The Best Next-Gen Firewalls

Cyber Attackers are constantly looking for vulnerabilities in your network and devices, using which they can exploit your data and resources. As an organization, you must take all possible measures to identify and plug these vulnerabilities. One such tool that can help you in this process is a firewall.

Here is our list of the best next-gen firewalls:

1. Perimeter 81 FWaaS – FREE DEMO A cloud-native Firewall-as-a-Service (FWaaS) that provides centralized control of network traffic to help you take a rules-based approach to secure your network.
2. Forcepoint NGFW A comprehensive firewall that blocks evasion attempts and exploits to mitigate your cybersecurity threats.
3. Sophos XG A web application firewall that extends your network to remote devices and locations, easily and affordably.
4. Fortinet FortiGate A popular firewall that combines AI-based security and threat alliance to protect your network.
5. Barracuda CloudGen Firewall An NGFW that provides multiple layers of protection using advanced technologies.
6. Juniper Networks SRX Series A hardware that extends security to every endpoint and device on your network.

Read on as we talk about what a firewall is, why you need one for your organization, and what are some of the best choices out there for you.

What is a Firewall?

A firewall is software or hardware that sits at the edge of your network, where it connects to outside networks like the Internet. Its role is to examine the traffic passing through your network, including the incoming and outgoing data packets. If it identifies any malicious content in any of the packets, the firewall blocks that packet, and notifies you. Typically, firewalls check each packet against the established security rules of your organization, to check for violations.

There's also another type of firewall called a stateful firewall that monitors the state of each connection instead of individual packets. These stateful firewalls make informed decisions about blocking or allowing traffic from specific sources.

Next-Gen Firewalls

Next-Gen Firewalls (NGFWs), as the name suggests, are the latest evolution in the world of firewalls and they come with many advanced features that enhance your organization's security. They can proactively identify and block veiled malicious content that can be missed by traditional firewalls.  Other key features of NGFWs are:

• Identifies and controls applications to prevent unauthorized access to your network. It also helps to block malicious applications.
• Detects and blocks malicious traffic.
• Filters web traffic to prevent users from downloading harmful content.
• Reduces the chances of sensitive data leaving your organization.
• Uses threat intelligence to identify known and unknown threats.

The above capabilities make NGFWs a valuable addition to any organization's cybersecurity infrastructure. In particular, they protect against a wide range of cyberattacks, including those that exploit vulnerabilities in traditional firewalls.

The Best Next-Gen Firewalls

Now that you know how NGFWs can boost your organization's cybersecurity, let's look at the top choices available today. Here's a detailed look at what each of these firewalls can do for your business.

1. Perimeter 81 FWaaS – FREE DEMO

Perimeter 81 FWaaS is a cloud-based firewall service that inspects all your incoming and outgoing data packets to prevent unauthorized access and infiltration. It eliminates the need for expensive hardware while centralizing security and visibility.

Key Features:

• Supports Remote Working: Perimeter 81 FWaaS is well-suited for today's remote and hybrid working models. With this tool, you can extend the features of an enterprise-grade firewall to remote employees and their devices. The obvious advantage is that there's a lesser chance for malicious content to infiltrate your network through the device of your employees.
• Comprehensive Control and Visibility: You get comprehensive control and visibility over all the data that enters and exits your network, including those of remote employees. You can even combine multiple solutions and endpoints and view them through a single pane. Such visibility enables you to get quick action when needed, and at the same time, makes it easy to check the impact of your security policies on your network.
• Easy Use and Maintenance: The biggest advantage of Perimeter 81 is its ease of use. You don't have to invest in expensive hardware or install and set up complex software tools. Simply subscribe to the service and start using it within minutes. Plus, it's also highly scalable, and you can easily extend it to as many devices as you require. A related advantage is that there's no maintenance involved for your organization, as Perimeter 81 handles it all for you.

Overall, Perimeter 81 FWaaS is a convenient and secure option to protect your network from malicious content.

Perimeter 81 offers four plans: Essentials at $8 per user per month, Premium at $12 per user per month, Premium Plus at $16 per user per month, and Enterprise with custom pricing. All plans include a 30-day money-back guarantee. Request a free demo and sign up to try any of these plans.

Perimeter 81 FWaaS Get FREE Demo

2. Forcepoint NGFW

Forcepoint NGFW provides extensive security for your organization while providing the visibility you need to take corrective action when needed. It also ensures high levels of availability to ensure that your organization is always protected from viruses, ransomware, malware, and other malicious programs.

Key Features:

• Centralized Management: All products from NGFW offer centralized management, so you can monitor or deploy an unlimited number of VPNs, firewalls, or IP addresses within minutes. Undoubtedly, it enhances your productivity while ensuring that you're always on top of your organization's security. Since you can manage all the activities from a single console, your network operating expenses are cut by almost 50%. In addition, it supports clustering that can enhance the resiliency of your network.
• Advanced Security Features: Forcepoint NGFW offers a wide range of security features like advanced access controls and deep inspection capabilities to protect your organization from possible data breaches and thefts. Moreover, it continuously scans your network for traffic patterns, and notifies you when anomalies occur, so you can take corrective action right away. All these features provide an extra security layer for your resources.
• Efficient and Cost-effective: This firewall comes with automation capabilities, so you can save time and effort on redundant tasks. Also, you can control changes on a global scale through a single console. Additionally, it's highly flexible to deploy on applications, both virtually and on the cloud. All these aspects bring down the total cost of ownership and boost the overall efficiency of your systems.

In all, Forcepoint NGFW is a comprehensive tool that provides top-notch security and visibility to your network.

Request pricing for Forcepoint NGFW and get a free trial.

3. Sophos XG

Sophos XG is a powerful and high-performance firewall that provides in-depth visibility into risky activity and suspicious traffic, so you can take corrective action to regain control of your network. More importantly, it uses advanced techniques like deep learning and intrusion prevention to keep your organization safe.

Key Features:

• Highest Visibility and Protection: Its deep packet inspection engine offers TLS 1.3 inspection, zero-day threat protection, perimeter defenses, country-based blocking policy, and more to offer the best protection and visibility about current and upcoming threats to your organization's security. It can even view encrypted traffic and through this, brings down the chances of security blind spots.
• Works Well on Any Network: Sophos comes with many capabilities that fit well with any kind of network and organization. If you have multiple WAN profiles in your organization, you use Sophos to implement user-based routing. Similarly, it provides extensive SD-WAN connectivity, real-time performance-based WAN monitoring, and more. With such features, you can use Sophos in any kind of network setup.
• Relevant Reporting: Another highlight of Sophos XG is its reporting. It comes with a single pane of glass where all metrics related to your network are displayed. Undoubtedly, such a centralized dashboard makes it easy to manage different devices and their performances. In addition, you can generate custom views and reports based on the purpose of each report.

Overall, Sophos XG comes with all the features you need to protect your network from known and unknown threats.

Get a custom quote for Sophos XG and start a free trial.

4. Fortinet FortiGate

Fortinet FortiGate is an NGFW that comes with many unique features like unified management, support for hybrid mesh walls, and consistent security practices across all environments. This platform can be implemented across any number of remote offices, branches, campuses, and data centers, and also expands well to meet your growing business needs.

Key Features:

• AI-powered Security: FortiGate uses AI-powered security features to protect your network. Its custom ASIC architecture provides decryption at scale while its integrated SD-WAN and 5G offer seamless security for all your endpoints. More importantly, the entire NGFW is powered by its operating system called FortiOS. The advantage of this operating system is you can get centralized views through its unified console.
• Flexible Deployment: You can use FortiGate on a wide range of deployments. It can be implemented on hardware appliances that are either located on-premises or managed. Likewise, it also supports virtual deployment on virtual machines and cloud environments and is even available in the form of Security-as-a-Service. Due to this flexibility, you can extend FortiGate to your remote devices, data centers, and all other endpoints.
• Reporting Capabilities: FortiGate comes with a robust reporting interface that generates custom reports to meet all your analytical, compliance, and decision-making processes. It even integrates with FortiAnalyzer to gather information and analyze them to provide pertinent information.

Overall, FortiGate is a technologically advanced solution that continuously learns and enhances your organization's security.

Contact the sales team for a quote on FortiGate and sign up for a demo.

5. Barracuda CloudGen Firewall

Barracuda CloudGen is an NGFW that provides comprehensive protection for both on-premises and cloud environments. It leverages advanced technologies to offer multiple layers of protection for your network and devices.

Key Features:

• Advanced Threat Protection: Barracuda uses advanced threat protection mechanisms to safeguard your network from 13 different types of attacks, including malware, ransomware, and more. Specifically, the Barracuda Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) feature checks files against a cryptographic hash database to identify malicious behavior. It also emulates a virtual sandbox to test for malware and other threats.
• Supports Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA): This NGFW supports MFA to protect your critical resources from unauthorized access. Since it also supports SSL-VPN and VPN connections, you don't have to additionally invest in Identity Access Management (IAM) solutions.
• Application-based Routing: Barracuda CloudGen Firewall uses adaptive WAN routing technology to dynamically assign bandwidth and routing information based on factors like location, applications, content, and protocol. As a result, all high bandwidth lines are available for business-critical applications.

In all, Barracuda firewalls can provide comprehensive protection while providing the control and visibility you need to maintain your network's security.

Find a partner near you to get pricing and try Barracuda for free.

6. Juniper Networks SRX Series

Juniper Networks SRX Series is a part of Juniper's Connected Security framework and is designed to protect your remote offices, data centers, and any other device connected to your network. This firewall is available in the form of physical, virtual, and containerized forms, to suit every deployment.

Key Features:

• Intrusion Prevention: Juniper's SRX Series comes with an Intrusion Detection and Prevention (IDP) that checks every packet that passes through the device and compares it against the established security rules of your organization. If there's a match, the firewall blocks the packet and notifies you. With such a feature, IDP protects against network-based exploit attacks that target vulnerabilities in applications.
• Unified Threat Management: The Unified Threat Management (UTM) feature protects your business from a wide range of cyber threats like viruses, malicious spam emails, malware, trojans, spyware, and more. It comes with a slew of features like anti-spam, content filtering, and antivirus to comprehensively protect your network from known and unknown threats.
• Application Security: The application security feature is a set of capabilities that detects changes in application behavior and identifies security weak points that prevent cyber criminals from exploiting them. Additionally, it offers in-depth visibility and control over your application's health and security.

The Juniper Networks SRX series is an advanced firewall that can protect your network from a myriad of threats.

Talk to your nearest partner for pricing on the Juniper Networks SRX series and watch a demo.

Thus, these are the best next-gen firewalls.

Final Thoughts

Next-Gen Firewalls offer advanced features that enhance network security against evolving and known cyber threats. The top choices described in this article – Perimeter 81 FWaaS, Forcepoint NGFW, Sophos XG, Fortinet FortiGate, Barracuda CloudGen Firewall, and Juniper Networks SRX Series – provide comprehensive protection for your organization. However, consider the different features to select the most suitable firewall that aligns with your security needs and compliance environment.