Nick Buraglio of The Forwarding Plane comments:

I admit that the title was meant to be inflammatory.  However, there are use cases that aren’t terribly uncommon where an in-line security appliance is just not the correct tool for the job.  Someone once told me “a firewall protects a network like a fuse protects an electrical circuit”, and it’s mostly a correct statement.

Nick has a great article about why firewalls aren’t the end all in security. If you design things the right way, the firewall has a minimal job to do. That’s what it’s all about.

Read more at: Why you don’t need a firewall [how to secure an open perimeter network]