I’ve been running my server without a firewall for quite some time now, I have a piped instance and snikket running on it. I’ve been meaning to get UFW on it but I’ve been too lazy to do so. Is it a necessary thing that I need to have or it’s a huge security vulnerability? I can only SSH my server from only my local network and must use a VPN if I wanna SSH in outside so I’d say my server’s pretty secure but not the furthest I could take it. Opinions please?
In your case: no need for a fw if you can trust your local network.
Generally: services can have bugs - reverse proxy them. Not everybody needs to access the service - limit access with a firewall. Limit brute-force/ word-list attempts - MFA / fail2ban.