The CF List: 2022's 20 Top Next-Gen Firewall Cybersecurity Providers You Should Know
Check Point, Cisco, Sophos and VMware are here. See who else made it and why.
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Omdia’s Fernando Montenegro cited Barracuda Networks as a top NGFW provider. KKR, a global investment firm, this summer completed its acquisition of Barracuda from Thoma Bravo in a deal reportedly worth about $4 billion. Barracuda focuses on serving SMEs and has more than 200,000 customers worldwide across a variety of industries.
Montenegro said Check Point Software Technologies is among top providers. And the company is listed among leaders on the Forrester Wave for Enterprise Firewalls for Q4 2022.
This month, Check Point and Network Perception, a network audit, compliance and security software provider, formed a technology integration partnership. Under the partnership, Check Point will provide security infrastructure while Network Perception’s NP-View platform protects critical assets by offering compliance verification, cybersecurity visibility and operational velocity.
Versa Networks is among top NGFW providers. Last month, it secured $120 million in additional financing, setting the company on its planned initial public offering (IPO) path. It received the capital as part of a pre-IPO round. This new round of funding will enable Versa to expand go-to-market (GTM) strategies and accelerate its SASE innovations.
Bitdefender is a leading NGFW contender. This month, Bitdefender unveiled its new GravityZone Integrity Monitoring, an integrity monitoring solution designed to monitor, alert and provide corrective actions to unwanted changes to files, registries, directories, installed apps and user escalation of privilege throughout the entire organization.
Montenegro cited Cisco among top NGFW providers. Cisco Firepower NGFWs provide organizations with visibility into their network activity and other relevant data in real time so security teams can detect malicious activity and take corrective action with complete context into the threat.
This month, Cisco announced Secure Firewall 3105 built specifically for hybrid workers and small branch offices.
Montenegro said Forcepoint is a noteworthy NGFW provider. Forcepoint NGFW blocks malicious attacks, and prevents the theft of data and intellectual property while transforming infrastructure and increasing the efficiency of operations. In fall 2021, Forcepoint acquired security service edge (SSE) provider Bitglass. The acquisition accelerated Forcepoint’s efforts to make data security and threat protection technologies easier for organizations to deploy and use.
Montenegro cited Palo Alto Networks as a top contender. And the company is listed among leaders on the Forrester Wave for Enterprise Firewalls for Q4 2022.
This month, Palo Alto Networks announced another round of firewall software and hardware updates, including its latest version of PAN-OS software and a new set of its NGFWs for branches, campus locations, and data centers.
Montenegro cited Fortinet among top providers. And the company is listed among leaders on the Forrester Wave for Enterprise Firewalls for Q4 2022.
This month, Fortinet announced FortiGate 1000F, its latest series of NGFW, to deliver higher performance, with more than seven times faster firewall throughput and lower power consumption than competitive solutions.
Huawei is a top NGFW contender, Montenegro said. Huawei USG6700E series NGFWs are designed for next-generation data centers and large enterprise campuses. USG6700E firewalls provide NGFW capabilities and collaborate with other security devices to defend against network threats, enhance border detection capabilities and resolve performance deterioration problems.
Montenegro cited Juniper Networks among top providers.
“One of the most significant changes in expectations for firewalls is the increasing emphasis on options for deployment. Enterprises need support for cloud deployments, as well as on-premises in virtual and physical forms,” said SPJ Global’s Eric Hanselman. “Branch office deployments are as important as ever, but traffic breakout for direct internet access is now a key requirement. Interest in SASE options is being driven by a greater need to support a hybrid workforce and the increasing use of SaaS applications for more business functions.”
Cato Networks is a noteworthy NGFW provider. In July, the company unveiled data loss prevention (DLP). Smart DLP scans all network traffic to ensure users aren’t sending sensitive files or information. The DLP engine belongs to Cato’s Security Service Edge (SSE) platform. The launch came a month after Cato launched network-based ransomware protection.
Montenegro said SonicWall is a top NGFW provider. In March, SonicWall announced that 2021 was its best year on record. Propelled by the delivery of high-demand products, including the evolution of its Generation 7 NGFWs and a focus on its customers, SonicWall delivered record levels of sales and profitability in 2021.
Netskope is a noteworthy NGFW provider. Netskope Cloud Firewall delivers firewall-as-a-service (FWaaS) for egress traffic from a SASE architecture. Users and offices connect to NewEdge, a security private cloud for firewall protection. With Cloud Firewall, organizations improve their security posture, while reducing operational costs compared to traditional hardware appliances.
WatchGuard Technologies is a top NGFW provider. This year, Vector Capital took majority ownership of WatchGuard. It acquired interests previously owned by Francisco Partners and other co-investors. The company’s Unified Security Platform enables more than 17,000 MSPs to protect the environments, users and networks of more than 250,000 businesses worldwide.
Montenegro said Sophos is among top NGFW providers.
“I cover network security, and I had assumed that, when the pandemic hit and all the users went off network to work from home, that companies would refocus their security efforts exclusively for the remote workforce,” said Forrester’s David Holmes. “And sure, there was a lot of that. But what surprised me is that on the other side of the pandemic, the enterprise firewall vendors reported an average of 26% year-over-year growth associated to firewall revenue. Some had much higher – in the mid-30s. These numbers were reported to us before inflation even started taking off earlier this year. Clearly, not all network security budgets had been negatively impacted. Our research suggests that the pandemic financial stimulus may have helped agencies and enterprises not just weather the lockdowns, but upgrade and expand their network security.”
Hillstone Networks is a noteworthy NGFW provider. In August, the company unveiled new models in the Hillstone Networks A-Series NGFWs to help enterprises secure their expanding network edge, deliver strong network security capabilities, and drive sustainability with solutions in a compact one rack unit form factor.
Hillstone secures more than 100 Fortune 500 customers, and possesses a global presence in more than 60 countries.
Sangfor Technologies is one to watch in the APAC market.
“We see most effective solutions needing to have their NGFW as a component in a broader TDIR architecture,” Montenegro said. “This might mean XDR, might mean SIEM/SOAR, or something in-between. The NGFW must be effective in policing the network traffic and user behaviour, but must do so taking meaningful external threat insights/intelligence and integrating with deeper investigation/response capabilities.”
H3C has maintained the No.1 position in China’s hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) systems market with a share of nearly 25% in the first half of 2022. In addition, its sales surged more than 46% year over year, three times higher than the market average, according to IDC.
VMware is one to watch in NGFW. In August, it announced Project Northstar, a SaaS-based networking and security offering that will provide its NSX customers with a set of on-demand multicloud networking and security services, end-to-end visibility, and controls. Customers will be able to use a centralized cloud console to gain iaccess to networking and security services, such as network and security policy controls, network detection and response (NDR), NSX intelligence, advanced load balancing (ALB), web application firewall (WAF) and HCX. It will support both private cloud and VMware Cloud deployments running on public clouds, and enable enterprises to build network infrastructure.
Qi-AnXin is one to watch in APAC. Its NGFW responds to traditional network attacks and advanced threats. It can be widely used in the business network boundaries of various enterprises and organizations to achieve network security domain isolation, refined access control and high efficiency.
Qi-AnXin is one to watch in APAC. Its NGFW responds to traditional network attacks and advanced threats. It can be widely used in the business network boundaries of various enterprises and organizations to achieve network security domain isolation, refined access control and high efficiency.
Next-generation firewall (NGFW) is a critical part of the fast-growing global cybersecurity appliances market. And the shift to remote and hybrid work has increased demand for more deployment options.
A traditional firewall typically provides inspection of incoming and outgoing network traffic. However, NGFW cybersecurity includes additional features such as application awareness and control, integrated intrusion prevention and cloud-delivered threat intelligence.
According to Industry Research, the global NGFW cybersecurity market totaled nearly $4 billion in 2021 and should reach nearly $8 billion by 2028.
Our latest CF List focuses on NGFW cybersecurity. Analysts with Omdia, S&P Global Market Intelligence and Forrester weighed in on NGFW market trends and what it takes to be a successful provider.
NGFW Security Key Component in Network Architecture
Fernando Montenegro is senior principal analyst at Omdia, which shares a parent company with Channel Futures (Informa).
Omdia’s Fernando Montenegro
“Firewalls remain a key component in network architecture, and many organizations rely on them for securing outgoing connections,” he said. “We do see NGFW vendors branching out to other areas such as secure access service edge (SASE) so that they can better support low-latency access for remote users and branches. In those cases, secure web gateways and zero trust access are key use cases.”
The expectation of a cutting-edge NGFW provider is that they’re adding capabilities on multiple dimensions, Montenegro said. Providers are doing more in terms of bringing more intelligence to bear on inspecting traffic, and they are adding more service coverage on the firewall itself.
“They are working in supporting multiple form factors, not only traditional physical appliances … but also virtual form factors including virtual machines, containers and more,” he said. ‘[And] they are making sure the NGFW integrates with broader threat detection, investigation and response (TDIR) architecture, be it security information and event management (SIEM), extended detection and response (XDR), etc., as well as integration with the customer environment, such as identity management and more.”
Customers want NGFW to do what it promises without adding too much “heartburn” to teams, Montenegro said.
Supporting a Hybrid Workforce
S&P Global Intelligence’s Eric Hanselman
Eric Hanselman is chief analyst with 451 Research, part of S&P Global Market Intelligence. He said ransomware and advances in attack automation that criminals use have shifted security spending.
“Email scanning and DNS reputation screening have become must-haves in the security portfolio,” he said. “Ransomware has created a shift in mindset for security professionals, as the cost of compromise has increased dramatically. Our Voice of the Enterprise, Information Security study shows a dramatic increase in successful attacks, almost doubling from 10% in 2021 to 18% reporting being victims this year. Traditional approaches to remediation aren’t working, forcing enterprises into reactive strategies. While 7% thought that they’d pay a ransom if compromised, for those that were compromised, 22% indicated that they’d paid.”
2 Prominent Market Strategies
David Holmes is senior analyst at Forrester.
Forrester’s David Holmes
“Not only are threats continuously evolving, but organizations are also suffering from the security skills gap more than ever,” he said. “Organizations are struggling to find and retain anyone today.”
Forrester recently highlighted two industry strategies in play to counter the skills gap, Holmes said.
“Check Point Software Technologies, the granddaddy of firewalls, has changed their strategy to prioritize automated prevention with the assumption that there isn’t talent at the customer site to do sophisticated detection,” he said. “So their firewall and associated software have to do it. And one can respect that approach given the situation. The other main strategy, followed by many of the other firewall vendors like SonicWall and WatchGuard Technologies, is to integrate better with the MSP and MSSP market, with the assumption that a trusted third party is actually going to be doing to the configuration, incident response and remediation.”
We’ve compiled a list, in no particular order, of 20 top NGFW providers. It’s based on analysts’ feedback and recent news reports. The list is by no means complete. It includes a mix of well-known providers as well as lesser-known ones making strides in NGFW.
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