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Audits & Attestation

Firewall & Cloud Reviews

Configuration and rule-base reviews of your firewalls and cloud environments, benchmarked against recognised hardening standards.

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Overview

Tighten the configurations that hold the line.

Firewalls and cloud platforms are only as strong as their configuration. Rule sprawl, permissive policies and drift from hardening baselines quietly widen your attack surface.

We review your firewall rule-bases and cloud configurations against CIS Benchmarks and good practice, flagging risky rules, gaps and drift, with clear recommendations to harden them.

What’s covered

The areas this audit examines.

Firewall rule-base review

Overly permissive, unused and conflicting rules.

Segmentation & zoning

Traffic flow between trust zones.

Cloud configuration

Security groups, IAM and exposed services.

Hardening baselines

Drift from CIS and vendor benchmarks.

Logging & monitoring

Visibility over network and cloud activity.

Who needs this

Does this match your needs?

Where this engagement tends to add the most value.

PCI-scoped environmentsFirewall configuration requirements.

Cloud-hosted businessesSecurity-group and IAM hygiene.

Enterprises with complex networksRule sprawl and drift.

Post-migration organisationsValidating new setups.

Regulated entitiesNetwork security expectations.

Any org with firewalls / cloudConfiguration assurance.

Regulatory drivers

Why this is required

Reviewing firewall and cloud configuration is a named, recurring requirement under payment-security standards and a core ISO control; configuration drift is a leading cause of exposure.

PCI DSS v4.0 (Req 1)

Requires network security controls, documented configuration standards and periodic review of rule-sets.

ISO/IEC 27001:2022

Network security and configuration management are explicit Annex A controls.

CIS Benchmarks

The recognised hardening baselines for firewalls, cloud and network devices.

How we work

A structured path, start to finish.

An orderly lifecycle designed for a credible, defensible result.

Scoping & architecture intake

Gathering the network and cloud architecture in scope.

Rule-base & policy review

Reviewing firewall rule-bases and security policies.

Exposure & segmentation analysis

Analysing exposure, segmentation and trust boundaries.

Cloud security-group & IAM review

Reviewing cloud security groups and identity policies.

Hardening recommendations

Practical hardening recommendations for each finding.

Report & remediation

A clear report with prioritised remediation.

What you receive

Documentation built for every audience.

Review reportFindings across firewall and cloud configuration.
Rule-base findingsRedundant, risky and overly-permissive rules.
Exposure & segmentation mapTrust boundaries and exposure visualised.
Hardening recommendationsPractical fixes for each finding.
Remediation planA prioritised plan to harden the estate.

Standards & frameworks

This work maps to the standards and regulatory requirements relevant to you.

CIS BenchmarksNISTCloud Well-ArchitectedISO 27001

Checklist

Are you ready? A quick checklist

What to have in place before we begin.

Firewall rule-base export available

Network diagrams current

Cloud account read access

In-scope environments defined

Change-management records

Hardening baseline agreed

Logging configuration accessible

Remediation owner identified

FAQ

Common questions

Is this the same as a penetration test?

No — a review analyses configuration against best practice, while a penetration test actively exploits weaknesses. They complement each other.

Which firewalls and clouds do you cover?

We cover the major firewall vendors — including Palo Alto, Fortinet, Cisco and Check Point — and the leading cloud platforms, AWS, Azure and GCP. We confirm the exact products and accounts in scope during scoping so the review fits your environment.

How often should we review?

At least annually, and after any significant change to your network or cloud environment. Rule-bases and cloud configurations drift quickly as teams add exceptions and spin up new services, so periodic review is the only reliable way to catch the gaps that accumulate between major projects.