How Does Organizations Use Next Generation Firewall and What are the Benefits?

Next-Generation Firewall:

A next-generation firewall (NGFW) is a network security device that has capabilities beyond a traditional, stateful firewall. Whereas a traditional firewall usually provides stateful inspection of incoming and outgoing network traffic, a next-generation firewall includes additional features like application awareness and control, integrated intrusion prevention, and cloud-delivered threat intelligence.

Next-generation firewall are suitable for businesses that require compliance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) or payment card industry (PCI) rules or for those that want multiple security features integrated into a single solution. However, they do come at a higher price point than other types of firewalls, and depending on the firewall you decide on, your administrator may have to put together them with other security systems.

Types of Firewall:

Packet filtering firewall: Looks at the IP header of packets and drops ones that are hailed. 

Circuit-level gateway: Flags malicious content supported by TCP handshakes and alternative network protocol

session initiation messages, instead of looking at the packets themselves.

Stateful inspection firewall: Combines packet filtering with session monitoring for an extra level of security.

Application-level gateway: Filters packets by objective port and HTTP request string. Additionally referred to as a proxy firewall.

Next-generation firewall: Employs application-level, context-aware, intelligent technology to protect against leading threats.

Next-generation firewall vs. traditional firewall :

The purpose of any enterprise-grade firewall is to protect your network, internal systems, and confidential data against intruders and pernicious access. They all share the same basic goal, however specific technologies, features, capabilities, and levels of complexity could vary vastly.

The two most primary categories for enterprise-level firewalls are traditional and next-generation. NGFW, a Next-generation firewall, is the additional advanced of the two types. It might offer the most robust protection for your business.

Traditional Firewall

Next-Generation Firewall

Traditional firewalls are designed to police traffic. The traffic all through a network will be controlled based on the source IP address, destination IP address, port, and protocol. The highlights of the traditional firewall are limited, such as: Stateful inspection, traffic is outlined as flow rather than isolated packets. Rules can be applied to the traffic flow, and selections are created based on the behaviors. Virtual Private Network provides a secured entry for the network once users or systems traverse the public or untrusted network. Packet filtering helps the network administrator to make sure both ingress and egress traffic is under inspection.  Firewalls will terminate the connection initiated by the suspicious source on behalf of users.

A next-generation firewall will do this and so much more. In addition to access control, it provides a lot of granular rules to block modern threats. According to Gartner’s definition, a next-generation firewall should have: Standard firewall capabilities like stateful inspection Integrated intrusion prevention Application awareness and control to identify and block risky application Threat intelligence sources Upgrade methods to incorporate future information feeds Techniques to handle evolving security threats

Benefits of Next-Generation Firewalls

#1 Multi-Functional:

In addition to all the functionalities of traditional firewalls, next-generation firewalls also embrace integrated intrusion detection systems (IDS) and intrusion protection systems (IPS) that detect attacks supported by traffic behavioral analysis, threat signatures, or anomalous activity. This functionality helps perform a deeper review and improve packet-content filtering of network traffic up to the application layer.

#2 Application Awareness : 

Next-Generation Firewall should be able to identify, allow, block or limit applications regardless of port, protocol, etc. This provides visibility into unknown & proprietary applications among the organization's network.

#3 Threat Protection and Mitigation:

Unlike traditional firewalls, NGFWs embrace antivirus and malware protection that’s continuously upgraded immediately whenever new threats are discovered. The NGFW device also minimizes the avenues of attack by restricting the applications that run on it.

It then scans all the approved applications for any invisible vulnerabilities or confidential data leaks, as well as mitigates risks from any anonymous applications. This additionally helps in reducing bandwidth usage from any useless traffic, which isn’t possible with traditional firewalls.

#4 Simplified Infrastructure :

You need to have a separate security appliance for each new threat. But, with the new generation firewall, you'll simply manage and update the security protocols from a single authorized device.

This simplifies the sophisticated security infrastructure and saves time on regular operational activities. 

#5 Network speed :

Though several vendors of traditional firewalls claim to offer a specific throughput (usually a gigabyte) from each port, the truth is entirely different.

The increased number of protection devices and services once turned on, tends to choke the network speed. By the time the traffic reaches the top user, the speed is chopped by almost one-third of the particular promised speed.

In contrast, next-gen firewall throughput remains precisely the same irrespective of the number of protection services.

In conclusion, traditional firewalls are not any longer ready to protect organizations from modern, sophisticated threats. Next generation firewalls have the capabilities to offer actionable intelligence and controls that permit  standard firewall features, integrated network intrusion prevention, application awareness and additional firewall intelligence.

NGFWs can also be a low-cost option for companies looking to improve their basic security as a result of incorporating the work of antiviruses, firewalls, and different security applications into one solution. With the number of features that an NGFW provides, it is undoubtedly becoming a helpful technology in cybersecurity.

Thanks and Regards,

Andrea

Next-Generation Firewall | IT Infrastructure Services | Enterprise Networking solution