firewall

do any of you sole proprietors/small firms use a special firewall
other than the one that comes with your router?

thinking about this with wisp compliance

I have a managed Ubiquiti firewall and router. My entire network out of my primary work place is a managed Ubiquiti network.

At other offices, it is a shared network so I keep as much off the network as possible and utilize a VPN.

I use a service called Ostra recommended by my tech guys. I have five employees and we’re often remote. They have a Palo Alto firewall at the office, VPN connection on all our computers since we’re often remote, and do the antivirus, malware, and email threat monitoring for a monthly subscription.

This isn’t my area, but I don’t hesitate to spend money protecting data. Even then we have concerns with Last Pass and Go to Meetings both having data breaches and being providers we use.

Cornerstone - when you say you have a managed Ubiquiti firewall and router. Does that mean you have someone
monitoring the firewall? My tech guy is recommending it for $150/mo Which is not alot if you have several people in your office; in my case; it's just me...so 1800/yr....for next 10 years is 18k....

Cornerstone - when you say you have a managed Ubiquiti firewall and router. Does that mean you have someone
monitoring the firewall?

I am not referring to managed services. I mean a firewall that is fully configurable (managed), not one that is basically "plug it in and defaults reign" (unmanaged). Similar to managed vs. unmanaged switches (my primary switch is managed, my others are unmanaged).

Managed services is a touchy subject for me. They're pushed heavily by IT firms because they're hugely profitable and they really do very little for the client. The IT companies adopt a specific brand and they have systems that automate almost everything; it is very rare for an actual human to ever look at devices under managed services unless they receive an automated notification of an issue.