.
Today’s firewalls are responsible for being fast and efficient gatekeepers of a network. They are built with more powerful hardware components to keep pace with the non-stop, on demand, more, faster, better, now, world. Older firewalls (or low end firewalls not built for business) just can’t keep up with modern internet speeds and cause a bottleneck with your traffic.
If you’re paying for a fast internet connection, but haven’t updated your firewall in a couple years, you could be wasting money by paying for speeds you aren’t getting. Investing a new firewall can help you get the internet speeds you’re paying for – and keep you safer.
In addition to causing a traffic bottleneck, older firewalls likely aren’t keeping you safe (they definitely aren’t keeping you safe if they haven’t been updated recently). Cyber security threats are evolving at a breakneck pace and older firewalls just don’t have the capabilities to keep out the newest threats.
Modern firewalls have vastly increased their memory capabilities and use more powerful processor chips, allowing them to play host to several incredibly important security services that previously were simply not possible due to the bottleneck that would have been created in the network.
Keeping Your Firewall Updated
Getting a new firewall typically isn’t a small expense and many companies set up their firewall then forget to actually install updates (making it basically an expensive paperweight). Thankfully industry leaders have heard this cry and have a solution: Firewall as a Service or FWaaS.
In this business model, rather than paying a big lump sum you pay your IT company or a security company a monthly fee for a firewall that’s always updated, so you’re always protected. Many of these plans also include replacing your physical firewall annually, which solves the issue of your physical firewall not being able to keep up with modern internet speeds.
Sometimes, FWaaS plans are rolled into a larger Security as a Service plan and combined with other security solutions like anti-virus and monitoring.
In the ever-evolving world of security, having a firewall that can meet and exceed network demand while maintaining security is critical to your company’s security and productivity. The advances in firewalls and Internet speeds of today mean you don’t have to sacrifice speed for security (and vice versa). You just have to make sure you’re using the right product.
