What Happens When Your Firewall Licence Expires? (FortiGate, Sophos, SonicWall)

Most business firewalls, including Fortinet FortiGate, Sophos Firewall and SonicWall, are sold with a security subscription that lasts one or more years. When it expires, many offices do not notice anything at first: the internet keeps working. That is exactly the risk.

What usually keeps working

In general, the firewall continues to do its basic job:

• Routing traffic between your office and the internet
• Basic firewall rules (allowing or blocking ports and addresses)
• In many cases, existing VPN connections

What usually stops

The security services are what the subscription pays for. When it lapses, these typically stop updating or working:

• Threat signatures: intrusion prevention (IPS) and anti-malware stop receiving updates, so new attacks are not recognised.
• Web filtering: category-based website filtering relies on the vendor's cloud and may stop working, or block or allow everything, depending on settings.
• Sandboxing and advanced protection features that use the vendor's cloud.
• Vendor support and firmware updates, including fixes for security vulnerabilities in the firewall itself.

The exact behaviour depends on the brand, model and which services were included, but the pattern is the same: a firewall with an expired licence gives a false sense of security.

How to check your expiry date

• FortiGate: the dashboard's licence widget and the System > FortiGuard page show each service and its expiry.
• Sophos Firewall: the licensing page in the web admin console lists each subscription and its expiry date.
• SonicWall: the licence or services section of the management interface (and your MySonicWall account) shows service status.
• pfSense (Netgate): pfSense CE is free; pfSense Plus and Netgate support subscriptions have their own terms, shown in your Netgate account.

Renew before it lapses

Plan the renewal at least a few weeks before expiry. When you request a quote, have ready:

• The firewall model and serial number
• Your current subscription or bundle, if known
• The number of years you want to renew for

Also check whether the model is still supported by the vendor. Older appliances can reach end of life, and at that point replacing the firewall with a new model and licence can be better value than renewing.

Renewal or replacement?

Consider replacing the firewall instead of renewing if:

• The model is close to the vendor's end-of-support date
• Your internet speed has outgrown what the firewall can inspect
• You need features the old model does not support