AWS FIREWALL: How Does It Work?

AWS firewalls provide excellent security for keeping information safe and ensuring compliance with rules. They watch the data going across network borders and decide if it should be allowed to go through. Firewalls prevent illegal access to networks where sensitive data is stored, among other things. This makes them an important tool for businesses that want to follow rules and laws like HIPAA, PCI DSS, GDPR, SOC 2, and more. Well, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Read on to learn about the AWS firewall service price, along with its rules and duties as an AWS manager.

What is an AWS Firewall?

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a comprehensive public cloud service platform that offers support for a wide range of operating systems, coding languages, structures, tools, databases, and devices. AWS operates on a shared security model, which implies that Amazon is responsible for safeguarding the infrastructure that supports AWS services. On the other hand, it is the customer’s responsibility to ensure the security of the data and applications used by end users. It is crucial for customers to take the necessary measures to safeguard their data, applications, and networks. One effective way to protect their digital property is by implementing a firewall.

In addition, the term AWS Firewall refers to a computer security system that effectively monitors the traffic, system, applications, and data operating within the Amazon cloud. In general, we can categorize these security systems into two main types: web application firewalls and network firewalls.

How Does the AWS Network Firewall Work?

The AWS Network Firewall service protects against network attacks and keeps your Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC) safe. You control it and it keeps your network safe. Network firewalls can work with other services and parts that you use with your VPC, like an internet gateway, a NAT gateway, a VPN, or a transit gateway. The firewall keeps the subnets in your VPC safe by limiting the data that goes between them and places outside of your VPC.

You also need to change your Amazon VPC route tables to send your network data through the Network Firewall firewall endpoints in order to use the firewall’s protection.

Read Also: AWS NETWORK FIREWALL: Everything You Need to Know

Features of AWS Network Firewall

AWS Network Firewall offers a range of features and benefits, which include the following:

#1. Web Filtering

The AWS Network Firewall can filter both incoming and outgoing web data. This includes the ability to support encrypted traffic by using hostname data that isn’t encrypted (SNI) to find and stop traffic to sites that aren’t wanted.

#2. Deter Intruders

An intrusion prevention system (IPS) protects against brute-force attacks and uses security holes. It finds known types of strange data or malicious content using signature-based detection.

#3. Management From One Place

The AWS Network Firewall records traffic and lets you see and control security policies across an entire AWS deployment from one place. This helps make sure that all AWS security tools follow the same security rules.

#4. Availability and Scaling

The AWS Network Firewall has built-in backups to help protect your network from threats all the time. The firewall promises to be up 99.99% of the time and can be expanded to meet changing business needs.

#5. Putting Partners Together

AWS Network Firewall can connect to a number of different threat information and security solution providers. Because of this, it can only partially work with Check Point’s CloudGuard.

#6. Stateful Firewall

AWS Network Firewall is a stateful firewall, which means it can look at and track network links instead of individual packets. This lets you filter different kinds of data based on protocol, Internet Protocol (IP) address, and ports with protocol identification.

AWS Firewall Manager

AWS Firewall Manager streamlines administration and maintenance tasks for multiple accounts and resources. It offers various protections, such as WAF from Amazon Web AWS Shield Advanced, VPC Amazon security groups, etc. Firewall Manager allows you to establish your protections once, and the service will automatically apply them to all your accounts and resources. This includes any new accounts and resources that you add in the future.

AWS Firewall Manager features

The features of AWS Firewall Manager include the following:

#1. Hierarchical Implementation of the Rules

You can set up safety policies in a hierarchical way with AWS Firewall Manager. This means that you can give someone else the job of making rules for specific applications while still being able to enforce some rules from one place. Rules that are applied centrally are constantly checked to make sure they aren’t being removed or handled incorrectly. This makes sure that they are always applied in the same way.

#2. Dashboard With Alerts for Compliance

The visible dashboard of AWS Firewall Manager allows you to quickly view the secure AWS resources, identify resources that do not comply with the rules, and take appropriate actions. SNS news streams can also notify you when changes are made to your settings. 

#3. Resource Groups With Multiple Accounts

You can put resources into groups in AWS Firewall Manager based on account, resource type, and tag. Your security team can make rules that apply to all tools in a group or to all accounts in the company.

#4. Policies for Cross-Account Safety

AWS Firewall Manager works with AWS Organizations and will get a list of all the accounts in your company automatically, so you can group resources from different accounts. To begin, you create protection rules that name a group of resources and link those resources to your policy. In the next step, you choose whether the policy applies to a certain group of AWS accounts or all of your organization’s accounts. Based on the strategy, the firewall manager will only protect the resources in the accounts that can be reached.

#5. Third-Party Firewall Support in the AWS Marketplace

You can use AWS Firewall Manager to set up and keep an eye on all of your organization’s virtual private clouds (VPCs) that use third-party firewalls that you bought from the AWS Marketplace. The service is a single firewall management solution that can be used to set up and handle both AWS-built firewalls and third-party firewalls that are subscribed to from the AWS Marketplace. You can set up VPC routes, automate the deployment of firewalls across accounts, and do all of this as new accounts and VPCs are created in your company.

#6. Audit Existing and Future Security Groups in Your VPCs

You can set rules for what security groups are allowed and not allowed across your VPCs with AWS Firewall Manager policies. AWS Firewall Manager constantly checks security groups for rules that are too lax and helps make the firewall stronger. You can be notified of accounts and services that don’t follow the rules, or you can let AWS Firewall Manager fix the problem itself through auto-remediation.

AWS Firewall Rules

An AWS Network Firewall rule group refers to a set of criteria that can be reused to inspect and handle network traffic effectively. As part of policy configuration, you can add one or more rule groups to a firewall policy. You have the freedom to use AWS-managed rule groups as well as create and use your own rule groups.

There are two types of network firewall rule groups: stateless and stateful. Stateless rule groups evaluate packets independently, whereas stateful rule groups evaluate packets within the context of their traffic flow. In Network Firewall, you have the ability to create and manage various categories of rule groups below:

#1. Stateful Rules Engine

Packet inspection, within the context of traffic flow, enables the utilization of more intricate rules. Additionally, it facilitates the logging of network traffic and alerts generated by the network firewall. Stateful rules take into consideration the direction of traffic. The stateful rules engine has the capability to delay packet delivery for the purpose of grouping packets together for inspection. The stateful rules engine handles your rules in the order of the action they take, setting them by default. The processing order is passed rules first, then drop rules, and finally alert rules. The engine halts its processing once it encounters a match. Network firewall stateful rules share similar behavior and usage with Amazon VPC security groups. The stateful rules engine is configured to allow traffic by default, whereas the security groups are set to deny traffic by default.

#2. Stateless Rules Engine

Each packet is inspected individually, without considering factors such as the traffic direction or whether the packet belongs to an established and authorized connection. This engine places a high priority on the speed of evaluation. It requires rules that have standard network connection features. The engine processes your rules in order of priority and stops processing as soon as it finds a match.

Stateless rules in network firewalls have similar behavior and usage as Amazon VPC network access control lists (ACLs).

What Is the Difference Between an AWS Firewall and a Security Group?

Each of them plays a unique role. AWS Network Firewall is designed to safeguard the perimeter of your virtual private cloud (VPC). It is responsible for managing both incoming and outgoing network traffic. On the other hand, security groups are linked to individual EC2 instances and certain other services.

Is AWS Network Firewall a WAF? 

Yes. Numerous companies rely on the AWS Web Application Firewall (WAF) to safeguard their websites against potential threats.

What Is an AWS Firewall Policy?

A firewall policy in AWS Network Firewall determines the behavior of monitoring and protection for a firewall. The behavior details are specified in the rule groups that you include in your policy, as well as in certain default settings of the policy. In order to utilize a firewall policy, you need to correlate it with one or more firewalls.

Is AWS Responsible for Firewall Configuration?

When customers choose to deploy an Amazon EC2 instance, they are entrusted with the responsibility of managing the guest operating system, which includes various crucial tasks such as performing updates and ensuring the installation of necessary security patches. This level of control and autonomy allows customers to have a comprehensive understanding of their system’s operations and enables them to tailor the management process according to their specific requirements. By taking charge of these essential aspects, customers can ensure the optimal performance, stability, and security of their EC2 instances, thereby enhancing the overall efficiency and reliability of their operations.

Why Use AWS Firewall?

The intrusion prevention system (IPS) of AWS Network Firewall offers active traffic flow inspection, enabling you to effectively identify and block vulnerabilities through signature-based detection. AWS Network Firewall also provides web filtering capabilities, allowing it to block traffic to known malicious URLs and track legitimate domain names.

References

• kirkpatrickprice.com
• barracuda.com
• docs.aws.amazon.com
• checkpoint.com

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