What is a Next-Generation Firewall (NGFWs)?

Next-generation firewalls filter network traffic to protect an organization from external threats. Maintaining features of stateful firewalls such as packet filtering, VPN support, network monitoring, and IP mapping features, NGFWs also possess deeper inspection capabilities that give them a superior ability to identify attacks, malware, and other threats. Next-generation firewalls provide organizations with application control, intrusion prevention, and advanced visibility across the network. As the threat landscape continues to develop rapidly, traditional firewalls fall further behind and put your organization at risk. NGFWs not only block malware, but also include paths for future updates, giving them the flexibility to evolve with the landscape and keep the network secure as new threats arise.
Coupled with Network Access Controls (NAC) which is a type of Cyber Security technology that allows an organization to define and implement policies that control the access of endpoints to a network; while at the same time providing visibility of each device trying to access.
NAC provides security posture assessments for the endpoints, highlighting the risks, and can control access based on the level of risk tolerated by the organization.
They add application-level inspection, intrusion prevention, and bring intelligence from outside the firewall such as the ability to use Active Directory or Exchange as sources to help correlate firewall sessions to users and desktops all in real-time.
There is also a trend toward software-defined and stretched datacenters, part of which means implementing virtual appliances or software firewalls in various locations.
As Jaynet, we handle Multi-Vendor solution deployments while embracing Next Generation Firewalls (NGFWs).These Vendor Solutions include, but not limited to;

i. FortiGate NGFW: Enterprise Firewalls

FortiGate NGFWs enable security-driven networking and consolidate industry-leading security capabilities such as intrusion prevention system (IPS), web filtering, secure sockets layer (SSL) inspection, and automated threat protection. Fortinet NGFWs meet the performance needs of highly scalable, hybrid IT architectures, enabling organizations to reduce complexity and manage security risks.
FortiGate NGFWs are powered by artificial intelligence (AI)-driven FortiGuard Labs and deliver proactive threat protection with high-performance inspection of both clear-text and

encrypted traffic (including the industry’s latest encryption standard TLS 1.3) to stay ahead of the rapidly expanding threat landscape.
FortiGate NGFWs inspect traffic as it enters and leaves the network. These inspections happen at an unparalleled speed, scale, and performance and prevent everything from ransomware to DDoS attacks, without degrading user experience or creating costly downtime.

ii. SOPHOS

All the advanced networking, protection, user, and app controls you need to stay secure and compliant .XG Firewall provides an elegant and effective web-based management console that offers quick access to all the features you need without unnecessary complexity.
• Sophos Central provides the ultimate cloud management platform for all your Sophos products including XG firewall
• XG Firewall’s Control center provides at-a-glance feeds of system performance, traffic patterns, alerts, and policies.
• Unified policy model enables convenient management of all your user, network, NAT, and business app rules in one place with snap-in policies for apps, web, QoS, IPS, Security Heartbeat, and routing, which dramatically simplifies enforcement and reduces redundancy, and overall rule count.
• Policy templates offer common business applications to dramatically streamline configuration.
• Role-based admin provides flexible granular access control for different functional areas

iii. Cisco Firepower NGFW

Cisco’s biggest strength might be the breadth of security services it offers or integrates with its firewall, among them intrusion prevention, advanced malware protection, cloud-based sandboxing, URL filtering, endpoint protection, web gateway, email security, network traffic analysis, network access control and CASB. However, that broad protection comes with above average prices

What is Secure SD-WAN?

As the use of business-critical, cloud-based applications and tools continue to increase, distributed organizations with multiple remote offices are switching from performance-inhibited wide-area networks (WANs) to SD-WAN. SD-WAN is a software-defined wide-area network architecture. SD-WAN solutions transform an organization’s capabilities by leveraging the corporate WAN as well as multi-cloud connectivity to deliver high-speed application performance at the WAN Edge of branch sites. SD-WAN provides a centralized control mechanism that can determine and route the ideal path for traffic—MPLS, 3G/4G/5G, or broadband—ensuring organizations can quickly and easily access business-critical cloud applications. But SD-WAN solutions don’t provide in-built security which is critical for direct internet access. Secure SD-WAN enables organizations to enable NGFW with SD-WAN in simplified offering.