Azure NSG Vs Azure Firewall

Azure Cloud Workload Protection
Azure NSG Vs Azure Firewall

As you may know that Azure protects workflow with two different ways, Azure NSG and Azure Firewall. What is the difference, lets talk about both and the difference between them.

Azure Firewall( FWaaS)
FWaaS stands for Firewall-as-a-service. Azure Firewall provides workload protection at OSI layers 3-7 with a cloud-based, fully-managed service. In addition to assessing incoming/outgoing traffic based on IP, port, and protocol, Azure Firewall inspects the network traffic to determine if it is malicious.

Fig 1.1- Azure Firewall

An integrated security platform that provides threat intelligence and signature-based IDPS, it is a completely managed, highly available cloud service. Microsoft uses Azure Firewall to protect Azure Cloud workloads.

Azure NSG
An Azure Network Security Group (NSG) is a firewall or access control list that manages network traffic to and from Azure resources inside a virtual network. It gives you the ability to construct rules that filter traffic based on IP address, port, and protocol.

The rules may be applied to individual virtual machines or subnets to manage access to resources like as virtual machines, load balancers, and application gateways.

Azure NSGs can aid in the protection of your resources against unauthorized access and other harmful actions. Azure NSGs can be linked to subnets or specific virtual machine instances inside those subnets.

Fig 1.2- Azure NSG

Azure Firewall and NSG together
Azure provides security services like Azure Firewall and Azure NSG. Both of them work by controlling traffic according to a set of regulations. But it is the only similarity there is. 

While Azure Firewall includes next-generation firewall features like packet inspection and intrusion detection, Azure NSG is a traditional firewall.

It's crucial to understand that Azure NSG and Azure Firewall do not compete with one another. Without respect to whether or not Azure Firewall is used, almost all cloud installations will employ Azure NSG. In actuality, Azure NSG and Azure Firewall configurations frequently work together.

In addition to providing access to a management subnet for resource sharing and monitoring, Azure NSG may be used to separate subnets for various departments. Then, an administrator may set up Azure Firewall to examine incoming traffic from all approved connections made by end users. In order to prevent the VDI service from having a single point of failure, Azure Firewall may additionally construct a highly-available load balancer.

Fig 1.3- Azure NSG Vs Firewall

Conclusion
In conclusion, Azure NSG focuses on network-level security, whereas Azure Firewall offers more sophisticated features and capabilities for safeguarding your Azure Virtual Network at the network level.