Firewall Meet Hybrid: Choosing the Right Firewall to Power Secure Hybrid Working
The modern workplace has been utterly transformed in recent years. In most cases, we haven’t really changed how we work—but rather, where we work. In the UK, nearly a quarter of people are hybrid workers, meaning they work from both the office and home.
This widely distributed workforce model is hailed by many for its flexibility and productivity. A vast majority of workers (70%) also report that hybrid work helps them save money and ease the cost of living. Yet, hybrid work is not without challenges, especially from a technology and security standpoint. Technology decision-makers continue to experience the limitations of outdated firewalls in the hybrid workplace. Subject matter experts also continue to learn that previously common VPN solutions simply can’t scale as quickly as needed, and this hinders productivity and growth.
Enter the next-generation firewall, or NGFW. It’s a proven solution to ensure productivity for the hybrid workplace, while balancing the important considerations of price and performance. From a security perspective, NGFWs play a key role in threat protection to ensure business continuity and monitor the environment—from your network edge to your data centre. The benefits of NGFWs abound; yet it can still be a bit overwhelming to identify the best solution for your unique business.
We can make it a bit easier! Here, we share seven considerations to evaluate NGFW performance and guide your selection.
7 Considerations for Firewall Performance in the Hybrid Work Era
1) IPsec VPN Performance: You may not see hybrid workers around the office most days, but don’t forget they still have access to highly sensitive company data. Seek an NGFW that provides encrypted sessions to ensure the integrity of data in transit as well as all traffic between your workers and the public internet. Make sure the solution can sustain the increase in traffic loads, irrespective of location.
2) Threat Protection Performance: If robust threat protection is a necessity, performance is often an afterthought. It shouldn’t be. How does the NGFW perform when running full threat protection—not just when it’s firewalling but also when everything is turned on, like intrusion prevention, antivirus, and application control?
3) SSL Inspection Capacity: Hackers continue to insert malware into encrypted packets. SSL decryption and inspection can offset these risks, but it can also reduce throughput. The best NGFWs offer it all: Predictable performance with minimal speed degradation, even when SSL is turned on.
4) Price versus Performance: Often, when vendors increase the size of a firewall, they also increase its price. The best NGFWs leverage disruptive technology to combine price and performance with a smaller footprint and lower total cost of ownership.
5) Credible Third-party Valuation: Selecting and implementing an NGFW is not the time to rely solely on vendor documentation and word of mouth. Seek solutions with recognised third-party evaluators (like Gartner and NSS Labs) and detailed validations.
6) Single-pane-of-glass Management: When your team must toggle between multiple dashboards to assess vulnerabilities and respond to threats, you lose time and drain resources. Insist on an NGFW that is part of a broad, integrated security architecture including automated intelligence and information-sharing across network devices.
7) Future-proofing: You already embrace digital innovation as a key business enabler. Don’t let the wrong firewall solution slow you down. Ensure that your NGFW is high performing, affordable, and scalable. Think about your anticipated future demands. Can the NGFW keep up with your growth, today and tomorrow?
In our hybrid world of work, next generation firewalls play a critical role in threat protection and business continuity. Keep these seven considerations in mind as you evaluate vendors and invest in a solution. Remember, not all firewalls are created equal!
For more guidance, please download this white paper for additional selection criteria, and get in touch with Optec to learn about best-in-class options, like the FortiGate Next-Generation Firewall from Fortinet.
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