When it comes to firewall protection, the usual port & protocol identification no longer seems to be the norm. According to a survey conducted by Tech Target – one of the prime resources in Networking, Cloud Computing, Business applications, and analytics – over 66% percent of 221 respondents in the survey asked for next-generation firewalls.
According to a reading paper at the SANS Institute, Intrusion Detection & Response – Leveraging Next Generation Firewall Technology , next generation firewall technology utilizes “Deep Packet Inspection” at its core. As such, it’s a technological system that’s used to integrate intrusion detection, malware filtering, and basically monitoring and controlling data flow within the network.
The concept of Next generation firewalls is still new. Many people still don’t know about it and for most businesses, the present generation UTM (unified threat management) firewall will do the job.
For some large businesses, and small/medium businesses that have to deal with highly sensitive data or if they have an overly increased presence on the Internet with heavy social media or web 2.0 use, the next generation firewalls do seem to be promising. Most businesses will also need Intrusion Protection Systems, application aware firewall systems, and unified security solutions.
The next generation firewalls fill in the void that the present so-called UTM were unable to fulfill: the inability of UTM to successful combat the increasingly wide array of reach on the Internet through multiple channels that enterprises engage in such as social media, mobile devices, Intranet, websites vulnerable to attacks and hacking, and the lack of strong encryption.
Next generation firewalls come with high-in-demand, state-of-the-art technologies such as deep encryption packet filtering, proxy avoidance detection, complete clamp-down mechanisms for peer-to-peer network sharing, advanced user access and identification, ability to monitor/allow/restrict activity on social media platforms and extensible to all mobile devices tethered to the network.
One thing is clear, across the technology industry – customers don’t just buy software or hardware anymore. They need answers to questions. They need support, at all times. In such a scenario, good old firewall systems without bells and whistles are not going to do the trick.
We predict that pretty soon, firewall technology will be expected to be “next generation” anyway. The present “next generation” firewall technology will become the new reigning standard.
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