What is a Next-Generation Firewall?

What is a Next-Generation Firewall?

Next-generation firewalls (NGFWs) filter network traffic to protect an organization from internal and external threats. Along with maintaining features of stateful firewalls such as packet filtering, IPsec and SSL VPN support, network monitoring, and IP mapping features, NGFWs possess deeper content inspection capabilities. These capabilities provide the ability to identify attacks, malware, and other threats, and allow the NGFW to block these threats. NGFWs provide organizations with SSL inspection, application control, intrusion prevention, and advanced visibility across the entire attack surface. As the threat landscape rapidly expands due to co-location and multi-cloud adoption, and businesses grow to satisfy escalating customer needs, traditional firewalls fall further behind, unable to offer protection at scale, and leading to poor user experience and weak security posture. NGFWs not only block malware, but also include paths for future updates, giving them the flexibility to evolve with the threat landscape and keep the network secure as new threats arise. Next-generation firewalls are a vital component of implementing network security.

FortiGate Next-Generation Firewalls

FortiGate NGFWs are network firewalls powered by purpose-built security processing units (SPUs) including the latest NP7 (Network Processor 7). They enable security-driven networking, and are ideal network firewalls for hybrid and hyperscale data centers.

Fortinet NGFWs reduce cost and complexity by eliminating points products and consolidating industry-leading security capabilities such as secure sockets layer (SSL) inspection including the latest TLS1.3, web filtering, intrusion prevention system (IPS) to provide fully visibility and protect any edge. Fortinet NGFWs uniquely meet the performance needs of hyperscale and hybrid IT architectures, enabling organizations to deliver optimal user experience, and manage security risks for better business continuity.

FortiGate next-generation firewalls inspect traffic at hyperscale as it enters and leaves the network. These inspections happen at unparalleled speed, scale, and performance to ensure that only legitimate traffic is allowed, all without degrading user experience or creating costly downtime

As an integral part of the Fortinet Security Fabric, FortiGate NGFWs can communicate within the comprehensive Fortinet security portfolio as well as third-party security solutions in a multivendor environment. FortiGate NGFWs seamlessly integrate with artificial intelligence (AI)-driven FortiGuard and FortiSandbox services to protect against known and zero-day threats and improve operational efficiency through integration with Fabric Management Center.

FortiGate NGFW Use Cases

FortiGate NGFWs help organizations achieve digital transformation by protecting any edge and any application at any scale by improving operational efficiency, automating workflows, and delivering strong security posture with best-of-breed threat protection. FortiGate NGFWs offer the industry’s highest security compute rating and provides the following benefits:

Manage External Security Risks

With the growing amount of HTTPS traffic, organizations without TLS decryption strategies are effectively blind to the near 90% of HTTPS traffic that’s encrypted. Consequently, they are exposed to targeted malware campaigns and data loss. FortiGate NGFWs deliver security-driven networking to achieve full visibility into applications, threats, and networks. This protects any edge, with industry-validated best-of-breed security to keep operations running and achieve business continuity — Get details in the infographic.

Manage Internal Security Risks

Flat networks weaken when attacked because they don’t offer any advanced security inspection. FortiGate NGFWs deliver network-based segmentation to reduce the attack surface and inhibit the ability of an attack to spread laterally within the network, securing any segmentation (micro-, macro-, port- or application-based) with automated workflows, adaptive trust, and high-performance threat protection to achieve defense in depth, compliance and Trusted Application Access.

Manage Vulnerabilities

The majority of malware propagates by using known vulnerabilities and is a major cause of attacks. FortiGate NGFWs offer consolidated IPS without degrading performance to provide virtual patching and prevent against known and zero-day attacks and Reduce Cost & Complexity.

Provide Security at Hyperscale

Traditional firewalls choke when handling the high influx of user traffic required at hyperscale speeds. As a result, user experience suffers. Forgoing security opens the doors to attackers to disrupt your services. Fortinet NGFWs offer unique and unparalleled security to ensure your business web sites remain accessible, responsive, and provide an Optimal User Experience

Secure Cloud On-Ramp

Organizations want to adopt cloud for agility, resiliency, and to scale on demand. Moving data to and from the cloud securely at network speeds is required to maintain both user experience and compliance. Traditional firewalls don’t allow fast transfer of large data sets and as a result, slow down business. Fortinet next-generation firewalls offer rapid transfer of large data sets called Elephant Flows that can reach up to 100Gbps and can be encrypted with IPsec at the same throughput levels. Accelerate Cutting-Edge Research with 1800F.