What are the advantages and disadvantages of having a hosted firewall?

Posted by Roy on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by Roy
Published on 2010-04-06T08:58:39Z Indexed on 2010/04/06 9:03 UTC
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firewall

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isp

Would you rather have your firewall hosted or in house if you've got the skills to manage it?

We currently have 6 remote offices and 2 different ISP's, one private network and our firewall (Watchguard, licenses are due to expire) is also our main gateway. I don't see how a hosted firewall (in this case Fortinet) is going to work for us especially when it's cheaper to buy our own firewall and the transition from one ISP to a new provider will take some time because our current contracts aren't due to expire soon.

What are to pros and cons of having a firewall hosted by your ISP in general?

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