The real need & real purpose for a Firewall Tech Refresh Project

Did you manage to sucessfully find the answer?

If yes, amazing job! Your superiors understand the need & purpose of it.

If no, you are not alone! So here we are to teach and learn.

Now, if you ask me what’s the real need & the real purpose for a Firewall Tech Refresh Project? Oooooooo……so many reasons. Here we go:

1. First reason: When one firewall begin to malfunction or found out the warranty/maintenance is about to expire which means it applies to all firewalls purchased. As such, it's more of a let’s a do a quick Firewall Tech Refresh keeping ‘as it is’ and later on will look into the new features implementation.
   

2. Second Reason: The firewalls are reaching EOL & EOS, it's time to do a Firewall Tech Refresh.
   

3. Third Reason: Every 5 years, it’s a requirement to do a Hardware Tech Refresh.
   

4. Fourth Reason: There's a need for enhanced or better security features/reporting/functionalities/alerting/logging to be implemented.
   

5. Fifth Reason: Renewal Costs / On-Going Maintenance Costs are more costlier but does not tally with the performance of the work completed as well as the development of new & upcoming features to keep up with the current world.

   
   

Is the real need & real purpose aligned? - Yes. So simple isn’t it? BUT it just never works that way at all. This is where all the chaos, mess, security concerns and whatnot starts to arise.

Because there’s a compliance factor in place that they need to ensure they are actually not just refreshing BUT also using this refresh as an opportunitiy to upgrade and evolve with the threats & trends. 

Whenever there is a Tech Refresh Project, there is a compliance factor that will need to be met eventually. It’s a known thing and it will also turn into the need to address ‘the elephant in the room’.

*Note: Tendency for 'Scope Creep' to happen is very high. Expectations of the project must be set correctly from the beginning & managed till the end.

When the Tech Refresh Project is NOT only solving the basic problem at hand BUT also the following features are being enhanced: 

1. Secure Authentication - Integrated with AD / Radius / Tacas & Utilizing 2FA/MFA

2. Role Base Access / Group Base Access / Attribute Base Access

3. Least of Privilege - Granular Permissions Assigned

4. Security First Approach in Configuring and Implementing Security Policies/Rules

5. Easy, Quick, Seamless API Integrations with various solutions/applications/systems

6. Centralized Management

7. SIEM Capabilities - Enhanced ways to alert, detect and prevent attacks/threats

8. Threat Intelligence

9. SOAR Capbailities - Reduce manual work significantly and promote increased efficiency, accuracy & analyst empowerment

10. Dashboard Reporting - Out-of-the Box and Custom Reporting

11. Accurate & Comprehensive Audit Trail

12. Technical Configuration, Operational Process/Procedure, Security Best Practices Implementation have met the compliance according to the Organizations's standards, Industrial Regulations, Security Frameworks and indeed it's worth the effort, the time & the money spent to perform the Tech Refresh to meet all of the above.

I hope this provides a better understanding on how to find the answer to the question. (: