1. Why the spotlight is suddenly on your firewall
The EU’s NIS2 Directive (Directive (EU) 2022/2555) came into force in January 2023, and Member-State laws must now be in place. Enforcement starts as national acts land—most countries set Q1 2025 as the real-world deadline, with fines of up to €10 million or 2 % of global turnover for non-compliance.(digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu, dataguard.com)
NIS2 expands the old NIS scope dramatically and hard-wires network-security risk management into law for thousands of “essential” and “important” entities. For most organisations, the first control that regulators (and attackers) will test is the firewall.
2. What NIS2 actually demands of your perimeter
Article 21 requires “state-of-the-art” protection, including “policies on risk analysis, incident handling, access control, and secure network infrastructure”. In practice that translates to:
- Granular access control & segmentation (users, apps, workloads)
- Continuous deep-packet inspection with IPS/IDS
- Real-time threat-intel feeds and sandboxing
- Encrypted traffic visibility & TLS 1.3 support
- 24 h / 72 h incident-reporting telemetry (syslog/SIEM ready)
A traditional port-and-protocol firewall cannot tick all those boxes.
3. Five technical gaps we find in NIS2 audits
| Gap | Why it fails NIS2 | How an NGFW fixes it |
|---|---|---|
| Flat network rules | No micro-segmentation; lateral movement unchecked | Dynamic zones & identity-based policy |
| Legacy TLS interception | Can’t inspect TLS 1.3 / HTTP/2 | Native decryption with hardware assist |
| Sparse logging | Forensic data missing; can’t meet 24/72 h reports | Full-packet capture & SIEM-ready logs |
| Manual rule hygiene | Stale, shadowed rules breach “state-of-the-art” | Automated cleanup & risk scoring |
| Decentralised configs | Article 23 requires central oversight | Single-pane management & API orchestration |
4. A 10-point firewall-readiness checklist
- Inventory every physical, virtual & cloud firewall in scope.
- Baseline current rule-set against NIS2 risk-management measures.
- Upgrade to an NGFW or SASE edge that supports DPI, IPS, and TLS 1.3.
- Segment critical assets (micro-segmentation or SD-WAN).
- Enforce MFA for all administrative access.
- Automate logging to a central SIEM with 12-month retention.
- Set alerting that aligns with 24 h “early warning” and 72 h full-report windows.
- Run quarterly rule audits and document changes for board sign-off.
- Test with red-team / tabletop exercises and feed lessons into policy.
- Document everything—controls, processes, board minutes—to prove diligence.
5. Ask yourself…
- Can we isolate any workstation, OT segment or cloud VPC in under five minutes?
- Does the board receive firewall-risk metrics at least quarterly?
- Would our logs satisfy a national CERT if they knocked tomorrow?
If you hesitated on any point, your firewall probably isn’t NIS2-ready.
6. How Pablosec accelerates compliance
- NIS2 Firewall HealthCheck – one-week engagement with rule-set diff and gap analysis.
- Next-Gen Firewall Migration – vendor-agnostic design & cut-over with zero downtime.
- Managed Segmentation Service – policy orchestration, continuous audit, real-time dashboards.
- Incident-Reporting Pack – pre-built SIEM queries and report templates that mirror 24 h / 72 h / 30-day NIS2 timelines.
- Board-level Workshops – translate tech detail into governance language and meet new accountability clauses.
7. Ready to close the gap?
NIS2 enforcement is weeks—not years—away. Let Pablosec turn your firewall into a compliance-grade security control before the auditors arrive.
Let’s talk. Book a 30-minute discovery call or email [email protected].
