Firewalls are still widely treated as the first and final line of defense. Once deployed, configured, and updated, they are often assumed to be a stable control that quietly does its job in the background. Recent ransomware incidents suggest that the assumption is becoming dangerous.
In early February 2026, Marquis, a financial technology provider, confirmed a ransomware and data breach that it traced back to exposed firewall configurations and backup data tied to legacy SonicWall systems, according to reporting by TechRadar. While the breach itself unfolded recently, the root cause dated back months, highlighting how long misconfigurations at the network edge can remain invisible before being exploited.
Rather than exploiting a novel zero-day, attackers leveraged what was already there: accessible configuration files, insufficient monitoring, and trust placed in perimeter controls that were no longer being actively scrutinized.
From a technical perspective, this type of breach is deceptively simple. Firewalls are complex systems with rule sets, VPN access, backup exports, management interfaces, and administrative credentials. Over time, especially in hybrid and legacy-heavy environments, exceptions accumulate. Temporary rules become permanent. Backups are stored where they are easy to retrieve but not well protected.
In the Marquis case, attackers did not need to force entry. They accessed configuration artifacts that revealed how the network was structured and how security controls could be bypassed or disabled. Once this intelligence was obtained, ransomware deployment became a matter of execution, not discovery.
What makes these incidents especially damaging is that they often bypass traditional alerting. There may be no malware detected at the perimeter, no brute-force attempts, and no obvious exploit signatures. Access looks administrative. Changes appear authorized. By the time encryption begins, the attacker has already mapped the environment.
This breach reflects a broader shift in ransomware operations. Attackers are increasingly patient. Instead of launching immediate payloads, they monitor environments, harvest configuration data, and wait for the right moment. Firewalls and edge devices are attractive targets because they provide both visibility and control.
Once compromised, these systems offer insights into segmentation boundaries, trusted IP ranges, VPN pathways, and downstream assets. In environments where firewall logs, network telemetry, and endpoint behavior are analyzed in isolation, these signals never converge into a clear warning.
The result is a dangerous gap between exposure and detection.
Seceon’s unified security platform treats firewall infrastructure not as static enforcement points, but as dynamic sources of behavioral intelligence. Rather than assuming that correct configuration equals security, Seceon continuously analyzes how network controls are accessed, modified, and used over time.
This enables:
By correlating firewall logs with network flows, endpoint signals, and user behavior, Seceon exposes patterns that would otherwise appear benign when viewed in isolation. In breaches driven by misconfiguration rather than malware exploits, behavioral context becomes the most reliable indicator of compromise.
Ransomware attacks linked to firewall misconfigurations are not the result of cutting-edge exploits. They succeed because legacy assumptions persist. Once deployed, perimeter controls can be trusted indefinitely. That backups are harmless. That administrative access implies safety.
Modern attackers understand these assumptions and exploit them methodically.
In today’s threat landscape, the question is no longer whether a firewall is in place. It is whether its behavior, access patterns, and downstream impact are being continuously analyzed. When edge security is treated as static, ransomware doesn’t need to break in. It simply waits for the door that was never fully closed.
