In A Dynamic Security Architecture, What Role Do Next-generation Firewalls Play?

To grasp the present state of business firewall technology, it’s necessary to dispel two common misconceptions: (next gen firewall)

For starters, many people believe that the firewall has lost relevance in today’s enterprise network security architectures for a variety of reasons: the widespread use of mobile devices and cloud computing has expanded the traditional network perimeter; trendy concepts like “zero trust” networking have deemphasized the firewall in favour of access control and data protection mechanisms; and increasing virtualization of networking has abstracted firewall functions like segm. (next gen firewall)

Second, because of its roots as a packet-filtering device, many people think of the firewall as a one-trick pony that serves no use other than ensuring business security. While close collaboration with network and application operations teams has long been standard practise, firewall architecture planning, purchasing decisions, and, in many cases, deployment and management have traditionally been overseen or directed by an organization’s chief information security officer (CISO) and his or her team. As a result, it didn’t matter whether a buyer chose a firewall from Vendor A or Vendor B; the differences weren’t significant.

The firewall

The firewall, not just in terms of what it can achieve, but also in terms of its business value, is fast evolving. Integration enablement, uniform controls, and comprehensive monitoring and alerting across numerous cloud and on-premises systems are becoming the cornerstones of hybrid cloud network security. Simultaneously, the firewall’s feature set is growing beyond standard network security to encompass a fascinating range of characteristics that aren’t necessarily security-related. Key technology advancements such as encryption, artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML), and the internet of things (IoT) will undoubtedly make the business firewall more critical than it has ever been in the future.

While many of the common features long associated with enterprise firewalls have become commoditized and should have less impact on purchasing decisions, major enterprise firewall vendors are now attempting to differentiate with a surprising variety of emerging capabilities, many of which highlight their product portfolios’ strategic direction. This paper will go over the specifics of the “new” next-generation firewall for the enterprise, including how it’s changing, where it’s headed next, and what decision makers need to know going into the product selection process.

Firewalls in businesses: From the past to the present (next gen firewall)

It’s difficult to overestimate how much the commercial business firewall has changed as it approaches its 30th birthday. The firewall swiftly expanded from its simple beginnings as a packet-filtering device to interrupt undesirable inbound network traffic, adding features such as stateful inspection (knowledge of open connections), network address translation, VPN, and many more.

Application-aware firewalls, which introduced the ability to identify and manage TCP/IP network traffic between certain types of internet-enabled apps such as web browsers and email clients that corporations needed control over, marked a big shift in the industry. Beginning in the late 2000s, vendors began to recast these multifunction, application-aware firewalls as “next-generation firewalls,” adding security-driven capabilities like intrusion prevention, port/protocol-independent inspection, and increased throughput and reliability.

With the rise of server virtualization a decade ago, the market evolved once more. Virtual firewalls, software-based firewall instances that get inserted as needed to inspect traffic, segment virtual local area networks (VLANs), and bridge physical and virtual networks, among other functions, were created in response to the need to identify and control “east-west” network traffic traversing between virtual servers – often residing on the same physical server. As virtual servers became more common in hosted and growing cloud computing environments, demand for firewall solution sets with integrated physical-virtual firewalling increased.

Conventional firewall (next gen firewall)

Many conventional firewall functionalities have become commoditized, despite vendor assertions to the contrary; in other words, there is little significant differentiation among top-tier rivals in terms of these long-standing characteristics. This is due to a maturing market segment (many vendors’ fundamental firewall technology has been in use for more than a decade) and fierce rivalry from at least five top-tier enterprise-caliber competitors.

The effect of feature commoditization on businesses starting their enterprise firewall purchasing cycles should be to reassess the importance of overvaluing what have become commoditized capabilities throughout the product-evaluation process. Here are a few concrete examples:

Throughput, fresh and concurrent sessions, and port capacity are no longer as vital as they were in the past. The average new security appliance from top suppliers now has multi-gigabit throughput; basic UDP-based firewall throughput among 2 rack unit (2RU) firewall models currently typically ranges from 40 to 80 Gbps, with some models reaching as high as 160 Gbps. Because we clustered many corporate firewall implementations for availability or segments with lower requirements, we should deprioritize “speeds and feeds”  to variable degrees for most enterprises.

Virtual private networks

Virtual private networks (VPNs) are now a common feature on nearly all enterprise-class firewalls. We widely used IPsec VPNs , with connection rates exceeding 10 Gbps and capability for hundreds of thousands of concurrent connections. What was formerly a top-tier criterion is now a secondary concern, with only special VPN requirements requiring attention during product evaluation.

Application support, which was once a hit-or-miss proposition with even the most advanced enterprise firewalls, is now commonplace. Most firewalls provide traffic detection and application control for hundreds, if not thousands, of different programmes, including enterprise and consumer-oriented applications, as well as social media apps. While custom application support is still difficult to come by, it should no longer be a top concern when making purchasing decisions.

Following that, businesses should be aware of features and functionalities that are both new and increasingly important. Consider the following scenarios.

Source: next gen firewall , ngfw