Managed Firewall Services
Firewall as a Service (FWaaS), What Firewall Management Includes, and What It Costs
Exploiting a vulnerability is now the most common way attackers get in, at 31% of breaches, and firewalls and VPNs sit right at that edge. Get managed firewall service through us: the providers that fit price your sites at once, and we negotiate the contract.
Price My Firewall ServiceMost companies buy firewall management from the reseller that sold the hardware, or from the first provider that answers. The quotes are hard to compare: one includes hardware and unlimited changes, another includes neither, and a third prices per user from the cloud. We source the service for you from the providers that fit, priced on the same inclusions. This page sets out what the service should include, how it is priced and the terms to get in writing. It sits under our managed security services guide.
Sources: 2026 Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR), executive summary (initial access, remediation and time to fix); IBM Cost of a Data Breach Report 2026, US average as summarized by Baker Donelson.
Sources: 2025 DBIR executive summary (edge devices and VPNs, 2024 and 2025 reports); 2026 DBIR executive summary (initial access). Figures as of October 2026. Free to cite with a link to this page.
Each provider prices the same sites, devices, throughput, change volume and log retention, so you compare real totals instead of a headline per-device fee.
Send us the requirement before you request quotes. Once you have asked a provider for pricing directly, it usually will not register an advisor on the deal, and you negotiate alone.
Change-request limits, response times, patch windows, and who owns the hardware and the configuration when the contract ends, in writing before you sign.
The provider you choose pays us, so it costs you nothing. You'll hear back within 24 hours.
What Is a Managed Firewall Service?
A managed firewall service is an arrangement in which an outside provider configures, patches, monitors and changes your firewalls under a contract with defined response times. You still decide what traffic is allowed. The provider turns those decisions into rules, keeps the device current, watches it around the clock and tells you when something is wrong.
The firewall itself can sit in three places: as hardware at each office, as a virtual appliance in your data center, colocation cage or public cloud, or as a service in the provider's own cloud. The management work is similar in all three. What changes is who owns the hardware, how the price is built and how traffic reaches the inspection point.
What Is a Next-Generation Firewall (NGFW)?
A next-generation firewall (NGFW) is a firewall that decides on applications and users, not only on addresses and ports. On top of the older allow-or-block rules, it identifies the application in a stream of traffic, ties traffic to a named user, runs intrusion prevention, and can decrypt and inspect encrypted traffic. Most firewalls sold for business use now include these functions, so the useful buying questions are about the extras: which subscriptions are included (intrusion prevention, URL filtering, malware sandboxing), how much throughput is left once inspection and decryption are switched on, and whether the managed service actually tunes those features or simply leaves them at their defaults.
Managed Firewall vs Firewall as a Service (FWaaS) vs SASE
Firewall as a service is the cloud-delivered version: traffic from each site and each remote user is sent through an encrypted tunnel to the provider's points of presence, where it is inspected, so there is little or no hardware to manage on site. FWaaS is also one of the building blocks of secure access service edge (SASE), which bundles it with SD-WAN and the other cloud security functions.
| Option | Where the firewall runs | How it is usually priced | Best fit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Managed on-premises firewallHardware or virtual appliance, managed remotely | A device at each office, data center or colocation cage | Per device per month by size tier, plus hardware bought, leased or included | Data centers, high-throughput sites and anything that needs inspection between internal networks, not only at the internet edge |
| Firewall as a service (FWaaS)Cloud-delivered | The provider's points of presence; sites and users connect by tunnel | Per user or per site per month, often with a bandwidth tier | Many small branches and remote staff, a lean IT team, and no appetite for hardware refreshes |
| Firewall inside SASEFWaaS bundled with SD-WAN and cloud security | The provider's cloud, with SD-WAN devices at the sites | Per user or per site, for the whole bundle | Companies redesigning the WAN at the same time. See SASE and SD-WAN providers |
| Managed cloud firewallVirtual firewall in a public or private cloud | Inside your cloud environment, in front of your workloads | Cloud usage or license, plus a monthly management fee | Workloads that live in a public or private cloud, or that are moving there in a cloud migration |
What Firewall Management Services Include
A managed firewall contract should name seven pieces of work. If a quote does not mention one, assume it is not included or is billed separately, and ask.
Patching and firmware
Security updates and firmware upgrades on a schedule, with critical fixes applied out of cycle, starting with anything on CISA's catalog of exploited flaws. Get the window in days, not "promptly."
Rule-base review and cleanup
A scheduled review that removes unused, duplicate and overly broad rules. PCI DSS v4.0 requirement 1.2.7 calls for network security control configurations, firewall rules included, to be reviewed at least once every six months (as quoted in Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center El Paso's PCI policy). A rule base nobody reviews only grows.
Change requests with turnaround
New rules, NAT and VPN changes through a ticket, with a stated turnaround for standard and urgent changes and a stated number included each month.
24/7 monitoring and alerting
A firewall monitoring service watches device health, failed logins, configuration changes and threat events at all hours, and escalates by severity. Security events often feed a SOC as a service or managed detection and response.
Log retention
Firewall logs kept for a stated period and exportable to your own tools. One state service gives customers visibility of the preceding 30 days of intrusion prevention events, so check the number against what your auditors and your SOC need. See compliance colocation.
High availability
Paired firewalls that fail over to each other, both managed and the failover tested. Two devices usually means two fees. Redundant links matter as much: see data center connectivity and dark fiber.
Reporting for audits
Change logs, rule-review records and configuration backups in a form an auditor accepts, for HIPAA, financial services, PCI and similar regimes.
Firewall management software vs a managed service
Firewall management software is the tooling: the central console from the firewall maker, or a policy tool that analyzes rule bases across brands and flags unused or risky rules. Buying it does not buy anyone to watch the console at 2 a.m. A managed firewall service includes the people and the tools. If your team runs the software and wants outside help only for monitoring and patching, that is the co-managed column below.
Send us your firewall count, your sites and roughly how many rule changes you make a month. Every provider prices the same inclusions, so you compare monthly totals, not headline rates.
Co-Managed vs Fully Managed Firewall
The choice is about who touches the rules. In a fully managed service the provider makes every change. In a co-managed service your team keeps hands-on access for routine changes and the provider covers patching, monitoring and the hours your team is off. Washington State's own firewall service offers both, as fully managed and delegated administration, at the same price.
| Task | Fully managed | Co-managed |
|---|---|---|
| Rule changes | Provider makes every change through a ticket | Your team makes routine changes; the provider handles complex ones and reviews yours |
| Patching and firmware | Provider, in an agreed window | Provider, in a window your team approves |
| Monitoring after hours | Provider, 24/7 | Provider, 24/7, escalating to your on-call engineer |
| Admin access | Provider holds it; you get read-only views and reports | Shared, with separate roles and every change logged by name |
| An outage caused by a change | Provider's responsibility under the service levels | Depends on who made the change, so the contract has to say how that is decided |
| Best fit | Lean teams and many sites | Teams with firewall skills that want speed on routine changes |
Managed Firewall Cost: How Firewall Management Services Are Priced
Managed firewall pricing comes in four shapes, and most quotes mix two of them. The table shows what each one counts and what to check before comparing them.
| Pricing model | How it works | What to check |
|---|---|---|
| Per device per monthBy size tier | A monthly fee per firewall, higher for larger throughput | Whether the hardware, the security subscriptions and the second unit of a high-availability pair are included |
| Per site | A flat fee per location, sometimes bundled with the network link | What size of site each tier covers, and the price when a site grows into the next tier |
| Per userUsual for FWaaS and SASE | A monthly fee per named user, sometimes with bandwidth or site add-ons | Whether contractors, shared devices and servers count as users, and any minimum commitment |
| HardwareBought, leased or included | Bought: you own it and pay for management only. Leased: monthly over the term. Included: built into the per-device fee | Who owns it at exit, who pays for a refresh during the term, and the buyout price |
| OnboardingOne-time | A setup fee to import, clean up and test your rules | Whether cleanup is included, or the old rule base is copied as it is |
Commercial providers rarely publish managed firewall prices, so the clearest public reference is a state IT agency that runs the service for its own agencies and publishes the rate card. North Carolina's Department of Information Technology procures the firewall, installs it, manages it 24/7 and folds the hardware and software cost into the monthly charge, with size and performance as the main cost drivers.
Source: North Carolina Department of Information Technology, 2026-2027 network security rates, rounded to the dollar. Government cost-recovery rates charged to state agencies, with one-time consultation and implementation costs possible on top: a public reference point, not commercial quotes. Prices checked October 2026. Free to cite with a link to this page.
Send your sites, device counts, throughput and how many changes you make in a month. The providers that fit price the same scope, hardware and terms included. The provider you choose pays us, so it costs you nothing, and you'll hear back within 24 hours.
Managed Firewall Contract Terms That Matter
The monthly price is the easiest number to compare and the least likely to decide whether the service works. These terms do. Two public service descriptions show what writing them down looks like: Maryland DoIT's managed firewall service agreement (fiscal 2021) and Kentucky's state firewall service.
| Term | What to get in writing | Why it matters, with public examples |
|---|---|---|
| Change-request limits | How many changes are included each month, what counts as one change, and the price of the next one | Kentucky's service provides unlimited non-emergency maintenance requests, plus emergency changes, defined as changes needed within four hours, six times a year. A low cap turns every new application into an invoice. |
| Change turnaround | Hours for a standard change and for an urgent one, and when the clock starts | Maryland's agreement: regular changes in 4 hours, urgent changes in 2 hours, substantial changes in 7 to 30 days. Kentucky: requests in before 3:00 PM take effect before 8:00 AM the next business day. |
| Response times | Response and resolution targets by severity, and service credits when they are missed | Maryland's agreement: priority 1 response in 30 minutes and resolution in 2 hours, against a 99.9 percent availability target. |
| Patch window | Days to apply a critical fix, with flaws on CISA's exploited list first | In the 2026 DBIR, organizations took a median of 43 days to fully resolve a critical flaw on CISA's exploited list, up from 32. Your contract should beat that. |
| Hardware ownership at exit | Who owns the devices, the buyout price, and how they are returned or wiped | When hardware is included in the fee, the provider buys and controls it, as in North Carolina's service, so leaving can mean new hardware on day one. |
| Configuration ownership at exit | Your right to a full export of rules, objects, NAT and VPN settings in a readable format, on request and at termination | Without it, the next provider rebuilds your rule base from scratch, and years of decisions about why a rule exists are lost. |
| Hardware refresh | Who pays when a device reaches end of life or runs out of throughput during the term | CISA directs federal agencies to remove an affected product that is end-of-life or cannot otherwise be updated. A five-year term on a device with three years of support left is a refresh you will pay for. |
| Term and renewal | Length, auto-renewal notice period and the price cap on renewal | A missed notice window renews the whole contract on the provider's terms. |
We negotiate these terms with each provider before you sign, not after the first missed patch. The provider you choose pays us, so it costs you nothing.
Managed Firewall Providers: Questions to Ask Before You Sign
Ask every provider the same questions, in writing, and compare the answers next to the price.
We send these with every requirement, so each provider answers them alongside its price.
Managed Firewalls in Colocation, Hybrid Cloud and Data Center Moves
Firewalls move whenever servers move. A company leaving an office server room for colocation usually needs a high-availability pair in the new cage, carrier and cloud cross-connects through it, and sometimes dark fiber back to headquarters. A hybrid cloud design adds a firewall at each end of the private link to the public cloud, and a cloud repatriation brings firewalling back on site that the cloud used to provide. A recovery site needs its own firewalls kept in step with the primary, which is part of any DRaaS or recovery design.
We place the space and the service together when both are moving: the colocation side through the colocation pricing guide, wholesale colocation and data center lease terms, and the firewall service priced for the same sites. High-density deployments in AI and GPU colocation need firewalls sized for the throughput, which is the extra-large tier rather than the branch one. When the question is bigger than one service, such as where each workload should run or what a new facility should cost, that is paid work under IT infrastructure consulting or data center consulting, with the fee agreed before work starts.
Six Managed Firewall Mistakes
Comparing the per-device fee alone
One quote includes hardware, subscriptions and unlimited changes; another includes none of them. Put the same scope in front of every provider before comparing a single number.
Copying the old rule base across
Moving years of unused and overly broad rules into a new service carries the risk with them. Ask for a cleanup during onboarding, with every removed rule documented.
Leaving change limits vague
"Reasonable changes" means whatever the provider decides it means. A number per month and an overage price are easier to live with.
No exit clause for the configuration
If the rule base cannot be exported in a readable form, switching providers means rebuilding it from memory. Get the export right before you sign.
Treating the firewall as the whole program
Ransomware was present in 48 percent of breaches and the human element in 62 percent in the 2026 DBIR. A firewall does not catch a stolen login, so pair it with MDR and a SOC.
Requesting quotes one at a time
Each provider you call directly prices you as its only option, and usually will not register an advisor afterward. Send the requirement to us first and the providers that fit compete at once.
How We Place Managed Firewall Services
You send the requirement
Sites and remote users, current firewalls and their age, throughput, how many changes you make in a month, log retention needs and any compliance regime. Rough numbers are fine.
The providers that fit price it at once
Managed appliance, FWaaS and SASE providers all quote the same scope on the same day, with the nine questions above answered in writing.
We compare real totals and terms
Device or user fees, hardware, subscriptions, onboarding, change limits, response times and exit terms, over the full contract term.
We negotiate, you sign
Price and terms are settled while they are still negotiable, and you sign directly with the provider you choose. That provider pays us.
Managed Firewall Services: Frequently Asked Questions
What are managed firewall services?
Managed firewall services are an outside provider running your firewalls under contract: patching and firmware, rule changes, 24/7 monitoring, log retention and audit reporting. You decide what traffic is allowed, and the provider turns those decisions into rules and keeps the devices current. It is usually priced per device, per site or per user each month.
What is firewall as a service (FWaaS)?
Firewall as a service is a firewall delivered from a provider's cloud instead of a box at each site. Traffic from offices and remote users travels through an encrypted tunnel to the provider's points of presence, where it is inspected. It is usually priced per user or per site, and it is one of the building blocks of SASE.
What is the difference between a managed firewall and FWaaS?
A managed firewall is a device at your site or in your data center that a provider runs for you, while FWaaS runs in the provider's cloud with little or no hardware on site. Managed appliances suit data centers and high-throughput sites. FWaaS suits many small branches and remote staff, and many networks use both.
How much do managed firewall services cost?
It depends on device size, what is included and the pricing model. As a public reference point, North Carolina's state IT agency charges its agencies about $121 a month for a small managed firewall and about $6,170 for an extra-large one, hardware included, on its 2026-2027 rate card. Commercial quotes vary more, so compare them only on the same scope.
What do firewall management services include?
Seven things: patching and firmware, rule-base review and cleanup, change requests with a stated turnaround, 24/7 monitoring and alerting, log retention, high availability, and reporting for audits. If a quote does not mention one of them, assume it is excluded or billed separately and ask.
What is a firewall monitoring service?
A firewall monitoring service watches your firewalls around the clock for device health, failed logins, configuration changes and threat events, and escalates by severity. It can be bought on its own or as part of a managed firewall contract. Security events are often passed to a SOC or an MDR service for investigation.
Is firewall management software the same as a managed firewall service?
No. Firewall management software is the tooling, such as a central console or a policy analyzer that flags unused and risky rules. A managed firewall service includes the people who use those tools at all hours. Teams that run the software themselves and want help only with monitoring and patching usually buy a co-managed service.
What is the difference between co-managed and fully managed firewall service?
In a fully managed service the provider makes every rule change, and in a co-managed service your team keeps access for routine changes while the provider covers patching, monitoring and after-hours response. Co-managed suits teams with firewall skills that want speed on routine work. The contract has to say who is responsible when a change causes an outage.
How do I choose between managed firewall providers?
Compare them on the same written scope, then on terms: changes included each month, turnaround for standard and urgent changes, the patch window for critical flaws, response times by severity, log retention, and who owns the hardware and configuration at exit. The monthly price only means something once those match.
Who owns the firewall and the configuration when the contract ends?
Whatever the contract says, so get it in writing before you sign. Hardware you bought is yours, and hardware included in the fee generally belongs to the provider unless the contract says otherwise. Ask for the right to a full export of rules, objects, NAT and VPN settings in a readable format at any time and at termination.
How often should firewall rules be reviewed?
At least every six months for networks in PCI DSS scope, and a twice-yearly review is a sensible default for everyone else. The review removes unused, duplicate and overly broad rules. Put the review schedule and the report it produces in the managed firewall contract.
Is FWaaS the same as SASE?
No. FWaaS is one part of SASE, which combines cloud-delivered firewalling with SD-WAN, secure web gateway, zero trust network access and related services under one platform. A company can buy FWaaS alone, or as part of a SASE contract when it is redesigning its wide area network at the same time.
Do you place managed firewall services?
Yes. Send us your sites, devices, throughput and change volume, and we put the same requirement in front of the managed firewall providers that fit, at once, then negotiate price and terms. The provider you choose pays us, so it costs you nothing, and you'll hear back within 24 hours.
Price Your Managed Firewall Service
Send your sites, devices, throughput, change volume and anything your auditors require. Rough numbers are fine. You'll hear back within 24 hours from the person who will run your search. If your current firewalls just need management rather than replacement, we will say so. Everything runs by email, so there is no sales call to book.
That is what keeps the providers that fit competing for your business. The provider you choose pays us, so it costs you nothing. If you have already spoken to one provider, tell us which; we can still run the rest of the market.
Managed security: managed security services, SOC as a service and managed SIEM, managed detection and response and SASE and SD-WAN.
Compliance: compliance colocation, HIPAA compliant hosting, financial services colocation and the CMMC enclave and GCC High guide.
Network: data center connectivity, dark fiber and hybrid cloud colocation.
Cloud and infrastructure: cloud migration services, managed private cloud, DRaaS, data center cost and data center consulting.
