What are five benefits of Palo Alto Networks next generation firewalls?

A few months ago, I received an email from one of my customers, a senior IT leader at a state government agency. He had a problem on his hands. The organization’s digital footprint was growing, and its need for bandwidth seemed insatiable. No matter how much new capacity the agency added to the network, it was quickly consumed during peak periods.

The agency’s IT leaders needed better insight into what was driving bandwidth demands and suspected that much of the use was not related to work. On top of that, the agency’s existing firewall was unable to keep up with these bandwidth demands and required an upgrade. The situation looked dire, and my customer didn’t have a good sense of how to get things under control. The agency needed ideas on how to improve security, better manage its networks, and control IT costs.

When we spoke, I suggested that the agency consider replacing its existing stateful inspection firewall with a next-generation firewall. My customer knew that next-generation firewalls represent the state of the art in security technology but feared that the organization didn’t have the financial resources to purchase one and lacked the technical staff to support its operation. As we spoke, it became clear to both of us that implementing next-generation firewalls was both technically wise and fiscally sound.

The Benefits of a Next-Generation Firewall vs. Traditional Firewall

Next-Generation Firewalls Are More Secure

The primary advantage of a next-generation firewall is the advanced security technology that these solutions bring to the table. The threat landscape is constantly changing, and an NGFW can leverage threat intelligence information to identify and prevent unknown malicious malware from getting into a network. In addition, NGFWs combine multiple security technologies on a single platform, including intrusion prevention, application visibility and web security capabilities.

Next-Generation Firewalls Are Often Cost-Efficient in the Long Run

From a financial perspective, the agency actually lowered its costs. While upgrading to the NGFW was more expensive than simply replacing the legacy firewall technology, using an NGFW allowed the agency to replace three existing security products with a single platform. The agency replaced its firewall, intrusion prevention system and web security solution with a single product capable of meeting all three needs. The NGFW upgrade cost was far less than the agency’s combined planned replacement costs for all three solutions.

Next-Generation Firewalls Provide Resource Efficiencies

The savings didn’t end with those direct costs, however. Like many government agencies, the technology team at this organization was chronically understaffed and lacked the specialists needed to adequately operate and monitor existing security technology. Consolidating security solutions allowed the agency to consolidate management responsibilities and dramatically increase staff effectiveness. It also gave the agency’s IT professionals better visibility into how bandwidth is utilized in their environment.

Three months after deploying the product, my customer is incredibly pleased with the early results. The solution’s centralized monitoring and management capability alone justify the investment, but the agency’s IT leaders are also thrilled to have answers to their other security needs without purchasing additional products. They’ve identified several unnecessary, bandwidth-intensive applications running on the network and decreased the need for additional bandwidth. And, most important, they now rest comfortably, knowing that the agency’s networks are protected against cybersecurity threats with the best available technology.

For tips on what to look for when choosing a next-generation firewall, check out BizTech’s “Best Practices for Selecting a Next-Generation Firewall”!

Want to learn more about how to combat modern security threats? Read “The Cybersecurity Insight Report” from CDW.

This blog post brought to you by:

Gartner Peer Insights reviews constitute the subjective opinions of individual end users based on their own experiences, and do not represent the views of Gartner or its affiliates.

This site is protected by hCaptcha and its Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Flexible deployment options and native integration with our next-generation platform extend the policy enforcement and cyberthreat prevention to everywhere your users and data are located: in your network, on your endpoints and in the cloud. Superior architecture, superior benefits Complete visibility and precise control: Our next-generation firewalls provide complete visibility into all network traffic based on applications, users, content and devices. Automated security: Innovative features reduce manual tasks and enhance your security posture, for example, by disseminating protections from previously unknown threats globally in near-real time, correlating a series of related threat events to indicate a likely attack on your network, and using dynamic address groups in security rules to avoid updating server IP addresses frequently. Protection for your users and data everywhere: Our next-generation firewalls are natively integrated with our security platform, which prevents advanced and unknown cyberthreats no matter where the users and data are located: in your network, on your endpoints and in the cloud. Products: PA-5000 Series, PA-4000 Series, PA-3000 Series, PA-2000 Series, PA-500, PA-200, VM-Series, Management Platforms Visibility and Control Our next-generation firewall classifies all traffic, including encrypted traffic, based on application, application function, user and content. You can create comprehensive, precise security policies, resulting in safe enablement of applications. This lets only authorized users run sanctioned applications, greatly reducing the surface area of cyber attacks across the organization. Threat Prevention The combination of Content-IDTM and WildFireTM provides protection from known and unknown threats. Content-ID limits unauthorized data transfer and detects and blocks a wide range of threats. WildFire identifies unknown malware, zero-day exploits, and advanced persistent threats (APTs) through static and dynamic analysis in a scalable, virtual environment, and automatically disseminates updated protections globally in near-real time. Built-in, not Bolted-on Today’s security architectures are a result of adding uncoordinated security layers one at a time, making them ineffective in dealing with modern threats. Unlike legacy firewalls that are based on this "layered security" architecture, our next-generation firewalls use a unified security design that classifies all traffic into full context before applying one set of flexible security rules in a single pass.

What are the benefits of a next

Which five of these are considered fundamental features of a Next Gen firewall?

What are three unique benefits of the Palo Alto Networks Content ID choose three?

What are the 3 main advantages of using firewalls?