What happens first, firewall or IPS?

[Jon_Crotteau]

What happens first, firewall or IPS?

[the_rock]

Im pretty sure its firewall, but maybe other people can confirm for you.

[PhoneBoy]

In simple terms, Firewall/Access Policy is first followed by Threat Prevention.
Reality is a little more complicated than that since Application Control and Content Awareness use the same underlying engines as Threat Prevention.
That said, if there's no Access Policy permitting communication to/from the relevant hosts/ports, then there's no deeper inspection required 🙂