Differences Between Security Groups and Firewalls

You can configure firewall and security group rules to protect the instances in your VPC, such as ECSs and databases.

• A security group protects the instances in it.

• A firewall protects associated subnets and all the resources in the subnets.

For details, see Figure 1.

Figure 1 Security groups and firewalls

Table 1 describes the differences between security groups and firewalls.

Table 1 Differences between security groups and firewalls

Category	Security Group	Firewall
Protection Scope	Protects instances in a security group, such as ECSs and databases.	Protects subnets and all the instances in the subnets.
Rules	Does not support Allow or Deny rules.	Supports both Allow and Deny rules.
Matching Order	If there are conflicting rules, they are combined and applied together.	If rules conflict, the rule with the highest priority takes effect.
Usage	When creating an instance, such as an ECS, you must select a security group. If you do not have a security group, a default security group will be created for you. After creating an instance, you can: Add or remove the instance to or from the security group on the security group console. Associate or disassociate a security group with or from the instance on the instance console.	Selecting a firewall is not allowed when you create a subnet. You must create a firewall, add inbound and outbound rules, associate subnets with it, and enable firewall. The firewall then protects the associated subnets and instances in the subnets.
Packets	Packet filtering based on the 3-tuple (protocol, port, and source/destination) is supported.	Packet filtering based on the 5-tuple (protocol, source port, destination port, and source/destination) is supported.

last updated: 2024-05-13 02:46