How FWaaS Handles Encrypted Traffic

With an increasing percentage of internet traffic being encrypted (primarily through SSL/TLS), handling encrypted traffic has become a critical function of modern firewalls. Firewall-as-a-Service (FWaaS), being a cloud-based firewall, is equipped to handle encrypted traffic in a scalable and efficient manner. The primary goal is to inspect and secure encrypted communications without compromising performance or security.

Here’s how FWaaS handles encrypted traffic:

1. SSL/TLS Decryption

To inspect and secure encrypted traffic, FWaaS performs SSL/TLS decryption. This involves decrypting the traffic so that the firewall can inspect the contents for potential threats, apply policies, and re-encrypt the traffic before sending it to its destination.

  • How it works:
    • Decryption: FWaaS intercepts encrypted traffic, decrypts it to inspect its contents, and applies necessary security policies (e.g., intrusion prevention, malware scanning, content filtering).
    • Re-encryption: After inspection, the traffic is re-encrypted and forwarded to its intended destination, ensuring that the confidentiality of the data is maintained.
  • Benefits:
    • This allows FWaaS to detect and block threats hidden in encrypted traffic, such as malware, phishing attempts, or data exfiltration, which would otherwise bypass traditional firewalls that cannot inspect encrypted traffic.
  • Example: A user downloads a file from an encrypted website. FWaaS decrypts the traffic, scans the file for malware, and only allows it to proceed if it’s deemed safe. The traffic is then re-encrypted and sent to the user’s device.

2. Policy-Based Decryption

Decryption of all traffic is resource-intensive, so FWaaS uses policy-based decryption to optimize performance while ensuring security. This allows organizations to selectively decrypt traffic based on specific criteria or security needs.

  • How it works:
    • Selective Decryption: Organizations can configure policies to decrypt specific types of traffic (e.g., traffic to sensitive applications or websites), while allowing trusted traffic (such as communication with well-known, secure websites) to remain encrypted without inspection.
    • Exceptions for Privacy: FWaaS can also be configured to bypass decryption for certain types of sensitive data, such as banking or healthcare traffic, to ensure user privacy and compliance with regulations like HIPAA or PCI-DSS.
  • Benefits:
    • This approach helps strike a balance between security and performance, reducing the processing overhead for the firewall by only decrypting traffic where necessary, while still maintaining the security of critical data.
  • Example: An organization might configure FWaaS to decrypt and inspect all traffic related to corporate applications like Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, but bypass decryption for financial websites and healthcare portals.

3. Advanced Threat Detection and Deep Packet Inspection (DPI)

Once the encrypted traffic is decrypted, FWaaS applies advanced threat detection techniques, such as deep packet inspection (DPI), to analyze the contents of the traffic for potential threats.

  • How it works:
    • Deep Packet Inspection: FWaaS looks beyond the header of the data packet and inspects the entire contents of the traffic, checking for any malicious behavior, malware, or violations of security policies.
    • Threat Intelligence Integration: FWaaS often integrates with global threat intelligence feeds, allowing it to detect zero-day attacks, ransomware, and phishing attempts hidden within encrypted traffic.
  • Benefits:
    • DPI allows FWaaS to detect threats that could bypass traditional firewalls, which often only inspect unencrypted traffic or the headers of data packets. It ensures that malicious payloads embedded within SSL/TLS traffic are identified and mitigated.
  • Example: If a user is downloading an email attachment from an encrypted email service, FWaaS can decrypt the traffic, inspect the file for potential threats, and block it if it detects a malicious payload.

4. SSL/TLS Inspection for Remote Workers and Distributed Networks

For organizations with remote workers, branch offices, or multi-cloud environments, FWaaS ensures that encrypted traffic is securely inspected regardless of where the user or application is located.

  • How it works:
    • Global Points of Presence (PoPs): FWaaS leverages cloud-native infrastructure with global Points of Presence (PoPs). Traffic from remote users or branch offices is directed to the nearest PoP, where it is decrypted, inspected, and re-encrypted.
    • Uniform Policy Enforcement: This ensures that all users, whether remote or on-premises, are subject to the same decryption, inspection, and security policies. This is especially useful in distributed workforces where traffic needs to be secured from various locations and devices.
  • Benefits:
    • FWaaS provides consistent security across remote environments, ensuring that even encrypted traffic from remote workers is inspected for threats, without requiring backhauling through a central data center.
  • Example: A remote employee accessing a corporate CRM application over an encrypted connection will have their traffic decrypted and inspected at the nearest FWaaS PoP, ensuring the same level of security as if they were in the office.

5. Handling Performance and Latency Issues

Decrypting and inspecting encrypted traffic can introduce latency and impact performance, especially if done on-premises. FWaaS, being cloud-native, is designed to mitigate performance issues associated with SSL/TLS inspection.

  • How it works:
    • Cloud Scalability: FWaaS leverages the scalability of cloud infrastructure to distribute decryption workloads across multiple cloud instances, reducing the performance impact of inspecting large volumes of encrypted traffic.
    • Traffic Optimization: FWaaS can also perform intelligent traffic routing, ensuring that decrypted traffic is inspected without causing unnecessary delays. It uses SD-WAN integration to dynamically route traffic based on network conditions, further improving performance.
  • Benefits:
    • By using cloud-based scalability and intelligent traffic routing, FWaaS minimizes the performance overhead typically associated with SSL/TLS inspection, ensuring that users don’t experience noticeable slowdowns while maintaining high levels of security.
  • Example: A large organization with thousands of remote workers can offload decryption tasks to FWaaS, ensuring that encrypted traffic is inspected efficiently, without compromising user experience or slowing down critical business applications.

6. Compliance and Privacy Considerations

Handling encrypted traffic is sensitive, especially when it involves personal or financial data. FWaaS ensures that organizations can comply with privacy regulations while still maintaining security.

  • How it works:
    • Customizable Decryption Policies: FWaaS allows organizations to create custom decryption policies that comply with industry regulations such as HIPAA, GDPR, and PCI-DSS. This ensures that sensitive data, such as healthcare records or payment information, is not decrypted unnecessarily.
    • Logging and Auditing: FWaaS provides detailed logs and audit trails for all decryption activities, ensuring that organizations can demonstrate compliance during security audits. It tracks which traffic is decrypted and inspected, ensuring transparency and accountability.
  • Benefits:
    • FWaaS helps organizations balance the need for data security with privacy concerns, ensuring that sensitive data is protected and that the firewall is compliant with regulatory standards.
  • Example: A healthcare provider using FWaaS can ensure that traffic related to patient records is inspected for security threats while maintaining HIPAA compliance by creating policies that prevent the unnecessary decryption of sensitive healthcare information.

Conclusion

FWaaS is well-equipped to handle encrypted traffic by performing SSL/TLS decryption, applying deep packet inspection (DPI), and leveraging cloud-native scalability to optimize performance. Through policy-based decryption, FWaaS can selectively decrypt traffic based on security needs and compliance requirements, ensuring that critical data remains secure while minimizing performance overhead.

This makes FWaaS an ideal solution for organizations dealing with a large volume of encrypted traffic across remote workers, cloud environments, and distributed networks, as it provides consistent threat detection, traffic inspection, and policy enforcement without sacrificing performance or compliance.