Cyber Security

Dedicated & Virtual
Secure Firewalls

Enterprise-grade firewall protection on the platform of your choice — Sophos XGS, pfSense or OPNsense. Self-managed for full control, or fully managed by our UK engineers, with built-in failover, IDS/IPS and free DDoS protection.

  • Sophos XGS, pfSense and OPNsense supported
  • Virtual or dedicated appliance options
  • 1Gbps and 10Gbps network ports
  • Multi-WAN load balancing & failover
  • Free 600Gbps Corero DDoS protection
  • 24/7 UK NOC and engineering support
fw.cambridge.fast2host — ha cluster
Enterprise firewall appliances and network security infrastructure in the Fast2host Cambridge data centre

Supported platforms

Sophos XGS
pfSense
OPNsense
HA failover

HA failover path

Synced

Active

Primary FW

Standby

Hot spare

  • IDS/IPS
  • Multi-WAN
  • VPN

HA failover

Active / standby pair

Edge protection

600Gbps DDoS included

0
Supported platforms
0%
Uptime SLA
0Gbps
Free Corero DDoS
0/7
UK NOC monitoring
Supported platforms

Sophos XGS, pfSense and OPNsense

Choose from three powerful platforms — from a vendor-backed next-gen firewall to flexible open-source — all deployed and supported in our Cambridge data centre.

Next-Generation Firewall

Sophos XGS

Enterprise next-gen firewall with deep packet inspection, hardware-accelerated TLS inspection, sandboxing and synchronised security across endpoints. Available as a managed dedicated appliance.

  • XStream packet processing
  • Synchronised Security
  • Sophos Central management
  • Available as XGS or UTM
Open-Source Powerhouse

pfSense

A mature, enterprise-grade open-source firewall on Netgate hardware or as a virtual appliance. No licence fees, huge plugin ecosystem and rock-solid stability.

  • No licensing fees
  • Snort/Suricata IDS/IPS
  • Wide plugin catalogue
  • Active community
Modern Open-Source

OPNsense

A modern fork of pfSense with frequent updates, a clean web UI and rich reporting. Great for teams that want bleeding-edge features without a vendor licence.

  • Weekly security updates
  • Clean modern UI
  • Built-in WireGuard
  • Rich reporting
Comprehensive platform

Security, routing, VPN and reporting in one

Our appliances ship with everything you'd expect from an enterprise security platform — and a few things you wouldn't.

Firewall

  • Stateful Packet Inspection (SPI)
  • GeoIP blocking
  • Anti-spoofing
  • Captive portal for guest networks
  • Time-based rules & connection limits
  • Inbound & outbound NAT mapping

Routing

  • Policy-based routing
  • Concurrent IPv4 & IPv6 support
  • Configurable static routes
  • IPv6 prefix translation & RAs
  • Multiple IPs per interface
  • Integrated PPPoE server

Attack Prevention

  • Snort/Suricata IDS/IPS
  • Layer-7 application detection
  • Emerging threats & IP blacklist feeds
  • Pre-set rule profiles per interface
  • False-positive suppression
  • Deep Packet Inspection (DPI)

VPN

  • IPsec, OpenVPN & WireGuard
  • Site-to-site and remote access
  • SSL encryption & split tunnelling
  • L2TP/IPsec for mobile clients
  • Multiple tunnels & VPN failover
  • RADIUS / LDAP authentication

Proxy & Content Filtering

  • HTTP/HTTPS proxy (transparent or not)
  • Domain/URL & antivirus filtering
  • SafeSearch enforcement
  • HTTPS content screening
  • Website access reporting
  • DNSBL (DNS blacklisting)

Network Services

  • Dynamic DNS (multi-provider)
  • Integrated DHCP & DHCPv6 server
  • DNS forwarding/caching with DNSSEC
  • Conditional / split DNS & mDNS reflection
  • Built-in NTP time server
  • Multi-WAN load balancing & failover

Resilience & Reliability

  • Optional multi-node HA clustering
  • Multi-WAN load balancing & failover
  • Reverse proxy with auto failover
  • Bandwidth shaping & throttling wizard
  • Bandwidth reservation & user quotas
  • Configurable failover policies

Reporting & Monitoring

  • Configurable dashboard widgets
  • Local & remote logging
  • Real-time traffic graphs
  • SNMP & hardware monitoring
  • Email/SMTP & Growl notifications
  • Built-in network diagnostic tools

Access & Hardening

  • Local user & group database
  • External RADIUS authentication
  • Group-based privileges & expiry
  • Hardened web interface security
  • DNS rebinding protection & HSTS
  • Optional key-based SSH access
Who it's for

From office edge to multi-site failover

Office Edge Security

Replace ageing SonicWall or WatchGuard appliances with a managed Sophos, pfSense or OPNsense edge for your office.

Colocation Perimeter

A virtual firewall sitting in front of your colocated kit — segmenting VLANs, enforcing rules and terminating site-to-site VPNs.

Multi-WAN Failover

Bond DIA, broadband and 4G/5G into a single resilient WAN with policy-based routing and automatic failover.

Secure Remote Access

WireGuard, OpenVPN and IPsec remote access for hybrid teams — with RADIUS/LDAP integration for SSO.

Technical specification

At a glance

Platforms
Sophos XGS, pfSense, OPNsense
Form factor
Virtual appliance or dedicated hardware
Network ports
1Gbps and 10Gbps interfaces
VLANs
Multiple 802.1Q VLANs supported
VPN
IPsec, OpenVPN and WireGuard
IDS/IPS
Snort / Suricata with curated rule sets
High availability
Multi-node HA clustering
DDoS
600Gbps Corero SmartWall — included
Management
Self-managed or fully managed
SLA
99.99% uptime with proactive credits
From scope to live

A predictable delivery process

  1. 1

    Scope & design

    We review your topology, throughput, VPN users and HA needs, then recommend the right platform and sizing.

  2. 2

    Provision & licence

    We provision the virtual or dedicated appliance, apply licences (where required) and stage the base configuration.

  3. 3

    Configure & migrate

    Our engineers build out rules, VPNs, VLANs and IDS/IPS profiles, then migrate cutover from your existing firewall.

  4. 4

    Live & supported

    Go live with 24/7 monitoring, optional managed-rule changes and a single UK NOC for everything firewall-related.

Explore Fast2host

Related security & infrastructure

Pair your firewall with DDoS protection, colocation, cloud onramps or dedicated servers — all from our Cambridge facility.

6 common questions

Sophos XGS is the best fit if you want a vendor-supported next-gen firewall with sandboxing, synchronised endpoint security and a polished management plane. pfSense is the workhorse choice for predictable, no-licence open-source firewalling with a huge plugin catalogue. OPNsense is great if you want a modern UI with weekly updates and built-in WireGuard. We're happy to advise based on your topology and throughput.

Ready to deploy Sophos, pfSense or OPNsense with UK engineering support?