Nowadays, as businesses and companies rely on cloud infrastructure, network security becomes more crucial for them. AWS Network Firewall is one of the reliable solutions provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS). This service helps businesses to safeguard their AWS environment by offering scalable defense against threats or vulnearbilities.
In this comprehensive blog we will explain AWS Network Firewall, its main features, limitations of ANF, use cases of Amazon Network firewall, and everything you need to know about it. We will explain here how our AWS professional services can help you make the most of this tool.
Table of Contents
What is AWS Network Firewall?
AWS Network Firewall is a stateful managed network firewall and intrusion prevention service provided by Amazon. It makes it straightforward to deploy essential network protections for all of your Amazon Virtual Private Clouds (VPCs). It helps filter outgoing and incoming traffic of your internet gateway, NAT Gateway, or over VPN or AWS Direct connect.
You can use this network firewall to monitor and protect it using customization firewall rules ensuring your applications and data are secured against malicious activities.
AWS Network Firewall Key concepts
The following are the key concepts for AWS Network Firewall:
- Route table: A set of rules that specify how network traffic is routed or directed. To route traffic through your firewalls for filtering, you need to make changes to your VPC route tables in Amazon VPC.
- Network Firewall: An AWS resource that provides capability for traffic filtering logic for the subnets within a virtual private cloud.
- Network Firewall Policy: An AWS resource that specifies guidelines and additional parameters that a firewall in a virtual private cloud (VPC) can use to filter inbound and outbound traffic.
- Network Firewall Rule Group: An AWS resource that defines rules for incoming and outgoing VPC traffic.
- Stateless rules: These are rules for inspection of a single packet of network traffic without taking into account other packet’s flow.
- Stateful rules: Standard guidelines for inspection of network traffic packets related to their traffic flow.
Key Features of AWS Network Firewall
1. Stateful Inspection
Stateful inspection is used by Amazon Network Firewall (ANF) to manage and monitor active connections and make sure that only authorized traffic passes through the network. By identifying and preventing suspicious activities, it improves security by analyzing the context and status of network connections.
2. Deep Packet Inspection (DPI)
Using the Deep Packet Inspection feature AWS Network Firewall inspects the contents of data packets beyond the header information. This feature is crucial for identifying and mitigating complex threats that can break the traditional firewall defenses.
3. Centralized Management
AWS Network Firewall offers centralized management through the AWS Management Console, AWS CLI(Command Line Interface), and APIs. This makes it easy to create, configure, and monitor firewall rules within multiple accounts and virtual private clouds.
4. Scalability and Flexibility
AWS Network Firewall provides extreme scalability to scale according to your traffic needs, ensuring good performance even during peak usage. This scalability is important for growing businesses that need to maintain robust security without any manual interference.
5. Integration with other AWS Services
AWS Network Firewall facilitates seamless integration with other AWS services including AWS CloudFormation, AWS CloudWatch, and AWS Firewall Manager. These integrations allow for automated deployments, monitoring, and management of firewall rules and policies.
Key Benefits of Amazon Network Firewall
AWS Network Firewall offers a wide range of benefits that improve the security and ability to manage your AWS infrastructure. Here are the key advantages:
1. Robust Security and Comprehensive Threat Detection
AWS Network Firewall offers robust protection against various threats and vulnerabilities. Using stateful inspection and DPI features, ANF is able to inspect and prevent malicious elements like malwares, ransomwares, and DDoS attacks. It ensures that only legitimate inbound and outbound traffic passes your network. Such AWS Network Firewall provides comprehensive threat detection.
2. Regulatory compliance
AWS firewall supports compliance with regulation authorities such as GDPR(General Data Protection Regulation) and HIPAA(Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act). It helps meet strict compliance requirements. It provides detailed logging and auditing capabilities, making it easier to track and report on network activities.
3. Cost-effectiveness
AWS Network Firewall is a cost-effective firewall solution for network security. As a comprehensive managed and controlling service, it eliminates the need for maintaining and updating hardware firewalls. You have to pay for what you use, and the service provides scalability with your needs, making it a price-efficient choice.
4. Easy deployment and flexible configuration
This is one of the most important benefits. The Amazon Network Firewall deployment process is easy and straightforward. Setting up firewalls and rule configurations are simple with step-by-step instructions that help you quickly secure your virtual private clouds (VPCs). Rule configurations are highly customizable with AWS Network Firewall. The deployment process is further made simpler by the user-friendly interface and integration with other AWS tools.
5. Consistent monitoring
AWS Network Firewall offers continuous monitoring capabilities through AWS CloudWatch and other monitoring tools ensuring your network’s security. You can set up alerts and dashboards to keep track of firewall activity and respond promptly to any security incidents.
Limitations of ANF(Amazon Network Firewall)
AWS Network Firewall provides robust security for AWS cloud users. However, it has significant limitations including:
1. It is AWS Focused
Although AWS is one of the most widely used cloud computing platforms, many businesses also have on-premises cloud infrastructure and they are multi-cloud environments. Although AWS Network Firewall safeguards workloads hosted on AWS, it is unable to impose uniform security policies and controls over the organization’s overall IT infrastructure.
2. Limited Security IntegrationÂ
AWS offers integrations with security solutions but these integrations are primarily concerned with protecting AWS-based infrastructure and do not offer all the features needed to secure AWS environments.
Due to this, businesses have to use a range of solutions to secure their diverse cloud environments, which makes security management more complex, increases the possibility of security flaws, and slows down incident detection and response times.
3. Signature-Based ProtectionÂ
AWS provides an integrated intrusion prevention system (IPS) that recognizes and prevents known threat attacks through signature-based protection. But as most modern attacks consist of novel and zero-day threats, signature-based detection offers no defense against them.
Although AWS Network Firewall gives businesses a strong starting point for securing their AWS environments, It doesn’t provide all the security features that businesses require. Businesses can close these security gaps by adding security solutions to AWS Network Firewall that offer comprehensive endpoint and network security and close the gaps between on-premises and multi-cloud environments.
Architecture of AWS Network Firewall
AWS Network Firewall is a stateful, managed network firewall and intrusion detection and prevention service for Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC). Network Firewall and other services can be combined that you use with your virtual private cloud (VPC), such as an internet gateway, NAT gateway, VPN, or transit gateway.
By filtering traffic passing between the subnets and external locations, the firewall secures the subnets in your virtual private cloud (VPC). The location of a firewall in a very basic architecture is shown in the figure below.
Use Cases of AWS Network Firewall
AWS Network Firewall can be used in a wide range of use cases in the Industry. Here are a few examples of use cases for the service:
- ANF safeguards VPC to protect your AWS resources such as EC2 Instances and RDS Instances.
- It is used in managing traffic flowing between your VPC and transit gateway.
- It creates rules that are compliant with security standards such as PCI-DSS or HIPAA.
- Network Firewall provides advanced threat protection for your cloud network and infrastructure.
- Network Firewall offers multiple layers of firewall, with each layer providing a different level of security.
AWS Network Firewall Pricing
Amazon offers a Pay-as-you-go pricing model for AWS Network Firewall that means you only have to pay for the resources that you actually use. ANF service cost depends on the quantity of traffic processed by the firewall and the number of firewall rules determine the
The prices offered by Amazon associated with the various categories of traffic that the firewall processes are as follows:
| Resource Type | Price |
| Network Firewall Endpoint | $0.395/hr |
| Network Firewall Traffic Processing | $0.065/GB |
| Network Firewall Advanced Inspection Endpoint | $0.38/hr |
| Network Firewall Advanced Inspection Traffic Processing | $0.00/GB |
| NAT gateway Pricing | Use one hour & one GB of NAT gateway at no additional cost for every hour & GB charged for Network Firewall endpoints. |
Furthermore, costs vary based on the area in which you use the service. With AWS’s free tier for Network Firewall, you can handle up to 50GB of traffic each month without paying anything. For the most accurate pricing information, visit the AWS Network Firewall service’s pricing page.
Getting started with AWS Network Firewall
Step 1: Prerequisites
Before you begin, make sure you have an AWS account with the necessary permissions to create and manage AWS network firewalls. Familiarize yourself with basic VPC concepts as AWS Network Firewall operates at the VPC level.
Step 2: Create a VPC(Virtual Private Cloud) and Subnets
If you don’t have a VPC, create one through the AWS Management Console. Ensure you have public and private subnets configured within your VPC, as the firewall will be associated with these subnets.
Step 3: Access the AWS Network Firewall Console
Navigate to the AWS Network Firewall service in the AWS Management Console. This console allows you to create, configure, and manage your firewalls.
Step 4: Create a Firewall
- Create a Firewall: Click on “Create firewall” and give a name for your firewall.
- Select VPC and Subnets: Choose the VPC and subnets where the firewall will be deployed.
- Set Firewall Policies: Define your firewall policies, including rules to allow or deny traffic based on IP addresses, ports, and protocols.
Step 5: Configure Firewall Rules
Create stateful and stateless rules. Stateful rules keep track of the state of network connections, while stateless rules are evaluated on a per-packet basis. Define these rules to match your security requirements.
Step 6: Deploy the Firewall
Once your firewall and rules are configured, deploy the firewall to your specified subnets. This step activates the firewall, allowing it to start monitoring and controlling traffic according to your defined rules.
Step 7: Monitor and Manage
Use AWS CloudWatch and other monitoring tools to keep an eye on performance and activity of your firewall. Regularly review and update your firewall rules to ensure ongoing protection against evolving threats.
How SupportFly’s AWS Professional Services Can Help?
It can be a challenging task for those who are not familiar with these services because AWS Network Firewall requires knowledge to implement and manage it and a deep understanding of AWS security best practices.
We provide comprehensive AWS Professional consulting services to help your business maximize the benefits of all the AWS services including AWS Network Firewall. Here’s how we can help you:
- Firewall configuration and operation: Our team of AWS certified professionals can help you configure and deploy AWS Network Firewall on your VPC. They ensure that firewall rules are tailored to your specific security needs.
- Ongoing operations and research: Managing firewall rules and managing network traffic can be time-consuming. SupportFly provides ongoing management and analytics services to ensure your firewall remains effective against evolving threats.
- Safety audit and compliance: We conduct security audits to assess your current network security level and identify areas for improvement. They also help with compliance requirements, ensuring that your AWS environment meets regulatory standards.
- Incident response and prevention: Timely action and prevention of a security incident is very important. SupportFly provides incident response services to rapidly address and mitigate threats.
- Training and support: SupportFly provides training and support to help your team understand and maintain AWS Network Firewall.Â
Conclusion
AWS Network Firewall is an effective resource for securing your AWS cloud infrastructure against an extensive range of threats and vulnerabilities. Its stateful inspection, deep packet inspection(DPI) feature, and integration with different AWS services make it a vital tool for a strong cloud safety. Whether you want to secure your web applications, make certain regulatory compliance, or secure internal communications, AWS Network Firewall offers the power and scalability to meet your security needs.
