Next-Generation Firewall, or NGFW, is a third-generation firewall technology designed to deal with high-level security threats through intelligent, environmentally aware security features. An NGFW integrates traditional firewall capabilities, such as packet filtering and status analysis, with traditional generation firewalls to make better traffic decisions.
In this tutorial, we are going to talk about these firewalls, so keep watching. Before describing this firewall, let’s first learn about the types of firewalls in information technology.
Types of Firewalls
Firewalls are generally divided into five categories, which are:
Packet Filtering Firewall: Views pocket IP headers and remove flagged ones.
Circuit Level Gateway: Instead of viewing packets, it flags malicious content based on TCP loss and other network protocol output session messages.
Stateful Inspection Firewall: Connects closed filters to session monitoring for greater security.
Application Level Gateway: Filters packets via target port and HTTP request string. Also known as a proxy firewall.
Next-Generation Firewall, or NGFW: Uses sophisticated technology to protect against the latest threats.
What is Next-Generation Firewall, or NGFW?
A Next-Generation Firewall is one of the ways to create global security and prevent hackers from infiltrating by detecting and blocking suspicious traffic. Next-Generation Firewalls or NGFW can be applied to software and hardware, ports, and protocols.
How do Firewalls work?
Some people ask how do firewalls work? We have already mentioned that there are many types of firewalls, and each of them serves to protect different generations from the second and third generation to the next generation.
For example, older generations, such as the first and second, detect and filter communication packets, allow secure data, and prevent suspicious data through streaming protocols. It is worth noting that Windows has more than 60,000 ports, each with its own application and Network protocols for handling it.
The third generation, analyzes and stores data and develops its own security code to speed up the flow and analysis, and prevent all data from coming from unknown sources.
It can be described as an anti-virus database. A whitelist of allowed data and a blacklist of blocked data. As you mentioned, this generation is spread by authenticity messages or certificates of authenticity. This generation is now spread in computers and smartphones.
Features of the Next Generation Firewall or NGFW?
The most important features and capabilities of the new generation firewall are the following:
- Advanced Security System
- Block Network Threats
- Geographical Location
- Comprehensive Network View
- Timely Detection of Network Attacks
- Ability to Decrypt Antivirus
- Ability to Submit Extensive Reports
- The Fastest Detection Time
- User Identity Control
- Integrity Capability
Advanced Security System
The first and foremost function of a firewall is to prevent hackers from entering and protecting your network. But since the precautions are not always 100%. The next-generation firewalls will use advanced features to detect malware quickly.
These features include:
- Stop and stop attacks before entering the computer.
- Use the new generation internal IPS to detect hidden threats and block them immediately by blocking URLs.
- Use the sandbox to protect yourself from modern malware.
Block Network Threats
Firewalls use network sandboxing and URL filtering tools to prevent network access attacks.
Geographical Location
Next-generation firewalls control location-based access or direct traffic by communicating between IP addresses and geographic locations.
Comprehensive Network View
Protecting yourself from the invisible is a difficult task. You should always monitor the location of your network so that you can detect threats in a timely manner and prevent them from entering the network. Therefore, you should have a comprehensive overview of your firewall network functionality to find the following.
- Threatening activity between users, networks, and devices
- Risk management time and place
- Types of active applications and websites
Timely Detection of Network Attacks
One of the most important features of the next-generation firewall is accurate detection of attacks while minimizing damage to systems and networks. This firewall uses malicious attacks to prevent malicious traffic.
Ability to Decrypt Antivirus
However, your computer must have an antivirus solution. But one of the main tasks of the NGFW is to prevent attacks before entering the network. It strengthens and supports your anti-virus system.
Ability to Submit Extensive Reports
The next-generation firewall gives you detailed and direct reports so you can easily find out what’s going on in the system. This allows you to quickly access your network security status.
The Fastest Detection Time
The standard time limit for detecting a network threat is currently 100 to 200 days. However, the Next Generation Firewall can detect threats and detect them in hours or minutes. If a threat is detected, you will be notified to take action against them.
User Identity Control
One of the main functions of a firewall is to allow users to access the network and monitor users identities. In fact, one of the most important components of network security is user tracking. The Next Generation Firewall monitors users’ actions and verifies their identity through control programs such as Active Directory.
Integrity Capability
One of the unique features of the Next Generation Firewall is its ability to integrate with other security systems. By working with this software, this firewall detects different types of viruses and protects the network.
In addition to these basic features, next-generation firewalls may have additional features such as anti-virus and malware protection. They can be implemented as a firewall (FWaaS), an equivalent service that provides easy scaling and maintenance.
With FWaaS, the firewall is maintained by the software service provider, and resources are automatically reduced to meet processing requirements. This makes it easier for corporate ID groups to handle links.
Advantages of Next-Generation Firewall (NGFW) In the Network
Anyone who wants to keep their network secure needs NGFW because:
- It is a comprehensive solution that works with many types of software and hardware security solutions. All you have to do to configure NGFW is think of more than one security solution.
- This is even more effective because you don’t have to purchase, manage, upgrade, and monitor permissions for multiple security solutions when there is only one comprehensive access solution.
- This is a big leap from the traditional firewall, and if you use it, it makes sense that you move to a more sophisticated way to protect your different types of networks.
- Also, an NGFW (and other support security solutions that usually come with it), like a traditional firewall, will not compromise your bandwidth.
Next-Generation Firewalls Vs Traditional Firewalls
Traditional firewalls rely on port/protocol exploration to block enterprise networks on data connection layers and transfer layers of the OSI Model. While this standard approach has been effective in the past.
The IT environment is less mobile than it is now and applications can be identified by port. But with increasing virtual networks and sophisticated security threats, this is not enough.
Next-generation firewalls or NGFWs are ideal. They can filter packets based on usage and behavior, creating subtle differences from the conventional methods used by traditional firewalls. External data is also cited to identify threats. This dynamic and flexible approach allows you to identify and defend sophisticated attackers more than ever.
Why should we use the Next-Generation Firewall?
Use next-generation firewalls for the following reasons:
- It is a comprehensive and practical tool that performs many software functions simultaneously.
- It is less expensive. Because there is no need to pay for the development and upgrade of security software.
- An innovative way to go through the traditional firewall.
- It does not affect your bandwidth.
- It is a step-by-step solution to get rid of all network security issues.
How do Next Generation Firewall Enable User Control?
Network Firewall Security Policy specifies whether a link to this destination is allowed from this source. The source and destination is traditionally an IP address assigned to a laptop or a large network address that includes multiple users and servers.
This standard address policy is difficult for humans to read. And setting up a security policy for users with different IP addresses does not work well when working with corporate tools and offsite work.
NGFW developers solve this problem by integrating it with third-party user directories, such as Microsoft Active Directory. Dynamic identity policies provide an accurate look and control over users, groups, and machines. Next-Generation Firewall (NGFW) defines once integrated console object managers.
When network firewalls see a link for the first time, the IP is mapped to the user and the group by searching the third-party user directory. This dynamic mapping for IP frees administrators from constantly updating security policies.
How does Next Generation Firewall Implement Threat Prevention?
Threat prevention capabilities are the most important in-depth search capabilities of the next generation of firewalls. As traffic fires through a network firewall device, known vulnerabilities (IPS) monitor traffic.
To detect malicious behavior (Security Box Security), files can be sent out of the device for duplication in a box or virtual environment.
Future of The Next Generation Firewall
As security threats continue to grow, companies are moving from traditional next-generation firewalls to newer firewall technology, called “next-generation firewalls or NGFWs”.
These firewalls provide real-time threat information in the data center, cloud, mobile, endpoint, and Internet of Things (IOT) with additional security functions.
Firewalls are an integral part of any organization’s security framework, helping to protect sensitive data, meet compliance requirements, and guide companies toward digital transformation.
Final Words
As a final thought, network attacks continue to be a growing trend, making it difficult to find any security solution. Currently, NGFW is one of the best network security solutions.