Huawei Firewalls: 11 Tips for Optimizing Performance

Nowadays, network security is more crucial than ever. Huawei Firewalls As organizations rely increasingly on cloud services, mobile devices, and the internet to conduct business, they become more vulnerable to cyber threats. An effective firewall like Huawei Firewall is essential to protect against unauthorized access, data breaches, malware attacks, and more.

This blog post provides eleven tips for optimizing Huawei firewall performance for optimal speed, decreased latency, and increased security. Whether you’ve recently purchased a Huawei firewall or want to upgrade an existing deployment, following best practices will help you make the most of the solution.

However, it is important to understand in detail about Huawei firewalls and their features to better understand the tips.

Understanding Huawei Firewalls

Huawei firewalls are an enterprise-grade network security solution that can effectively safeguard infrastructure against risks. They provide robust threat protection through high-performance hardware and AI-powered threat detection engines. However, to leverage the full potential of Huawei firewalls, their performance must be optimized as per the network environment.

Huawei firewalls are next-generation network security devices that protect organizational infrastructure from both known and undiscovered threats. They filter traffic using rules to prevent harmful actions while permitting valid network requests.

Features of Huawei Firewalls

• Hardware acceleration and multicore CPUs for high-speed traffic inspection.
• Integrated threat intelligence detects known virus, malware, and spyware signatures.
• Cloud-based sandbox for advanced investigation of suspect data.
• VPN supports secure remote access connections.
• Application awareness and management for filtering network traffic
• Anomaly-based detection enables intrusion prevention capabilities.
• Clustering numerous firewalls provides high availability.

Huawei firewalls provide comprehensive protection for medium and big businesses by harnessing these capabilities.

11 Tips to Optimize Huawei Firewall Performance

Here are 11 practical tips to improve the speed, security efficacy, and overall performance of Huawei firewalls:

1. Select the Right Firewall Model

Carefully evaluate your network size, traffic patterns, and performance goals when choosing a Huawei firewall. Advanced models with multiple cores will handle heavier workloads more efficiently compared to basic options. Match the firewall specifications to your needs.

2. Distribute Processing via Multiple Security Modules

Huawei firewalls with multiple security service modules can distribute tasks between cores for faster parallel processing. Activate all modules to divide anti-malware scanning, VPN encryption/decryption, logging tasks for enhanced performance.

3. Allocate Sufficient RAM and Storage

Inadequate RAM and limited storage will downgrade the performance of Huawei firewalls dramatically. Opt for sufficient computing resources right from installation based on projected network growth over time. The firewall should never hit 100% memory usage during peaks.

4. Limit Unnecessary Logging

While logging network activity is important for compliance, recording every minor connection overloads the firewall with IO write tasks. Filter logging to critical security events only. Proper log rotation policies should be implemented to restrict resource usage.

5. Enable Traffic Fast Path

The fast path feature minimizes firewall involvement in connections by directly forwarding legitimate traffic between ports after initial inspection. This reduces overall CPU usage for routing traffic, improving general firewall responsiveness.

6. Use Virtual Contexts for Separation

Enabling virtual security contexts allows logically separating various networks using one physical Huawei firewall. This eliminates multiple firewall infrastructures and reduces hardware, licensing, and management costs significantly.

7. Integrate with AD for Identity Policies

Integrating Huawei firewalls with Active Directory (AD) allows enforcing user identity-based rules rather than just IP addresses. The firewall only needs to validate the user’s credentials with AD before granting network access accordingly.

8. Analyze Traffic Patterns for Optimizations

Huawei firewalls provide rich traffic analytics reports on sources, destinations, applications, URL categories, threats detected and more. Review these insights to identify unnecessary access rules or bottlenecks that should be fixed. This helps avoid future firewall performance problems.

9. Configure Quality of Service (QoS) rules

The quality of service feature on Huawei firewalls allows prioritizing traffic so that essential applications get precedence. For instance, configure a higher priority for CRM traffic while setting a lower priority for social media. This ensures business-critical apps have enough firewall resources even during traffic floods. Careful QoS planning balances security with productivity.

10. Schedule Firmware Updates Off-Peak

While firmware updates bring in the latest security protections and performance fixes, the upgrade process temporarily occupies firewall resources. Instead of updating during regular business hours, schedule firmware installation for late nights or weekends. This prevents any potential performance lag that users may experience while the firewall installs and resets to apply the enhanced firmware version. Choose the timing carefully

11. Tune Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) policies

The Intrusion Prevention System on Huawei firewalls provides real-time protection against network vulnerabilities by scanning traffic flows for malicious patterns. However, overzealous IPS settings can bottleneck firewall throughput speed. Configure the IPS to only look for high-severity threats. Avoid enabling rules for minor suspicious activities unless necessary. Additionally, keep the IPS rule schedule updated so old, unused detections do not delay connections. Fine-tuning IPS policies prevents inspection overload.

The key is finding the right balance so genuine security risks are still monitored while valid traffic passes through without excessive scanning. Review detection rules and severity levels regularly. Remove outdated patterns for optimal inspection without compromising protection.

Author: TechBlonHub

As a passionate blogger, I'm thrilled to share my expertise, insights, and enthusiasm with you. I believe that technical knowledge should be shared, not hoarded. That's why I take the time to craft detailed, well-researched content that's easy to follow, even for non-tech. I love hearing from you, answering your questions, and learning from your experiences. Your feedback helps me create content that's tailored to your needs and interests