Role of next-generation firewalls in safeguarding your network from cyber threats

 By Shibu Paul

Cyber attacks are increasingly becoming more organized, sophisticated, and automated. Protecting sensitive data and preserving and building customer trust is, therefore, getting challenging by the day. Traditional cybersecurity renders ineffective towards today’s threats and requires a more holistic approach.

Next-generation firewalls provide a comprehensive approach to cybersecurity and enable businesses to strengthen their security posture and mitigate known and unknown threats.

What is NGFW, and how it helps businesses?

Next-gen firewalls (NGFWs) are advanced firewalls that provide a more detailed, holistic, and integrated approach to mitigating cyber threats. NGFWs are designed to prevent automated attacks with advanced features like deep-packet inspection, real-time threat detection, and more.

Some of the benefits next-generation firewalls offer are:

  1. Deep packet inspection

Traditional firewalls inspect the headers of network packets to determine whether they should be blocked or allowed. However, this is not enough to protect against sophisticated cyber attacks, which often hide malicious content inside the packet payload.

Next-generation firewalls (NGFWs) use deep packet inspection (DPI) to examine the entire contents of each packet, including the payload. This allows them to detect and block a wide range of threats, including advanced malware, application-layer attacks, and encrypted traffic.

  1. Application layer filtering

NGFWs offer complete control over your application settings, like enforcing certain policies that restrict the use of certain applications. This can help to prevent unauthorized access to sensitive data and applications. It allows you to exercise greater control over your applications and apply complex rules.

  1. Intrusion prevention system (IPS)

By monitoring network traffic, IPS can identify and block unauthorized, suspicious, and malicious traffic from entering your web application. This feature protects your application from a host of cyber attacks, such as SQL injection attacks, cross-site scripting (XSS), and zero-day attacks.

Next-generation firewalls also improve the performance of your applications by performing SSL offloading and comes with a host of benefits, including: 

  • Real-time insights: NGFWs provide real-time insights into web application traffic and security threats. This information can be used to identify and respond to attacks quickly before they can cause damage.
  • Simplified cybersecurity management: NGFWs combine the features of various security systems into a single solution. 
  • Granular insights and prevention of evolving threats: NGFWs use threat intelligence and advanced algorithms to provide granular insights into web application traffic and security threats. This information can be used to create and enforce fine-grained security policies that can prevent even the most sophisticated and evolving threats.
  • Scalability, reliability, and mitigation of known and unknown vulnerabilities: NGFWs are scalable and reliable solutions that can be deployed to protect web applications of all sizes. They can also mitigate known and unknown vulnerabilities, helping to keep web applications secure.

Final words

Cyber crimes are becoming a constant catastrophic reality in today’s digital-first world. These crimes are set to escalate even further with the use of advanced bot attacks and AI, which make it easier for attackers with no technical knowledge to cause disruption. Therefore, implementing security solutions that adapt to the evolving threats, provide granular and real-time insight, and leverage advanced algorithms is essential to mitigate modern-day threats. Next-generation firewalls can help businesses stay ahead of the curve by strengthening their security posture and staying ahead of threat actors.

Source Link: https://www.financialexpress.com/business/digital-transformation-role-of-next-generation-firewalls-in-safeguarding-your-network-from-cyber-threats-3290303/

Website Link: https://arraynetworks.com/

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