Cloud firewalls offer flexibility, but managing policies across AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud can lead to gaps fast. Rule formats vary, enforcement breaks down, and policy drift creeps in. Without the right controls, visibility suffers, and resolving issues across vendors becomes a full-time job. The right approach provides visibility and control without adding overhead, regardless of how dynamic your environment becomes.
What cloud firewalls are and how they differ from traditional firewalls
Traditional firewalls make sense in environments where all devices are located in a fixed position. You have static IPs, a known perimeter, and traffic that can be controlled at the edge. In the cloud, none of that is true. Workloads move at will, web applications scale on-demand, and data travels between services that have no shared policies. It’s increasingly difficult to track and manage what’s coming in and out.
Enter cloud firewalls. Some organizations use native firewall capabilities built into the platform, like AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud. Others prefer firewall-as-a-service (FWaaS) offerings where a managed service provider takes care of everything. Both typically include functions such as stateful inspection, workload awareness, and next-generation firewall (NGFW) capabilities like DDoS protection and adaptive access control.
Benefits and challenges of using cloud firewalls
Cloud firewalls scale with you. If you’re running firewalls across SaaS apps, data centers, and hybrid environments, you’ve probably hit the limits of on-prem gear. Cloud-based firewalls give you more room to scale and fewer headaches when workloads shift between platforms. You don’t have to wait for hardware upgrades or rewrite every rule just to support a new service. The Tufin Orchestration Suite helps extend visibility and control as well as optimize firewall rules in these hybrid use cases.
Cloud firewalls solve a lot, but they don’t solve everything. Managing network traffic across AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud means dealing with different rule formats, different syntax, and different ways each platform handles enforcement. That inconsistency makes it harder to keep policies aligned, especially when workloads are constantly shifting.
Some tools offer features like real-time filtering, malware detection, or DDoS protection to help block advanced threats, but not all providers support the same capabilities. And when your bandwidth spikes or you start moving more traffic through a multi-cloud setup, the costs can catch you off guard. Without a centralized way to manage it all, policy drift creeps in, and one misstep in one environment can expose everything. That’s where hybrid-aware management platforms become critical.
If you’re evaluating options, look beyond marketing claims. Ask whether your firewall supports remote teams, hybrid infrastructure, and consistent policy enforcement across cloud platforms. Resources like cloud vs on-premises, Aviatrix cloud firewall blogs, and this overview of cloud-managed firewalls can help you compare providers and identify what works best for your environment.
Evaluating cloud firewall vendors and pricing
Vendors like Cisco, Fortinet, Palo Alto, and Check Point all do firewalls differently. Some prioritize high-throughput hardware integrations. Others are built for cloud-native teams or microservices-heavy setups. If your environment doesn’t line up with how the product is designed—hybrid cloud, SaaS-first, on-prem—you’ll end up rebuilding rules, troubleshooting traffic issues, or dealing with gaps in enforcement.
Pricing brings its own surprises. One provider might bill you by the gigabyte, another by region or rule count, and some charge extra for things like DNS filtering or threat intelligence. If you’re scaling quickly or managing workloads across multiple cloud platforms, unexpected costs can hit hard. Always check what’s included—and what’s not—before signing the contract.
Providers with firewall-as-a-service (FWaaS) focus on remote teams or globally distributed networks. Some offer better visibility into hybrid use cases, while others are optimized for organizations that leverage SaaS products heavily. Finding the right fit for your stack is challenging, however. When your firewall platform doesn’t match how your environment actually works, things fall apart fast. You’ll spend time rewriting rules that don’t translate cleanly or patching over gaps that create exposure.
The Tufin Orchestration Suite cuts through that mess by letting you manage firewalls across vendors in one place. It prevents policy drift, flags inconsistencies before they cause trouble, and saves teams from writing one-off scripts just to make things work.
Before committing to a cloud firewall product, consider:
- Will it support the scalability of our infrastructure?
- Can we use it with tools we already have, including open source projects?
- Can we track changes and identify problems in real-time?
If you’re not sure, we recommend starting by understanding open source firewalls or taking a look at cloud security case studies that cover how others have addressed cloud firewall challenges. You can also refer back to this cloud firewall solution page for a more comprehensive understanding of capabilities.
Choose cloud firewalls based on enforcement needs, not just brand
Each cloud environment is different. Managing access control policies across hybrid cloud deployments. Securing sensitive data at the endpoint. Balancing real-time needs and latency against bandwidth costs. The best cloud based firewall fits your cloud infrastructure and architecture, adapts to your use cases, and mitigates risk without introducing new blind spots in your visibility.
Whether you’re securing API traffic, DDoS prevention, or policy enforcement for Azure, Google Cloud, and AWS services, the cloud needs clarity, not logos. If you’re ready to learn how to simplify security policies and service providers across cloud platforms, request a demo and discover how Tufin can help you cut through the complexity across vendors and environments.
Frequently asked questions
How is a cloud firewall better for dynamic environments?
Traditional firewalls depend on static rules and infrastructure. That works fine until apps start scaling across regions, containers spin up on demand, and policies need to follow the workload. A cloud firewall keeps up, helping you enforce consistent rules even as your environment shifts.
Here’s how it plays out in cloud vs on-premises.
What’s the best way to manage policies across multiple cloud firewall vendors?
When every firewall speaks its own language, managing policies gets complicated fast. A central platform gives you a single place to adjust rules, reduce manual rework, and keep enforcement aligned whether you’re running across AWS, Azure, or both.
See how teams handle that in extending network security to the cloud.
What makes a cloud firewall a good fit for Zero Trust Security?
Zero Trust means controlling traffic by identity, not just IPs. A cloud firewall should help you isolate workloads, inspect internal API traffic, and enforce least-privilege access across your cloud network with real-time visibility. Features like DNS filtering and segmentation help bring that model to life by protecting against internal and external cyber threats.
See what that looks like in understanding the Zero Trust Firewall.
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