On a daily basis, clients ask about managed firewall options. Should they buy a firewall and manage it internally or should they consider a managed firewall. This is an issue every company in need of IT solutions struggles with. Whether your company is one to manage all your colocation servers internally or if your company is one to farm out your colocation web hosting servers to a third party data center provider. In this article, we are going to explore that issue through looking at some of the pros and cons of managed firewall for colocation solutions.
Pros of Managed Firewall for Colocation Solutions
The positives of a managed firewall for colocation deployment come in two forms: a) you don’t have to deal with it directly and b) your managed colocation provider can provide and maintain the security features you need and want.
By utilizing a managed firewall for your colocation server needs, you are giving access to the colocation provider to carry out the following tasks:
- Basic and advanced packet filtering
- Applying security measures to however many connections your are processing per second
- Configuring various security avenues section by VLAN’s to maintain and limit traffic
- Customization of company security policies by way of filtering traffic
Aside from the specifics, allowing a third party colocation provider to operate your managed firewall means tapping into their expertise to handle all of your security needs and at the same time, being comfortable enough with your managed colocation solution to choice to allow you to implement the changes you need/want.
While the pros behind a managed colocation firewall are quite positive, at the same time you also have to realize by farming your firewall needs out to your managed colocation provider, you are losing granular control of your firewall settings.
Pros of Managing Your Own Colocation Firewall
If members of your IT staff have the knowledge and expertise to set up and maintain your colocation firewall, that is the probably the best avenue for you. With this said, we need to take the time to separate the benefits of managed colocation vs. the benefits of self-managed firewalls.
The reason managed colocation services sell so well is due to the solutions ability to allow the client to get back to running their business rather than focusing on IT. When it comes down to it, the majority of businesses on the market rightfully treat IT as a secondary part of their business, only talked about when something bad happens. Managed colocation is excellent because it allows IT to be a secondary part of doing business.
The major difference between the benefits of managed colocation and a self-managed firewall is managed colocation means managing the hardware, self-managing your firewall means controlling the security features of your IT servers and having full control over the packets being sent back and fourth. Essentially, self-managing your colocation firewall means having great control over how your company functions on a daily basis.
Managing your own colocation firewall gives you the ability to fully control the security features of your web servers. But again, managing your own colocation firewall is only advisable if you or someone on your IT team has the expertise to oversee the project through all stages. While self management is cheaper, if you don’t know what you’re doing, in the long haul you’re going to end up costing more money to your business than you saved on self management.