Log into the admin page on your office firewall and check when its software was last updated. In plenty of Monterey offices, the answer is the day it was installed. Attackers scan the internet for exactly those boxes, since old firewall software has known holes and published instructions for getting through them. We take over the care of your firewall so it stays current.
When You Need Firewall Management
If nobody on staff can log into the firewall, you need it. Same goes if the person who set it up has moved on and took the password with them. That happens more than you'd think.
The quieter signs take a closer look. The rule list has grown to dozens of entries and nobody knows what half of them do. Some are fine. Others were opened for a quick test and never shut. Ports were opened for a vendor years ago and never closed. A port is a numbered door through the firewall, and every open one is something an attacker can knock on.
Defense contractors who work with the Naval Postgraduate School or the Defense Language Institute have a harder deadline. NIST 800-171 and CMMC expect you to control and log what crosses your network boundary, and an assessor will ask to see the records. The NIST SP 800-171 requirements lay out what that involves.
How Our Firewall Management Works
First we take stock.
We back up the firewall's settings and read every rule. Anything nobody can explain gets flagged, and we go through the list with you before closing it.
After that, updates go on a schedule, timed so a bad patch never knocks your office offline at 9 AM on a Tuesday. The logs feed into monitoring that flags unusual traffic, like a burst of failed logins or a computer inside your office talking to an unknown server overseas at three in the morning.
Rule changes go through us and get written down. When a new vendor needs access, we open what they need and nothing more. Staff who connect from home get a locked-down VPN connection with two-step sign-in.
Firewall Management Cost in Monterey
Cost depends on how many firewalls you have and how many locations they protect. Logging and reporting needs matter too. A contractor preparing CMMC evidence needs much more record keeping than a five-person insurance office. If your hardware no longer gets updates, it has to be replaced first, and we'll tell you before you agree to anything. You'll have the price in writing before we start. No surprises.
Why Local Businesses Trust Us With Their Firewalls
Our security programs are NIST-aligned, and we help clients meet HIPAA, PCI DSS, and CMMC. Your firewall gets set up with the audit in mind.
If monitoring catches an attack in progress, that's a critical ticket, and a technician is on it within 15 minutes. And the people looking after your network work out of a Monterey office you can actually visit.
Call (831) 649-5050 and we'll take a look at your firewall. It's one layer of the network work we do for Peninsula and Salinas offices, and it works best alongside the others.
Frequently Asked Questions
Doesn't the router from our internet provider already have a firewall?
It has a basic one. It blocks unwanted traffic coming in, which helps, but it usually can't log in detail or split your network into separate zones. Most businesses with more than a few people need a proper firewall behind it.
How often should firewall rules be reviewed?
Once a year at minimum, plus any time you change vendors or add a system. First reviews almost always turn up rules nobody remembers adding, and some of them shouldn't be there.
Can you manage the firewall we already own?
Usually, yes. If the maker still puts out security updates for it, we can take it over as is. If it's past its support date, we'll recommend a replacement and explain why patching around it is a bad bet.