Effective management of your company’s firewall architecture can mean the difference between having an effective layered defense against cybersecurity breaches and becoming the latest in a long string of companies to have suffered a massive data breach. Many companies recognize that firewalls are a critical component of their network security perimeter—but there’s more to effective firewall management than having one at the point between your network and the internet.

Improperly-managed firewall services can lead to rules conflicts, gaps in the protection provided, and a reduction in network performance. However, many companies simply don’t have the right resources to manage their firewalls in-house. So, they turn to managed security service providers (MSSPs) to get managed firewall solutions.

What are managed firewall services—and why should you use them? Here are some things that you should know about managed firewall services and service providers:

How Much Managed Firewall Services Can Save You

One of the first questions many business owners have about hiring a managed firewall service provider is: “How much will it cost me?” This is a perfectly natural question to have. But, here’s the better question: “How much can using a managed firewall service save me?”

In any cost/benefit analysis, it’s always important to assess the risk of using or ignoring a particular tool or resource. In the case of not using managed firewall solutions, the risk can be quite high.

For example, how much productivity would your business lose if a poorly-optimized firewall configuration caused legitimate access requests to fail? Or, how much would it cost your business if an improper firewall configuration let a cybercriminal breach your network? According to Ponemon, a breach would cost you about $3.86 million on average.

More info: Managed Router Service