Managed Firewall as a Service: Enabling 24/7 Protection and Peace of Mind

Client Profile

A mid-sized financial services firm operating across three continents with over 1,500 employees and strict compliance needs triggered by expanding regulatory obligations (PCI-DSS, SOX, and GDPR). The client faced rapid cloud adoption and increased remote access requirements post-pandemic, exposing vulnerabilities in their existing perimeter defenses.

Challenges Faced

Key security concerns included:

  • Legacy firewall infrastructure unable to scale or adapt to hybrid-cloud environments.
  • Inconsistent rule management, leading to frequent misconfigurations and outages.
  • Lack of centralized monitoring, causing delayed threat detection and response.
  • Compliance pressure, especially around auditability and change control.
Solution

COE Security implemented a tailored Managed Firewall as a Service (MFaaS) engagement, combining:

  • Next-Gen Firewall Deployment: Unified threat management, deep packet inspection, and SSL decryption.
  • 24/7 SOC Monitoring: Real-time analysis and alerting through a dedicated security operations center.
  • Firewall Rule Optimization: Reduction of redundant or risky rules and implementation of least-privilege policies.
  • Compliance Reporting Engine: Auto-generated reports mapped to regulatory frameworks.
Operational Excellence & Continuous Protection
  • Eliminated manual rule changes by introducing automated change control workflows.
  • Reduced attack surface through zero-trust segmentation rules.
  • Enabled real-time visibility into traffic with integrated dashboards.
  • Lowered false positives via machine learning-assisted alert tuning.
  • Achieved near-zero downtime with high-availability firewall clustering.
Security Strategy & Governance Reinforced
  • Aligned firewall policies with business risk via continuous governance reviews.
  • Deployed pre-configured templates aligned with NIST, ISO 27001, and PCI-DSS.
  • Introduced a firewall lifecycle governance model with quarterly audits.
  • Instituted Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) for change and access accountability.
COE Security Services Portfolio
  • Managed Firewall as a Service
  • SOC-as-a-Service
  • SIEM Integration & Tuning
  • Vulnerability Management
  • Penetration Testing
  • Compliance Readiness (PCI, HIPAA, ISO, etc.)
  • Endpoint Detection & Response (EDR)
  • Identity & Access Management
  • Secure Cloud Posture Management
  • Incident Response Retainer Services
Implementation Details
  • Deployed firewalls across on-prem, cloud (AWS, Azure), and edge in less than 3 weeks.
  • Integrated firewall logs with existing SIEM for correlation.
  • Trained internal IT and DevOps teams via tailored workshops.
  • Delivered configuration and incident playbooks for Tier 1/2 SOC handoff.
  • Weekly reporting with executive dashboards and compliance summaries.
Results Achieved
  • 99.8% reduction in unapproved firewall changes.
  • 20% improvement in incident response time due to centralized alerting.
  • Passed PCI-DSS audit with zero firewall-related findings.
  • Raised security maturity score from 2.4 to 4.1 (out of 5) within 6 months.
Client Testimonial

“Partnering with COE Security gave us control, clarity, and confidence. Their firewall-as-a-service offering transformed our patchwork approach into a world-class perimeter defense, ready for modern threats.”