What's wrong with the firewall my ISP gave me?
Your ISP-provided gateway is built for the ISP — not for your business. It usually has no IPS, no IDS, no integrated antivirus or sandboxing, no real web-content filtering, no SSL inspection, no DNS filtering, no segmented guest Wi-Fi, no logging your auditor will accept, and no MFA-protected VPN. It's a router with NAT. A real next-generation firewall adds the actual security layers your insurance and your regulators expect. We replace the consumer-grade gateway, stand up the enterprise gear, manage it for life, and bill it as a monthly fee instead of a $3,000 surprise.
Do you handle Wi-Fi for offices, warehouses, and shops?
Yes. We do real Wi-Fi — not a Best Buy router shoved in a closet. That means a proper site survey for the building, predictive RF planning, 802.11ax (Wi-Fi 6 / 6E) access points, segmented SSIDs (corporate, guest, IoT, point-of-sale), seamless roaming between APs, and continuous monitoring of signal strength and client load. Enterprise gear selected to fit the environment. Warehouses, dental offices, bank branches, manufacturing floors — different gear, different layouts, same standard of work.
How do you handle remote workers and VPN?
Two paths. Traditional MFA-protected SSL / IPsec VPN for clients with on-prem servers and line-of-business apps. Or Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) for clients with mostly cloud apps — application-level access without a fat network tunnel. We pick the right model for your environment, not whatever the vendor wants to sell.
What is VLAN segmentation and do we need it?
VLAN segmentation slices your network into separated zones — corporate workstations on one VLAN, point-of-sale and card-reader on another, guest Wi-Fi on a third, security cameras and IoT on a fourth, with firewall rules controlling what can talk to what. It's a baseline expectation under PCI-DSS (cardholder data isolation), HIPAA (PHI isolation), and CJIS (criminal-justice data isolation), and it's the difference between "ransomware hit one machine" and "ransomware hit everything." Yes. You need it.
What does "managed" actually mean — what do you do every month?
Firmware updates and security patches the day they release (not whenever someone gets around to it). Continuous IPS / IDS signature updates and threat-intel feed enrichment. 24/7 uptime monitoring with alert escalation. Monthly review of firewall rules, VPN users, and access control lists. Configuration backups so we can restore in minutes if hardware fails. Quarterly review of network performance, bandwidth utilization, and capacity planning. Annual penetration-test-style external review. Documentation kept current. You see the work in monthly reports — not just a bill.
What gear do you deploy?
Enterprise-grade, cloud-managed networking gear across four categories: next-generation firewalls (with IPS, IDS, SSL inspection, application control, threat-intel feeds), Layer-2/3 managed switches (with VLAN segmentation and PoE), Wi-Fi 6 / 6E access points (with seamless roaming and segmented SSIDs), and modern remote-access platforms (MFA-protected SSL/IPsec VPN or Zero Trust Network Access). We're vendor-neutral — we pick what's right for the use case, the budget, and the support story, not what gets us a kickback. We'll walk through the specific build on the discovery call.
Do you replace what we already have or work with it?
Both — depending on what you've got and what condition it's in. If your existing firewall is current-gen and a brand we support, we take it over and manage it (no rip-and-replace). If it's end-of-life, no longer receiving security patches, or fundamentally undersized, we'll price a replacement upfront and offer hardware-as-a-service so it's a monthly fee instead of capex. We tell you straight which path applies after the free network assessment.
How much does managed networking cost?
Managed networking covers four moving parts — firewall (per location), switches, access points, and VPN / ZTNA user licenses — all rolled into one flat monthly fee. Hardware-as-a-service is included (zero capital outlay) or you can buy your own gear and we'll manage what you own at the same fee. The right number depends on site size, throughput needs, IPS / IDS / SSL-inspection scope, and whether your industry requires extra logging. We'll scope your number on the free 10-minute discovery call — no commitment, no pitch.