Deploy a security partner provider
Security partner providers in Azure Firewall Manager allow you to use your familiar, best-in-breed third-party security-as-a-service (SECaaS) offerings to protect Internet access for your users.
To learn more about supported scenarios and best practice guidelines, see What are security partner providers?
Integrated third-party Security as a service (SECaaS) partners are now available:
- Zscaler
- Check Point
- iboss
Deploy a third-party security provider in a new hub
Skip this section if you're deploying a third-party provider into an existing hub.
- Sign in to the Azure portal.
- In Search, type Firewall Manager and select it under Services.
- Navigate to Overview. Select View secured virtual hubs.
- Select Create new secured virtual hub.
- Enter your subscription and resource group, select a supported region, and add your hub and virtual WAN information.
- Select Include VPN gateway to enable Security Partner Providers.
- Select the Gateway scale units appropriate for your requirements.
- Select Next: Azure Firewall
Note
Security partner providers connect to your hub using VPN Gateway tunnels. If you delete the VPN Gateway, the connections to your security partner providers are lost.
- If you want to deploy Azure Firewall to filter private traffic along with third-party service provider to filter Internet traffic, select a policy for Azure Firewall. See the supported scenarios.
- If you want to only deploy a third-party security provider in the hub, select Azure Firewall: Enabled/Disabled to set it to Disabled.
- Select Next: Security Partner Provider.
- Set Security Partner Provider to Enabled.
- Select a partner.
- Select Next: Review + create.
- Review the content and then select Create.
The VPN gateway deployment can take more than 30 minutes.
To verify that the hub has been created, navigate to Azure Firewall Manager->Overview->View secured virtual hubs. You see the security partner provider name and the security partner status as Security Connection Pending.
Once the hub is created and the security partner is set up, continue on to connect the security provider to the hub.
Deploy a third-party security provider in an existing hub
You can also select an existing hub in a Virtual WAN and convert that to a secured virtual hub.
- In Getting Started, Overview, select View secured virtual hubs.
- Select Convert existing hubs.
- Select a subscription and an existing hub. Follow rest of the steps to deploy a third-party provider in a new hub.
Remember that a VPN gateway must be deployed to convert an existing hub to secured hub with third-party providers.
Configure third-party security providers to connect to a secured hub
To set up tunnels to your virtual hub's VPN Gateway, third-party providers need access rights to your hub. To do this, associate a service principal with your subscription or resource group, and grant access rights. You then must give these credentials to the third party using their portal.
Note
Third-party security providers create a VPN site on your behalf. This VPN site does not appear in the Azure portal.
Create and authorize a service principal
Create Microsoft Entra service principal: You can skip the redirect URL.
Add access rights and scope for the service principal. How to: Use the portal to create a Microsoft Entra application and service principal that can access resources
Note
You can limit access to only your resource group for more granular control.
Visit partner portal
Follow your partner provided instructions to complete the setup. This includes submitting Microsoft Entra information to detect and connect to the hub, update the egress policies, and check connectivity status and logs.
You can look at the tunnel creation status on the Azure Virtual WAN portal in Azure. Once the tunnels show connected on both Azure and the partner portal, continue with the next steps to set up routes to select which branches and VNets should send Internet traffic to the partner.
Configure security with Firewall Manager
Browse to the Azure Firewall Manager -> Secured Hubs.
Select a hub. The hub status should now show Provisioned instead of Security Connection Pending.
Ensure the third-party provider can connect to the hub. The tunnels on the VPN gateway should be in a Connected state. This state is more reflective of the connection health between the hub and the third-party partner, compared to previous status.
Select the hub, and navigate to Security Configurations.
When you deploy a third-party provider into the hub, it converts the hub into a secured virtual hub. This ensures that the third-party provider is advertising a 0.0.0.0/0 (default) route to the hub. However, virtual network connections and sites connected to the hub don't get this route unless you opt-in on which connections should get this default route.
Note
Do not manually create a 0.0.0.0/0 (default) route over BGP for branch advertisements. This is automatically done for secure virtual hub deployments with 3rd party security providers. Doing so may break the deployment process.
Configure virtual WAN security by setting Internet Traffic via Azure Firewall and Private Traffic via a trusted security partner. This automatically secures individual connections in the Virtual WAN.
Additionally, if your organization uses public IP ranges in virtual networks and branch offices, you need to specify those IP prefixes explicitly using Private Traffic Prefixes. The Public IP prefixes can be specified individually or as aggregates.
If you use non-RFC1918 addresses for your private traffic prefixes, you may need to configure SNAT policies for your firewall to disable SNAT for non-RFC1918 private traffic. By default, Azure Firewall SNATs all non-RFC1918 traffic.
Branch or virtual network Internet traffic via third-party service
Next, you can check if virtual network virtual machines or the branch site can access the Internet and validate that the traffic is flowing to the third-party service.
After you finish the route setting steps, the virtual network virtual machines and the branch sites are sent a 0/0 to the third-party service route. You can't RDP or SSH into these virtual machines. To sign in, you can deploy the Azure Bastion service in a peered virtual network.
Rule configuration
Use the partner portal to configure firewall rules. Azure Firewall passes the traffic through.
For example, you may observe allowed traffic through the Azure Firewall, even though there's no explicit rule to allow the traffic. This is because Azure Firewall passes the traffic to the next hop security partner provider (ZScalar, CheckPoint, or iBoss). Azure Firewall still has rules to allow outbound traffic, but the rule name isn't logged.
For more information, see the partner documentation.