Firewall policies are not just a list of independent decisions. In many firewall platforms, rule order affects which policy is matched first, which means a broad rule placed too high can weaken or bypass more specific controls below it.
Ordering problems often appear when teams add urgent access without checking existing overlaps. A later rule may look restrictive, but it may never be reached because earlier logic already permits or denies the traffic.
A good audit should therefore consider policy order, not only policy content. Highlighting shadowed or overlapping rules helps engineers understand whether the rulebase is enforcing the intended design or simply carrying unused complexity.