It's likely something like a SonicWall, WatchGuard, or Fortinet unit. These are sold in red/orange enclosures and are common.
1,000 a year for a hardware firewall subscription is not inherently unreasonable. It comes with with annual subscription fees for threat intelligence updates.
And it does a lot more (or should) than just firewall block incoming 'bad stuff' (I don't quote it as sarcasm, I mean it as in thats probably a lot wider range of things than you think). It might also do threat signatures, VPN licenses, offer support SLA, stop outbound bad data or bad security risk info or accidental/unintended port open attempts, etc.
Modern firewalls job is a lot more than just block outside backdoor attempts.
For you not seeing any results front facing from its duty:
The best way I can put it, is how one network admin of LEE put it: If the users and bosses are asking "What exactly, does he DO. I am never aware of anything he has to fix" I am doing my job well. IF they are aware of things I have to take care of, I am late to my job.
So the question changes to: You can do your own frontend hardware firewall. But how much time and effort will someone's job there be to keep threat updates, both incoming and outgoing, updated? Will time spent researching and applying them sum up to more than $1000 worth of manhours a year? ($80 a month)
Does anyone there already know how to do that, and if not anyone willing to learn it and have the spare time to do it for free?
Like even a dead simple thing: Someone there needs to connect to a customer/client/(whatever you guys have) SFTP port 22 file server. Anyone know how to change a hardware firewall you setup to allow that, and allow TLS certificates? (You may not need THIS thing, just an example of basic 101 hardware firewall type situations)
-We don't control what happens to us in life, but we control how we respond to what happens in life.
-Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times. -G. Michael Hopf
Disclaimer: Post made by me are of my own creation. A delusional mind relayed in text form.
