The Difference Between a Next Gen Firewall and a Traditional Firewall

Firewalls are intending to defend your network from cyber assaults and harmful threats that seek to infiltrate your network and steal your data. Although this may seem like something out of a horror movie, you’d be amaze how frequently businesses are being hack, and how common data theft and network breaches are. Every 39 seconds, a hacker assault occurs, with data breaches costing an average of more than $150 million.

 

Despite the fact that most firms have firewalls to protect themselves, hackers have evolved to the point where this may no longer be sufficient. This is how next gen firewall were conceived. 

 

In this post, we’ll compare traditional firewalls to next gen firewall, or NGFWs, to discover what benefits and features the current solution has to offer.

 

What is a traditional firewall? 

 

It’s crucial to know the difference between a normal firewall and a next-generation firewall. First, let’s look at classical firewalls. Consider ordinary firewalls as a tool for policing the traffic that enters and exits your network. It’s a network security gadget that examines your network traffic in great detail. It does the examination using a port, protocol, destination address, and source address, among other things. 

 

Looking at some of the fundamental aspects of a typical firewall may make it simpler to comprehend:

 

• Virtual Private Network (VPN)  functionality guarantees secure network access and network security when users travel across public or untrusted networks such as the Internet.
• Filtering of outgoing and incoming packets ensures that they are properly evaluate and scrutinize before being allowed to pass. Packets that pass the filter’s requirements are let through, whereas packets that fail to fulfill the criteria are reject or deny access. 
• Stateful inspection, rather than treating communication as individual packets, is characterized as a flow. Certain rules have been establish for traffic flow, and certain decisions can be taken to safeguard the network base on the behavior of the flow.

 

All of these traits were originally thought to be sufficient for complete protection. But that is no longer the case.

 

What is an NGFW?

 

Next gen firewall include many of the same functions as old firewalls, but they also have sophisticated features and extra functionality. 

 

NGFWs provide a greater number of security levels, making them the preferred choice for most enterprises. According to Gartner, some of the essential elements a next-generation firewall must have are:

 

• New-age security threats require advanced approaches. 
• Intrusion detection and prevention in one package 
• Sources of threat intelligence 
• Upgrade options 
• Application awareness allows you to detect and stop harmful programmes. 
• State-of-the-art inspection and other essential skills 

 

But, what does this mean for your company?

 

The extra benefit 

 

The beauty of next-generation firewalls is that they go beyond current firewalls’ static examination. NGFWs provide application-level security and control. Here are a few of the most important advantages of NGFWs.

 

Awareness of the application 

 

Instead of relying just on IP and port numbers, application awareness allows enterprises and organizations to create specific policies for each application. The ability to specify each application is one of the most important features of a next-generation firewall. Port number definitions are the only thing that traditional firewalls depend on. The disadvantage is that they are freely accessible to anybody. App-ID must be use to offer accurate identification for traffic flow and to detect possible threats.

 

Intelligence on threats 

 

To summarize, a next-generation firewall comes with all you need to give sophisticated threat intelligence and ensure your company’s safety and security. The following are some of the most significant benefits:

 

• Access to a single console 
• Protection with many layers 
• Infrastructure that is easier to use 
• Utilization of network bandwidth to its full potential 
• Antivirus, ransomware, and spam protection are include. 
• Role-based access control capability

 

Intrusion detection and prevention system 

 

An intrusion prevention system, often known as an IPS, is an add-on to an intrusion detection system, or IDS. It allows the NGFW to prevent hazards and instructions that have been recognise as a result of malicious packets being block. Furthermore, the system logs the potentially problematic IP addresses and retains a list of them for future reference, blocking any prospective traffic from them to avoid any potentially dangerous scenarios.

 

Inspection of the entire packet 

 

Packet filtering base on the header of a packet is use by traditional firewalls. Deep packet inspection, which inspects the contents of a packet in depth, is use by next-generation firewalls. It extensively examines and verifies the source and is capable of analyzing the whole contents of each packet. For organizations, this adds an extra degree of protection and dependability.

 

A next gen firewall is a trustworthy solution that will safeguard your firm from the negative consequences of data breaches and cyber attacks. We hope that this post has clarified the key distinctions between a standard firewall and a next-generation firewall.

 

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