Key Takeaways What you need to know
  1. Integration with multiple cloud platforms is essential for seamless security across diverse environments.

  2. Reliability, scalability, and flexibility are crucial factors for a Next-Generation Firewall to accommodate growing business needs.

  3. Strong security capabilities combined with user-friendly management and high performance are key for effective cloud security.

As its name suggests, an NGFW expands on the functionality of the traditional firewall. Rather than just doing stateful inspection of network traffic and blocking traffic based on rules, an NGFW is able to block new kinds of threats, such as application-layer attacks and advanced malware. An NGFW may also offer integrated intrusion prevention, threat intelligence, and application awareness. In the cloud, an NGFW should be able to deliver its functionality across public, private, and hybrid cloud architectures. It needs to offer multi-cloud capabilities, as well, enforcing policies wherever digital assets are deployed.

NGFWs tend to get confused with Web Application Firewalls (WAFs). The two technologies are similar and overlap in certain ways, but their core functionalities and purposes are distinct. While they can both be viewed as network functions, NGFWs and WAFs interact with traffic at different places in the network and on the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) stack.

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Fortinet FortiGate is #1 ranked solution in best firewalls, SD-WAN tools, and top WAN Edge tools. PeerSpot users give Fortinet FortiGate an average rating of 8.4 out of 10. Fortinet FortiGate is popular among the large enterprise segment, accounting for 50% of users researching this solution on PeerSpot. The top industry researching this solution are professionals from a comms service provider, accounting for 27% of all views.