A: Thank you for your thoughtful question! Right now, Security Ninja's Cloud Firewall operates at the plugin level, which means it runs after WordPress has initialized. This approach allows us to provide advanced features and detailed, localized error messages, but it does mean that WordPress core and plugins partially load before a block is applied, so it's a little bit less efficient than server-level or auto_prepend_file solutions.

That said, we're actively working on a major internal project (nicknamed "Calvin") to move our firewall logic to an even earlier stage in the request lifecycle, similar to what you described. Our goal is to block malicious requests before WordPress loads, which will improve both security and performance. We're currently testing this approach to ensure we can maintain all the features and flexibility our users expect, including things like localized error messages (which can be tricky without loading WordPress).

We'll share more details as this project progresses, we are of course keen on making the firewall even more effective and efficient is a top priority for us. Sumo-lings of course get to enjoy the benefits when it is released for everyone :-)

Thanks again for your interest and for helping us make Security Ninja better!