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5 reasons you need a hardware firewall
The increasing complexity of cyberattacks and the ease of automation means you should always have a well-configured firewall on your computer. That helps to filter unwanted traffic before it gets onto your PC, but it won't stop attacks from getting to other devices on your home network. Your Wi-Fi router also has a simple firewall on it, but these are often barebones and don't have a lot of options for customizability and other controls you might want on your network traffic.
To gain that level of control over your network, you might want to add a hardware firewall to your setup. While you could build your own with old PC components or virtualize it on your server, often the best option for ease of use is to get a dedicated network appliance for your firewall. Many have app-based setup routines that walk you through every aspect.
They do mean you're locked into a particular vendor and might have to deal with that device not getting updates in the future. However, you can eventually make your own hardware firewall, as you'll have more knowledge about what is important to you and your network. Until then, hardware firewalls are relatively inexpensive and are an important part of your home network security strategy.
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Protects the entire network and every device on it
Constant protection for every device with a single point of configuration
Hardware firewalls might require some setup and configuration to begin with, but they're often simpler in the long run when it comes to keeping your home network safe. That's because they stop malicious data before it reaches your home network, keeping every device you have connected safe with the same configuration and rules. At one point, they used only to examine data coming in, but modern hardware firewalls also examine outgoing data, so they can catch malware as it's being spread or notice if something is sending data to an external server that it shouldn't be.
At their simplest, they use a packet filter to examine every data packet and the source and location metadata associated with it. If the data meets the rules for allowed data, it is allowed through. If not, it will drop the packet, and it won't go anywhere. This could be set up only to allow video call protocols to go to certain devices on your network or to only let certain devices use VPNs. Plus, the hardware firewall is always running unless you choose to turn it off, keeping your network protected at all times.
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Additional layers of defense
Layered security is the best security, especially when things are connected to the internet
The best hardware firewalls aren't simply based on rules-based packet inspection. They come with advanced security features like deep packet inspection to see more than just the routing metadata in data packets, or real-time updates to the threat engine running in the firewall with updated information on new malware and other cybersecurity threats as they're discovered.
Plus, many newer hardware firewalls also pack intrusion prevention systems (IPS) and intrusion detection systems (IDS), which work together to flag potential issues, do extra checks on the flagged data packets, and decide if they are malicious or not. The more layers to your security, the better when dealing with internet-facing devices, and having a hardware firewall provides multiple ways to catch intrusions or unwanted data.
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Reduces resource use on other devices
Free up precious CPU cycles on your servers and computers for other uses
Whether you're running multiple computers on your home network or virtualizing your home lab with Proxmox, it's always better to find ways to keep more system resources open in case you need them. A hardware firewall filters out issues before they reach your internal network, so the software firewalls on your other devices don't have to do any hard work. You could even disable the software firewalls on servers and other devices if you wanted to, but that puts a lot of trust in making sure the hardware firewall is properly configured.
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Single point of security updates for the entire network
Staying on top of security updates can be tough, but it can be made easier
A hardware firewall covers your entire network, making it easier to keep up with updates and security settings. You only have to update protection settings once, and every device connected to your home network benefits from the upgraded coverage, and it requires no actions to be taken on those devices.
It also protects your networking hardware, from your router to switches and access points and even those pesky IoT devices that tend to have little to no security. By updating the hardware firewall, you can protect devices that aren't getting their own updates, making your whole home network safer.
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Prevents threats from getting to internal drives
Once malware makes it to a hard drive, you're going to have a hard time removing it
One feature of the best hardware firewalls is sandboxing, which prevents unrecognized files from being passed to the device that requests them from the remote server. Sandboxing is another layer of security that works with the antivirus and malware protection running on the firewall, putting those unknown files into digital timeout to study what it does. The firewall will also check the file's hash value through a cloud-based database provided by a cybersecurity company to see if it's okay to complete the download for the user.
This additional check can prevent malware from accessing internal storage drives even if the threat has not been seen as an exploit in the wild. If the sandbox environment decides the file is safe, it will be added to the overall database of known good files, keeping the internet a bit safer.
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Having a hardware firewall on your home network keeps all of your devices safer
While having software firewalls on your computers keeps individual devices safe, network security works better when it's a layered approach. Having a hardware firewall that's more advanced than the one built into a consumer router is a good start, with properly configured rules to drop potentially malicious traffic before it gets onto your home network. But a good hardware firewall will also track outgoing data, and alert you to potential threats from zombie devices or IoT hardware that are sending out information you don't want to leave your home network. Plus, you'll learn a ton of important network security concepts and best practices while setting it up and tuning things for your network.