Azure Firewall is a user-friendly, intuitive, cloud-native firewall security solution that provides top-of-the-industry threat protection for all your Azure Virtual Network resources. Azure Firewall is constantly and thoroughly analyzing all traffic and data packets, making it a very valuable and secure fully stateful firewall as a service with built-in high availability and unrestricted cloud scalability. Azure Firewall allows users to create virtual IP addresses and provides for secure DDoS protection for the virtual machines on your network. It also provides fast and efficient east-west and north-south traffic security.
Azure Firewall is a managed, cloud-based network security service built to protect your Azure Virtual Network resources. It is a fully stateful firewall as a service with built-in high availability and unrestricted cloud scalability.
The valuable features of Azure Firewall include:
Other valuable features include DDoS protection, threat intelligence, network filtering, integration with Azure services and reporting, ease of configuration, and access to a premium version with features like IP Groups, URL filtering, TLS inspection, and IDPs. The premium version also addresses concerns with URL filtering and provides intrusion detection and prevention, TLS inspection, and integration with the security center.
Azure Firewall could benefit from incorporating features similar to competitors, such as split tunneling. It would also be helpful to have a free trial version for new users to evaluate before deployment.
Rules management, monitoring, and logging would benefit from improvement, with a focus on making it more seamless and integrated within the interface.
For large organizations, the ability to integrate with third-party firewalls for advanced features would be advantageous. The development and QA areas could be enhanced to improve project implementation efficiency.
Azure Firewall should strive to offer a broader feature base, including layer 7 application analysis, anti-spam, anti-phishing, IDS, IPS, and antivirus functionality.
The lending speed across regions needs improvement for consistent performance worldwide.
Additionally, Azure Firewall should aim to become a market leader by investing more in the product and keeping up with other leading network and firewall vendors.
The configuration, reporting, logging, monitoring, and policy flexibility of Azure Firewall should be enhanced to match the capabilities of other marketplace products.
Lastly, the ability to support back-to-back firewall architectures and provide routing options would be beneficial for more versatile deployment scenarios.
Some clients have experienced a return on investment of approximately 25% from using Azure Firewall. The cost structure for Azure Firewall is based on usage, making it an operational expense rather than a capital expense. This differentiates it from traditional ROI calculations.
Using Azure Firewall is considered more cost-effective compared to other vendors, particularly when utilizing the premium version. This results in better spending in terms of operational expenses and better value for money.
Some users find the pricing to be competitive and affordable, especially when compared to security solutions from other vendors such as AWS or GCP. They believe that Azure Firewall should have similar competitive prices to make it accessible to small- and medium-sized organizations.
However, there are also users who find Azure Firewall to be expensive, particularly with the premium functions. They mention that it is costly, especially when used at an enterprise level. Despite the cost, they consider it a wise decision from a security perspective.
In terms of licensing, Azure Firewall comes with Azure native services, so there is no need to buy any additional licenses. Whether you have a free subscription or a pay-as-you-go model, you can deploy the Azure Firewall service. This is seen as an advantage compared to third-party vendors where additional subscriptions or licenses would be required.
The pricing of Azure Firewall, compared to third-party vendors, is considered good and affordable since it is Azure-native. Azure's cost-effectiveness is viewed as a major advantage by users.
The pricing model for Azure Firewall is pay-as-you-go, based on usage. There is a basic fee and a traffic fee, and it is not a monthly payment but rather per hour or similar intervals. Some users mention that Microsoft may offer discounts.
The primary use case of Azure Firewall is for application and server deployment, preventing vulnerabilities and security issues, blocking attacks, holding up traffic and filtering traffic, protecting against security threats, securing edges and gaining access control to the internet, acting as a firewall, restricting internet-based traffic, being part of a hybrid cloud solution, routing traffic between partners, network traffic filtering between private and public networks, and protecting workloads and limiting incoming connections.
It is used to secure Azure infrastructure, PaaS applications, networks, and ports, and to provide connectivity between on-premise and cloud environments.
Some users have had positive experiences with customer service and have praised the knowledge and professionalism of Microsoft's technical support staff. Users with an Enterprise Agreement have reported receiving prompt and efficient support from Microsoft, with issues being resolved within a half-day or a maximum of one day.
However, there are also users who have expressed dissatisfaction with the support. Some have mentioned delays in support and language barriers when connecting with support abroad.
The initial setup for Azure Firewall is described as straightforward and easy by multiple reviewers. They mention that it can be done within minutes to a few hours, depending on the specific requirements.
Some users emphasize the simplicity of the deployment process, noting that it only requires enabling the service within Azure and does not involve complex implementation steps.
The maintenance of Azure Firewall is fully managed by Microsoft, reducing the need for manual maintenance tasks.
Some reviewers recommend having a small team with knowledge of the firewall system for better management and handling of any changes. A few reviewers mention specific features or quirks of the setup process, such as numbering rules sets or the need for fine-tuning and proper configuration.
Azure Firewall is highly scalable and can accommodate a large number of users. It can be used across multiple regions. The solution is configured to automatically grow and support more traffic or bandwidth.
However, there are some reviews that mention limitations in scalability, particularly for large enterprise companies with millions of customers.
Azure Firewall is highly stable and reliable. Users have not encountered any issues or failures with the service.
It is fully managed by Microsoft, ensuring future upgrades and handling any potential downtime. The stability of Azure Firewall is attributed to the redundancy and resilience of Azure Infrastructure Services, providing a 99.95 percent uptime.
Microsoft is known for not releasing unstable products, and Azure Firewall is no exception.
Azure Firewall has two significant offerings, Standard and Premium.
Azure Firewall Standard works directly with Microsoft Cyber Security and supplies excellent L3-L7 filtering and threat awareness. The proactive real-time threat awareness will quickly alert you and immediately deny all traffic to and from any known problematic or suspicious domains or IP addresses. Microsoft Cyber Security is updated continually to protect against all new and known potential threats at all times. To learn more about Azure Firewall Standard, click here.
Azure Firewall Premium provides everything the standard version does, and additionally adds extra levels of data encryption, network intrusion detection, extended URL filtering, and Web category filters. To learn more about the added features of Azure Firewall Premium, click here.
Key Benefits and Features of Azure Firewall:
What our real users have to say:
Many PeerSpot users found Azure Firewall to be very user-friendly and easy to use. They liked that it offers seamless integration to the cloud and were especially pleased with the threat filtering options.
Regarding integration and threat intelligence, our users wrote:
“The most valuable feature is the integration into the overall cloud platform.”
