• 06 June, 2025
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The Shifting Landscape of Network Security in 2024

I’m sitting at my desk here after my third or fourth (or is it fifth?) coffee today–and yes, the one that’s supposed to perk me up sometimes just makes me jittery — and thinking about how much has changed since I began banging network cables and dialing into PSTN lines in ’93. A firewall used to be the equivalent of the guard at the gate of the castle: stand-alone, strong, and generally sufficient to keep out any pesky interlopers. But it’s 2024 now. And your firewall? It’s not a silver bullet anymore. And it’s no longer even your knight in shining armor.

The Shifting Perimeter: Firewalls, Old and New

I’ve seen the good, the bad, and the oh-s***-the-Internet’s-turned-evil, from running data mux over voice mux over PSTNs to earnings denial-of-service in the space of minutes by the Slammer worm. Fast, yes, that worm was, but compared with today’s threats? It was a tantrum with a toddler tantrumming. The firewalls that used to shield people from online crime are getting bypassed, overwhelmed or tuned out.

‘The thing with firewalls is that they’re meant to only do perimeter filtering. Block bad IPs. Stop suspicious ports. But new wave cybersecurity threats don’t care about your front door, they’ll slither through the cracks in your windows, creep in through your cloud apps or tunnel through your endpoints.

And no, just updating your firewall to the latest firmware is no longer going to do the job.

Defense-in-Depth Explained

If you think one locked door is capable of keeping burglars at bay, I have some real estate to sell you. In security, as in a well-run kitchen or a well-tuned car, many layers of protection count. This is what is called defense-in-depth, and it’s the difference between a band-aid and a surgical shield.

Defense-in-depth means:

• Dozens of layers of concurrent security measures.
• Full ecosystem visibility.
• Built from the ground up with continuous monitoring and rapid response in mind.

I recently assisted three banks in redesigning their zero-trust architecture — that’s the fancy term for trusting nothing within or outside of the network without verifying it. That project was another reminder of how important layered defenses truly are. If one layer fails? The others catch the fall.

Fundamental Elements for Today’s Security Stance

Do away with the idea of just defending the network edge. These days, you are prime property and to protect your assets, you should get a little diverse.

• Endpoints: Laptops, phones and IoT devices. And think back to when we all got briefly excited about BYOD? Yeah, that opened so many back doors. Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) system today identify suspicious activity and stop attacks in their tracks, preventing their spread.
• Network: Yes, firewalls are still a thing, but they’re just a piece of a larger pie of integrated next generation firewalls (NGFW), Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS), secure SD-WAN, and micro-segmentation, and other such network-centric security controls, right?
• Cloud: Whether it’s SaaS applications or IaaS tended by your own admin staff, your apps and data in the cloud are irresistible to attackers. Continuous cloud security posture management (CSPM) changes the game in this respect.
• Applications: Today’s apps are complex beasts, with vulnerabilities of their own. Application security testing and runtime protection means reducing exposure to breaches.

With each layer, you create resistance and purchase those precious seconds, or even minutes, to detect and stop incidents. Trust me, I have been in the trenches when seconds count.

Layered Security: A Look at How PJ Networks’ Managed SOC Provides It

You’re probably thinking: Well Sanjay, why can’t any company just create their own SOC? Great question — and one I hear pretty much every day. Operating an effective Security Operations Center requires tons of expertise and real time threat intel — more than most can cobble together on their own.

Our SOC as a service powered by PJ Networks? It is not merely some alert factory. We continously monitor and audit your full attack surface, not just the outside of the network:

• Endpoint telemetry
• Cloud service logs
• Network traffic
• Application behavior

We bring powerful correlation and machine learning tools — no hype about AI-powered that can promise the world but deliver a black box that is impossible to trust. Our model is human expertise, made ever more precise with tech, not displaced by it.

I’m still recovering from the hardware hacking village at DefCon that I had the fortune to attend. There simply is no substitute for witnessing attacks firsthand and learning from those experiences. We bring that same approach to your SOC: proactive, curious and relentless.

Threat Protection With the Fortinet Security Fabric

Benefit from the ongoing protection of the network security fabric combined with the proactive security enabled by the use of real-time threat intelligence.

The core of our layered approach is the Fortinet Security Fabric—imagine it as the frame of your car that keeps your cybersecurity car in one piece:

• Bundled Security Components. Firewalls, EPs, IPYm and cloud sec have a common function.
• Automation of Threat Intelligence and Response. The sharing of attacker data in real time means we can cut off attacks more quickly.
•  Analytical Scalability and Flexibility. Whether you’re a bank, a manufacturer, or a service, you receive security that’s adaptable to your organization’s requirements both today and in the future.

I have worked with many vendors over the years. No one else has the breadth that Fortinet does, from hardware appliances to cloud native. It is like having a Swiss Army knife versus a screw driver.

Secure Your Entire Ecosystem

Listen, if you’re still betting it all on your firewall as your single cardinal point defense, you’re playing a dangerous game. The universe of threats is large — and expanding. I’ve made mistakes before, like the rest of us. In the early days of my career, I was telling customers that a simple firewall and anti-virus would suffice. Spoiler: it’s NOT.

Here’s the takeaway:

• Implement layered defenses. Firewalls, endpoints, network segmentation, cloud security – working in unison.
• Continuous monitoring. It’s not set-and-forget.
• Make use of skilled managed SOC services. You don’t have to construct all of it.
• Leverage integrated platforms such as the Fortinet Security Fabric. They simplify complexity.

PJ Networks brings you exactly that – a Security Operations Centre (SOC) Hosting and Management service, developed from years of experience, new generation tech and a truckload of been there done that scars to penetrate the fog.

If you’re looking for peace of mind beyond a single perimeter device, let us know. We’ve got you covered—from your endpoints to that cloud your developers claim is secure by default.

Quick Take

• Firewalls alone aren’t enough to stop today’s attackers
• The defense of depth term is for multiple layers to put on a security barrier and overlap them
• Security that’s working today covers the endpoint, network, cloud, and applications
• PJ Networks Managed SOC watching everything all the time
• With the layers combined in a east-west as well as north-south chain, it is Fortinet Security Fabric that glues them together
• Why bet with one line of defense? Use multiple.

And yes, I’m still inherently skeptical of AI-powered buzzwords. Equal protection requires a human brain with the machine.

All this from a network admin who used to think that patching a firewall was the extent of what you had to do. Times change. Your security should too.

—Sanjay Seth, PJ Networks Pvt Ltd

P.S. If you’re as big a fan of nostalgia as I am, consider your current firewall as an old-school carburetor. Its time came and went — but today’s engines require fuel injection, electronic ignition and so much more to function fluidly and safely.