Azure NSG vs Firewall often creates a lot of delusions. Whenever we need to run any workload on cloud service, it becomes essential to monitor and manage the security measures such as incoming and outgoing traffic that uses your resources. Microsoft Azure provides two security services to track the in and out traffic flows. In this post, I will give you a walk-through of Azure Firewall vs NSG.
- What is Azure Firewall?
- Azure Firewall Standard
- Azure Firewall Premium
- Azure Firewall Basic
- How does Firewall Azure work?
- What is Azure Network Security Groups (NSG)?
- How does Azure Network Security Groups work?
- Difference between Azure Firewall and Azure Network Security Groups
- Feature Comparison
- FAQs
- Conclusion
Azure Firewall
Azure Firewall is a fully managed network security service. It is used to secure the incoming and outgoing traffic of content within it. It is an intelligent system that automatically detects the workloads in the VNet and protects all resources from malicious traffic. The Azure Firewall is based on layers 4 and 7 of the OSI (Open Systems Interconnection Model) model. It is effortless to implement the Azure Firewall. Users need to set and configure rules like Nat rules, Application rules, and Network rules to apply Firewall.
Azure Firewall Standard
Azure Firewall Standard provides L3-L7 filtering and threat intelligence directly from Microsoft Web Security.
Threat-based filtering can alert and deny traffic to and from known IP addresses and domains, and is updated in real time to prevent attacks.
Azure Firewall Premium
Azure Firewall Premium has advanced features such as signature-based IDPS, which provides rapid detection of attacks by searching for specific patterns. These patterns can include byte segments on network connections or known malicious instructions used by malware. More than 58,000 signatures across 50+ categories are updated in real time to prevent new and emerging vulnerabilities. Valid groups include malware, phishing, coin mining, and Trojan horse attacks.
Azure Firewall Basic
Azure Firewall Basic is similar to Firewall Standard with the following important limitations:
Threat only supports Intel Alert Mode
Fixed scaling units backend instance for running programs on two virtual machines
Recommended to estimate competition of about 250Mbps
How does Firewall Azure Work?
Azure firewall offers enough features to provide optimized control over the in and out network traffic. It eliminates the need for Load Balancer configuration because of its high availability. Microsoft Azure ensures 99.99% availability of its resources due to its availability zone feature. It does not charge anything extra for scalability. You pay only for what you use.
Moreover, it also allows restriction on outbound traffic by specifying the FQDN service. You can create your own defined rules using Azure Firewall to filter networks based on source IP, destination IP, port, and protocol. These rules further show the status as Allow or Deny status. It also enables threat intelligence features that can identify malicious IP addresses and irrelevant traffic.
Read Microsoft Defender for Cloud [AZ-500]: Everything You Should Know
Azure Network Security Groups (NSG)
Azure Network Security Groups is a fully managed offering from Microsoft that helps refine traffic from and to Azure VNet. The Azure NSG consists of certain security rules that users can allow or deny at their convenience. Evaluation of these rules is done through a 5-tuple hash. The 5-tuple hash takes values from the Source port number, IP Addresses, Destination IP address, port number, etc. It allows the association of Network Security Groups with a VNet or a VM network interface very easily, and it works on layers 3 and 4 of the OSI model.
Check out: Azure Networking
How does Azure Network Security Groups work?
Azure Network Security Group (NSG) is a great solution offered by Microsoft to protect virtual networks. Using this, administrators can comfortably organize, filter, direct, and limit various network traffic flows. You can set different inbound and outbound rules to allow or deny a specific type of traffic to configure Azure Network Security Group. If you want to use Azure Network Security Groups, you need to create and configure individual rules.
You can define any rules required as per the situation, such as to define whether the traffic flowing through the network is safe and needs to be permitted or not.
Also Check: Top 10 Best Practices for Azure Security
Difference Between Azure Firewall and Network Security Group
Azure Firewall | Azure Network Security Groups |
Azure Firewall is a robust service and a fully managed firewall. | Azure Network Security Group is a basic firewall. |
It is loaded with tons of features to ensure maximum protection of your resources. | This solution is used to filter traffic at the network layer. |
It can analyze and filter L3, L4 traffic, and L7 application traffic. | No such facility is available in Azure NSG. |
Azure Firewall provides full support to application FQDN tags. | This feature is not available in Azure NSG. |
It allows you to mask the source and destination network addresses this this | This feature is missing here. |
It offers a threat intelligence-based filtering option. |
This feature is missing in NSG. |
utilize
Check out: AZ-500 Exam – Microsoft Azure Security Technologies Certification
Azure Firewall and NSG in Conjunction
Network segmentation is the reason you can utilize NSGs for both internal and external traffic on a subnet. A jump box that must offer RDP connectivity to a portion of the subnet is a good example: A VNet’s security is safeguarded by Azure Application Gateway from the outside. An NSG is more targeted and is deployed to particular subnets and/or network interfaces, whereas an Azure Firewall monitors traffic more broadly. Applying rules based on IP addresses, port numbers, networks, and subnets is possible with both firewalls and NSG.
Feature Comparison
Let’s compare Azure Firewall and Azure NSG based on their features.
Service Tags:
Service tags act as a label that shows a range of IP addresses for specific services such as Data Lake, Container Registry, Azure Key Vault, etc. Both Azure Firewall and NSG provide full support to service tags, but users can’t customize them as Microsoft manages them.
FQDN Tags
Azure Firewall only supports FQDN Tags. They signify a group of fully qualified domain names of Microsoft services such as Windows Update or Azure Backup. FQDN Tags are also managed by Microsoft and cannot be customized.
SNAT
SNAT stands for Source Network Address Translation and is supported by Azure Firewall only. This feature lets the Azure Firewall configure with a public IP address that you can use to mask the IP address of Azure resources that are sent out via the Firewall.
DNAT
DNAT stands for Destination Address Translation, and Azure Firewall supports this feature to translate incoming traffic from the firewall’s public IP address to the private IP addresses of a VNet.
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FAQs
What is Azure Firewall?
Azure Firewall is a managed, cloud-based network security service that provides stateful packet inspection, network, and application-level protection, and inbound and outbound filtering for virtual network resources.
What is an Azure Network Security Group (NSG)?
Azure Network Security Group (NSG) is a logical firewall service that filters network traffic between resources in an Azure virtual network and the internet, and between resources within different subnets in a virtual network.
What is the difference between Azure Firewall and Azure Network Security Group (NSG)?
Azure Firewall is a central security service that provides security services for all the resources within a virtual network. It offers granular application-level filtering and threat intelligence-based filtering. On the other hand, Azure Network Security Group (NSG) is a more basic firewall that filters network traffic at the network layer (layer 4) and provides inbound and outbound security rules for individual resources.
Can Azure Firewall and Azure Network Security Group (NSG) be used together?
Yes, Azure Firewall and Azure Network Security Group (NSG) can be used together to provide additional layers of security for virtual networks. Azure Firewall can be used to filter application-level traffic while NSG can be used to filter network-level traffic.
Can Azure Firewall and Azure NSG be used together?
Yes, they can be used together to provide additional layers of security for virtual networks.
What are the benefits of using Azure Firewall?
1. Centralized network security
2. Advanced threat protection
3. Granular application-level filtering.
What are the benefits of using Azure NSG?
Basic network security, inbound and outbound security rules, and easy configuration and management.
What kind of traffic can Azure Firewall filter?
Azure Firewall can filter inbound and outbound traffic for TCP, UDP, and application protocols like HTTP and HTTPS.
When should you use the Azure firewall instead of NSG?
You should use Azure Firewall instead of NSG when you require centralized network security for a virtual network, granular application-level filtering, and advanced threat protection. Azure Firewall is also easier to manage and scale, making it more suitable for larger deployments.
Read: How to prepare for Microsoft Azure Security Technologies [AZ-500] Certification?
Conclusion
Azure Firewall vs NSG battle continues to escalate. Both services are two primary security services from Microsoft. Each service has its perks of security on different network levels. Azure Firewall is an intelligent solution to filter network traffic. On the other hand, Azure Network Security Group provides security to inbound and outbound network traffic based on basic rules. Overall, the Azure Firewall is a complete package and has a slight advantage over Azure Network Security Groups.
References/Related
- Microsoft Azure Security Technologies Certification
- Microsoft Azure Security Technologies: Step By Step Activity Guides
- Introduction to Azure Sentinel and Steps to Setup
- What is Azure Backup?- Features, Benefits, Tools & Real-life Examples
- Azure Site Recovery: Benefits, Working, Features, and Implementation
- Top 10 Best Practices for Azure Security
- Azure Firewall vs Azure Network Security Groups (NSG)
- Azure Security vs AWS Security
- What is Azure security?
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