Most Singapore SMEs shopping for a firewall end up paying for throughput they will never use — and skimping on the support that actually keeps the office running. It is one of the most common and most expensive mistakes we see when businesses try to buy network security on their own. A firewall is not a bandwidth purchase. It is an operational purchase, and the spec sheet rarely tells you what you need to know.
Why the sales sheet is lying to you (a little)
Every firewall datasheet leads with one big number: firewall throughput, usually measured in Gbps on a clean lab bench with large packets and no security features switched on. Your office will never see that number. The moment you enable IPS, application control, TLS inspection and antivirus — the features you are actually buying a firewall for — realistic throughput can drop by half or more.
Vendors often publish a second, smaller figure for this: “threat protection throughput” or “NGFW throughput.” That is the number that matters. If a vendor only advertises the headline figure and buries the rest, treat that as a warning sign.
For a typical Singapore SME office — say 20 to 50 staff, a mix of cloud apps, video calls, and a couple of guest Wi-Fi networks — the real question is not “how many gigabits?” It is “how many concurrent sessions, and how much inspection can this box sustain without becoming the bottleneck?” A 30-person office rarely saturates even a 1 Gbps internet line with inspected traffic. Buying a 10 Gbps appliance for that office is like buying a lorry to do the school run.
Match the SKU to the office, not the brochure
Before you compare models, get these four things clear. They will narrow the field faster than any spec comparison:
- User and device count. Count every laptop, phone, printer, camera, and IoT device. A 25-person office can easily have 80+ devices on the network.
- Internet line speed. Match the firewall’s inspected throughput to your actual subscribed bandwidth, with headroom for growth — not to the highest number on the box.
- Features you will actually switch on. If you plan to run IPS, SSL/TLS inspection, and application control, size against the threat protection figure, not the raw firewall figure.
- Remote and branch users. If staff connect from home or a second site, you need VPN throughput and concurrent tunnel counts, not just LAN throughput.
A useful rule of thumb: pick the model whose threat protection throughput is at least 1.5 to 2 times your current internet line speed. That gives you room for firmware updates, new features, and a bandwidth upgrade without replacing the hardware in 18 months.
The part SMEs underbuy: support, licensing and the person who answers the phone
Here is where the real cost hides. A firewall is not a one-time purchase. It needs a subscription for threat signatures, firmware updates, and vendor support. Skip the subscription and you are running a firewall with last year’s threat intelligence — which is barely better than no firewall at all.
Then there is the human side. When the firewall blocks something it should not, or a firmware update breaks your VPN, who fixes it? For many SMEs, the answer is “whoever in the office is most technical.” That works until it does not — usually on a Friday afternoon before a long weekend.
This is the gap that managed IT support for small businesses is designed to close. Instead of buying a box and hoping someone internally can run it, you get the firewall monitored, patched, and tuned as part of an ongoing service. The licensing stays current. The rules get reviewed. And when something breaks, there is a defined escalation path rather than a guess.
For an SME, the support and licensing line item is not overhead. It is the difference between a firewall that works and a firewall that is simply installed.
A practical way to shop without overbuying
If you are evaluating firewalls in Singapore right now, here is a sequence that keeps you honest:
- Write down your device count, internet speed, and the security features you intend to enable.
- Ask each vendor for the threat protection throughput figure, not the headline number.
- Price the three-year total: hardware, subscription, and support — not just the box.
- Ask who will manage rule changes, firmware updates, and incident response.
- If the answer to the last point is “we will figure it out,” factor in a managed service instead.
This is also where PDPA obligations come in. If your firewall is handling personal data flows and access logs, someone needs to be able to demonstrate that reasonable security arrangements are in place. An unpatched, unmanaged appliance is hard to defend in that conversation.
At Sakal Network, we see this pattern constantly: SMEs buy more throughput than they need and less support than they should. The fix is not a bigger box. It is matching the SKU to the office and putting a managed layer around it. If you would like a straight assessment of what your office actually needs — no pressure, no upsell — talk to our team and we will walk through it with you.