Main NGFW Features
NGFWs play a critical role in corporate cybersecurity and need certain features to be effective. Here are some of the main features to look for in an NGFW:
| Feature |
Description |
| Network Segmentation |
Isolates assets based on function and trust level, hindering attacker movement. |
| Access Control |
Filters traffic using IAM and RBAC to block unauthorized access attempts. |
| Remote Access VPN |
Enables secure access for remote users through NGFWs. |
| Zero Trust Networks |
Enforces zero trust principles on the network through API and IAM integration. |
| Email Security |
Scans emails for malicious content like links and attachments. |
| Web Security |
Blocks access to phishing websites and malicious web content. |
| Data Loss Prevention (DLP) |
Prevents sensitive data from being transferred outside the organization. |
| Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS) |
Protects against cyber threats like DDoS attacks, brute-force login attempts, and vulnerability exploits. |
| Sandboxing |
Analyzes suspicious files in a safe environment to identify and block malware. |
| AI-Powered Threat Intelligence |
Provides real-time updates on the latest cybersecurity threats. |
| Compliance Support |
Simplifies compliance by generating audit reports and documenting activities. |
- Network Segmentation: Network segmentation creates trust boundaries around assets with similar functions and trust levels, increasing the difficulty for attackers to move laterally through the corporate network.
- Access Control: Firewalls deploy access controls by integrating with identity and access management (IAM) security solutions and implementing role-based access controls (RBAC) to filter malicious traffic containing unauthorized access attempts.
- Remote Access VPN: NGFWs can terminate virtual private network (VPN) connections, providing secure access for remote sites and workers.
- Zero Trust Networks: Firewalls’ API and IAM capabilities enable organizations to enforce zero trust principles on the corporate network.
- Email Security: Email is one of the leading cyber attack vectors that cybercriminals use to target organizations and their employees. Firewalls can inspect email links and payloads to identify and block malicious content.
- Web Security: Web security involves URL filtering and packet filtering to block visits to phishing pages and blocking malicious content contained within web pages.
- Data Loss Prevention (DLP): DLP scans for protected data types and ensures that it isn’t being transferred to unauthorized parties outside of the organization.
- Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS): An IPS protects against cyber threats like Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, brute-force password guessing, and vulnerability exploitation.
- Sandboxing: Many malware attacks use zero-day malware or conceal malicious functionality in other files. Sandbox analysis opens files and detonates any malicious payloads to identify and block malicious content from reaching the target.
- AI-Powered Global Threat Intelligence: AI-powered threat intelligence feeds provide real-time updates to virtual firewalls, enabling them to identify the latest cybersecurity threats.
- Compliance Support: Firewalls should have built-in compliance logging and support to help identify compliance gaps and generate required audit reports and documentation.
NGFW Capabilities
Here are the most powerful NGFW capabilities (and how they can save you from cyber threats).
Security Management
Firewalls should be easy to use and configure to ensure consistent security and regulatory compliance.
Additionally, there should be a centralized management platform that is unified across on-prem, cloud, and remote environments to ensure complete visibility and consistent protection across the entire corporate IT environment.
Threat Prevention
Firewalls should offer Layers 1-7 threat prevention.
To do so, they should go beyond incorporating IPS to include sandboxing, anti-malware, DDoS prevention, and other targeted defenses against sophisticated attacks. Furthermore, a modern NGFW needs the ability to inspect encrypted traffic (including SSL web traffic) where sophisticated threats can remain undetected.
Inspection and Granular Control
As application traffic becomes more sophisticated and complex, threat detection is more difficult.
Identity-Based Inspection and Control
The growth of cloud computing and other factors make IP address-based traffic management less effective.
Instead, firewalls should base access decisions on user identity and RBAC security policies, which are key to implementing zero trust.
Hybrid Cloud Support
Most companies have hybrid clouds and must protect and control access to these environments. Corporate firewalls must be capable of protecting multi-cloud infrastructures and have the flexibility and scalability to adapt to rapidly changing business needs.
Scalable Performance
Key firewall operations — such as inspection of encrypted incoming traffic — can be computationally expensive and cause network latency. Firewalls should offer hyper scalability to ensure performance despite growing traffic loads or unexpected spikes in network demand.
Encrypted Traffic Inspection
NGFWs should offer efficient inspection of network traffic with minimal latency and performance impacts.
Advanced Threat Protection
AI-powered global threat intelligence feeds provide real-time updates on zero-day attacks to firewalls. Once a security threat is detected, automated incident response enables organizations to quickly respond to an evolving threat and minimize the risk to the business.
Security Automation
Automating common network security tasks and incident response activities reduces the burden on security personnel and enables faster threat prevention and mitigation.
Securing IoT and OT
Firewalls should support IoT and OT protocols to protect these devices against unauthorized access and potential attacks.
AI Firewall
NGFWs evolved to address the modern threat landscape by integrating additional features on top of those of the traditional firewall. However, cybercriminals are leveraging sophisticated zero-day attacks that are difficult to identify with traditional means.
AI offers the potential to detect and prevent these attacks by identifying patterns and anomalies within suspicious traffic. AI-enabled NGFWs can provide robust protection against both known threats and novel attacks by combining traditional and emerging methods of threat detection and prevention.
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