Secure Web Gateway Vs Firewall
Secure Web Gateway Vs Firewall
the Difference
When originally conceived, secure web gateways (SWGs) filtered and managed web traffic, and firewalls filtered and
managed all network traffic of which web traffic was a subset. However, as the technologies matured, vendors continually
added features and capabilities so that the most robust solutions now have more in common than distinct differences. A
remaining distinction is that SWGs provide data loss protection and more detailed user website access reports.
To truly understand the differences, get to know each solution at a basic level and then examine key differences. This
information can inform how and when firewalls and SWGs can be used separately or even together.
Table of Contents
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Network
Generally no network traffic Robust inspection and reporting;
Traffic
inspection core feature
Inspection
URL &
Robust filtering and reporting; Effective filtering and blocking;
Website
core features secondary feature
Filtering
Data Loss Monitors web traffic for Only available in select advanced
Protection potential data exfiltration firewalls; secondary feature
Block malicious traffic: Uses lists of known-malicious URLs and websites to block traffic to and from these IP
addresses to cut off possible infection vectors.
Deny undesired content: Applies administrator-defined blacklists (aka denylists) to block user access to
undesired websites and applications (gambling, pornography, etc.).
Manage network bandwidth: Limits the amount of bandwidth to less critical functions, such as streaming media,
to ensure sufficient bandwidth for critical business functions.
Monitor employee behavior: Enforces policies, simple rules, and even artificial intelligence (AI) anomaly
detection to detect and block unwanted user behavior.
Prevent discovery: Obscures IP addresses and assets protected by the SWG by inserting a web proxy in
between the assets and the internet sources.
Advanced SWG tools often incorporate threat intelligence feeds and data loss prevention (DLP) inspection for sensitive
data.
What Is a Firewall?
Firewalls are security controls that control traffic at the border of a network, a host-based or device-specific
protection (server, router, PC), an application, a database, or even between two network segments. The most common type
of firewall focuses on controlling traffic entering and exiting a network, but more advanced firewalls add features for email
security, URL filtering, and malware detection.
Detect attacks: Inspects network traffic for signs of malware and even, for next generation firewalls (NGFW),
decrypts traffic to analyze malicious behavior.
More complex firewall solutions, such as NGFW and unified threat management (UTM) will incorporate features associated
with other types of security solutions. For example, they can screen data with an antivirus inspection, block malicious URLs
like a SWG or domain name service (DNS), or inspect email like an email gateway.
Protect against data loss: Enforce policies, detect anomalous behavior, and inspect data flows for regulated,
sensitive, or secret information.
Screen attacks: Filter known-malicious domains, enable sandbox file inspection, and detect malicious packets
using signatures, indicators, AI, or machine learning (ML).
Simplify management: Manages the consolidated features that might otherwise require separate, non-integrated
tools through a single installation and management dashboard.
Throttle unproductive content: Block, limit access, or limit bandwidth to streaming media, gambling sites,
pornographic sites, and other defined sites and applications.
The primary differences are primarily device, model, and implementation specific. Some vendors will focus SWG benefits on
controlling website traffic and firewall benefits on the internal network data. In part, this is because the SWG focuses on
analyzing data at the application layer and most firewalls focus on the network layer information of packets.
However, they often fail to note the types of firewalls that also scan packets at the application layer such as NGFW or web
application firewalls (WAF). While it can be academically useful to draw distinct lines, in reality, the best SWGs and firewalls
have heavy overlap of capabilities.
Firewall SWG
Email protection
Depends on
Cloud-enabled scalability Depends on installation
installation
Complex configuration: While more simple to manage and maintain than a suite of tools, the consolidated
features of advanced SWGs and firewalls create much more complex and time-consuming tools to initially setup
and configure.
High costs: Although cost effective in comparison to many individually purchased solutions, if you don’t need all of
the features, advanced SWGs and firewalls are quite expensive to purchase, install, and configure.
Variable capabilities: The same feature won’t perform the same or provide similar capabilities for all products;
most SWG and firewalls offer ‘reports’ but the type of reports and the detailed contents will vary extremely from
product to product.
The primary cons can be summarized as product confusion. An inexpensive, simple firewall won’t provide the same
protection as an expensive NGFW, but some of the features will be labeled similarly. Likewise, while implementing three to
five separate solutions takes much more time than setting up a robust SWG, most companies set up the separate solutions
over time and can become overwhelmed by options setting up a complex tool.
Firewall and SWG capabilities will also be incorporated into other modern security solutions to protect remote users and
remote assets. For example, Enterprise virtual public networks (VPNs) enable safer access for remote users by adding
basic firewall and SWG URL or malware filtering to cloud-based VPN infrastructure.
Secure service edge (SSE) incorporates FWaaS and SWG capabilities with other security technologies to protect remote
users, application data, and cloud resources. Similarly, secure access service edge (SASE) builds off of SSE remote
security to add software defined wide area network (SD-WAN) networks for location independent segmentation.
All of these solutions play important roles in securing businesses, non-profits, and government agencies, but buyers need to
fully understand their own needs to understand which product provides the best fit. Additionally, given the wide range of
capabilities within any product category, or even the products from a specific vendor, buyers also need to fully test tools to
ensure that the theoretical capabilities match needs and expectations.
Headquarters Protection
A municipal government maintains a central headquarters building (city hall) with a data center. Previously established
firewall protection is sufficient but they want additional protection against rising internet threats. They might add an on-prem
SWG appliance to improve the layers of security between users and potential threats.
SWGs and firewalls help to secure the network perimeter, to consider other solutions might be required for a full
security stack