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Cyber Essentials glossary

Boundary Firewall

The firewall separating your internal network (or corporate VPN gateway) from the public internet. Under CE v3.3, the boundary firewall must have a non-default admin password, current firmware, and deny inbound traffic by default.

Why this term matters for scope

Scoping terms decide whether an asset, user, service, or network is covered by the Cyber Essentials assessment. This is one of the highest-risk areas because an organisation can answer the questionnaire correctly for one boundary while accidentally leaving a cloud service, remote worker, BYOD estate, or production environment ambiguous.

A strong submission documents the boundary, names the assets and services inside it, and explains how any excluded subset is technically prevented from accessing organisational data.

How Fig uses this term

Fig Group uses Boundary Firewall as part of a practical Cyber Essentials and compliance vocabulary. The purpose is to make assessment decisions easier to verify: what the term means, where it appears in evidence, which control it supports, and which buyer or assessor question it helps answer.

If this term affects your Cyber Essentials submission, treat it as an evidence question rather than a definition question. Document the relevant owner, system, configuration, policy, or workflow so an assessor can see how the control works in your environment.

Official sources and related guidance

For scheme interpretation, verify against official NCSC and IASME material. Fig's glossary is designed to translate those concepts into implementation language for UK organisations, MSPs, and procurement teams.

Fig Group is an IASME-licensed Cyber Essentials certification body (licence 325cdf33-3812-4082-bf8d-7dce7ac02977) that certifies UK organisations from £299.99 + VAT with a 6-hour turnaround guarantee and three free re-submissions. Learn more at /cyberessentials, see pricing at /pricing, or run the free readiness checker.