Top 10 Firewalls

With the alarming rate of cyber attacks happening worldwide, it's more important than ever to have robust cybersecurity measures in place. According to penetration testing company Astra, there are an average of 2,200 cyber attacks per day, with an attack occurring every 39 seconds. 

This is where having an effective firewalls come into play. Firewalls are a fundamental component of any cybersecurity strategy, acting as a barrier between a private network and the public internet. They monitor and control incoming and outgoing network traffic, identifying and blocking potentially malicious activity before it can gain a foothold. 

However, not all firewalls are created equal. There are a variety of firewall types, each with their own unique features and capabilities. Stateful firewalls, for example, monitor the state of network connections, while next-generation firewalls incorporate advanced functionality like intrusion prevention and application control.

Choosing the right firewall depends on the specific needs and risks faced by an organisation or individual. So to help enterprises know what specific protection their companies need, Cyber Magazine has collected the 10 top firewalls that they can implement to keep their network perimeter secure.

10. VMWare vDefend Distributed Firewall

CEO: Raghu Raghuram

Location: California, US

VMWare vDefend Distributed Firewall is a software-defined Layer 7 firewall designed to secure multi-cloud traffic across virtualised workloads. It provides stateful firewalling with IDS/IPS, sandboxing, network traffic analysis (NTA), and network detection and response (NDR) capabilities.

It simplifies security architecture by distributing the firewall to each host, making it easier to segment networks and stop lateral movement of attacks, while providing complete coverage and visibility across network flows.

9. Sophos Firewall

CEO: Kris Hagerman

Location: Oxfordshire, UK

Sophos, a British IT security company, offers a range of powerful and scalable firewall solutions suitable for various deployment options, including cloud, virtual firewalls, and on-premises.

These firewalls integrate seamlessly with other Sophos products and can be managed from a single, user-friendly console, streamlining IT operations. Key features include Xstream Protection for optimal threat prevention and traffic management, TLS 1.3 decryption and deep packet inspection, and a single high-performance engine for stream scanning protection across multiple areas.

8. Palo Alto Networks VM-Series

CEO: Nikesh Arora

Location: California, US

Palo Alto Networks VM-Series firewall is a security solution designed to enhance safety in VMware NSX, enforce consistent security for Software-Defined Networks (SDNs) and virtual machines, deploy policies, and scale automatically.

It is compatible with various environments, including VMware, Linux KVM, Nutanix, and Cisco, promoting unified control in virtualised data centres and simplifying security measures. With VM-Series, businesses can create comprehensive policies that can be automatically provisioned during the development lifecycle, maintaining security and compliance without constraints.

7. Juniper SRX

CEO: Rami Rahim

Location: California, US

Juniper SRX Series Firewalls are a part of the Juniper Connected Security portfolio and aim to protect network edges, data centre networks, and cloud applications. These firewalls run on the Junos operating system and are available in physical, virtual, and containerised form factors.

Key components include advanced security services, content security, intrusion prevention system (IPS), and EVPN-VXLAN support, enabling AI-driven protection to predict and prevent a wide range of threats.

6. Fortinet Fortigate Next Generation Firewall

CEO: Ken Xie

Location: California, US

Fortinet's FortiGate Next-Generation Firewall features industry-leading threat protection and decryption at scale through a custom ASIC architecture, as well as secure networking with integrated features like SD-WAN, switching, wireless, and 5G.

It provides AI-powered security performance and threat intelligence with full visibility, security, and networking convergence. FortiGate NGFW caters to various use cases such as protecting and connecting distributed edges, deploying hyperscale security for data centres, providing segmentation capabilities, and integrating public and private cloud protections.

5. ForcePoint Next Generation Firewall

CEO: Ryan Windham

Location: Texas, US

Forcepoint offers a reliable next-generation firewall (NGFW) solution that features advanced capabilities such as built-in secure SD-WAN, automated unified policy updates, and easy deployment, configuration, and use. 

The firewall provides 2FA/MFA support for remote end-users, customisable whitelists and blacklists for application traffic, and the ability to block the exfiltration of sensitive information and data. It also integrates with Secure Access Service Edge (SASE), providing Secure SD-WAN, site connectivity to Security Service Edge, and a built-in Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) app connector.

4. Cisco Secure Firewall 4200 Series

CEO: Chuck Robbins

Location: California, US

Cisco Secure Firewall 4200 Series is designed to maintain network security by unifying policies across various environments and prioritising vital aspects. The series offers superior visibility on security threats, enabling users to regain control over encrypted traffic and application environments.

It collaborates with Cisco Talos to improve security resilience and leverages billions of signals throughout the infrastructure. The Secure Firewall 4200 Series enables collaborative work on security, providing license entitlement for Cisco SecureX, and implements zero-trust policies, automating access and anticipating potential threats.

3. Check Point Quantum

CEO: Gil Shwed

Location: Tel Aviv, Israel

Check Point Quantum is a Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) that offers advanced network security for endpoints, networks, cloud, data centres, and remote users. The platform is designed to provide superior threat prevention using SandBlast's Zero Day protection and can scale on demand, delivering up to 1.5 Tbps of threat prevention performance.

Key features include integration with SandBlast threat prevention, unified management platform, VPN, IoT security, sandboxing, anti-phishing, anti-virus, anti-bot capabilities, and extensive configurations to ensure compliance with regulations.

2. Barracuda CloudGen Firewall

CEO: Hatem Naguib

Location: California, US

Barracuda CloudGen Firewall is a comprehensive security solution designed to protect on-premises and multi-cloud networks from a wide range of cyber threats. With a focus on real-time network protection, this firewall effectively guards against various network vulnerabilities and exploits, including SQL injections, cross-site scripting, and DDoS attacks.

Barracuda's multi-layered security approach includes advanced threat signatures, behavioural and heuristic analysis, static code analysis, and a comprehensive sandbox, providing accurate detection and in-depth protection against ransomware, malware, and other advanced cyber-attacks.

Designed specifically for cloud and hybrid environments, Barracuda CloudGen Firewall offers easy deployment through templates and APIs, and includes advanced Software-Defined WAN (SD-WAN) capabilities, supporting connections among distributed sites, multiple clouds, and remote users.

1. NordLayer Cloud Firewall

CEO: Tomas Okmanas

Location: Vilnius, Lithuania

NordLayer Cloud Firewall is a Firewall-as-a-Service (FWaaS) solution designed to protect private networks and cloud infrastructure from unauthorised access. This cloud-based firewall solution offers several benefits including scalability, availability, and extensibility. With no hardware components, it can be easily deployed and integrates seamlessly into existing hybrid cloud environments.

The cloud-based control panel simplifies operations and management, while automatic updates ensure optimal security. NordLayer Cloud Firewall offers granular control over access to internal cloud resources, with firewall rules that can be created on a virtual private gateway level, applied to single members or entire teams, and configured based on the source, destination, and service.

In addition to access control, it offers DNS filtering to block malicious websites and filter out harmful or inappropriate content. NordLayer Cloud Firewall is part of Nordlayer's Secure Service Edge (SSE) solution, which combines multiple network security solutions into a single cloud-native service.

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