# What is Firewall as a Service (FWaaS)?

> Firewall as a service (FWaaS) is a market category for firewall capabilities operated as a network-accessible service, usually from provider-managed cloud points of presence.

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## Content

Customer traffic is steered to the service, which applies policy and may combine stateful filtering with application identification, intrusion prevention, web controls, or other functions.

Users, branches, cloud networks, and data centers can reach FWaaS through tunnels, connectors, agents, routing, or provider integrations. Centralized policy may reduce dependence on appliances at every site, but the design must still establish which traffic reaches the service, where inspection occurs, which party operates each control, and how traffic behaves when components fail.

### Key points

- **Service scope:** Verify supported protocols, application and identity context, encrypted-traffic handling, egress locations, private access, logging, APIs, and optional security functions.
- **Traffic engineering:** Account for latency, asymmetric routing, bandwidth, address translation, geographic paths, and fail-open or fail-closed behavior.
- **Governance:** Retain accountable policy ownership, change review, telemetry access, incident procedures, retention requirements, and an exit plan even when the provider operates the platform.
- **Important limitation:** FWaaS is not a standardized capability set. A provider service can have blind spots, outages, capacity constraints, configuration errors, or concentration risk, and it cannot protect traffic that does not traverse an enforcement point.

### Related terms

[Firewall](<https://yellowcube.eu/glossary/firewall/>) · [Cloud firewall](<https://yellowcube.eu/glossary/cloud-firewall/>) · [Security service edge (SSE)](<https://yellowcube.eu/glossary/security-service-edge/>) · [Secure access service edge (SASE)](<https://yellowcube.eu/glossary/secure-access-service-edge/>) · [Secure web gateway (SWG)](<https://yellowcube.eu/glossary/secure-web-gateway/>)

### Sources

[NIST SP 800-215: Guide to a Secure Enterprise Network Landscape](https://csrc.nist.gov/pubs/sp/800/215/final) · [GSA: Zero Trust Architecture Technology Book](https://buy.gsa.gov/api/system/files/documents/zero-trust-architecture-tech-book-508c.pdf)

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