Compared to just a few years ago, data and users are now everywhere. Organisations are managing more devices, more data, more mobile users and a seemingly ever-increasing attack surface. How do you keep pace with the complex changes facing your network, and minimise risk, without slowing down business? You start with a next-generation firewall that's designed to ease deployment and management, block tomorrow's threats, and simplify security.
Over 388,000 professionals have used IT Central Station research to inform their purchasing decisions. Their latest paper looks at the highest rated firewall solution vendors, profiling each and examining what they can offer enterprise.
Here's a breakdown of the key players currently active in the market:
Fortinet Fortigate
Average Rating: 8.6
Top Comparison: Cisco ASA NGFW
Overview: The FortiGate family of NG firewalls provides proven protection with unmatched performance across the network, from internal segments, to data centres, to cloud environments.
pfSense
Average Rating: 9.0
Top Comparison: Sophos UTM
Overview: Providing comprehensive network security solutions for the enterprise, large business and SOHO, pfSense solutions bring together the most advanced technology available to make protecting your network easier than ever before.
Cisco ASA NGFW
Average Rating: 8.0
Top Comparison: Fortinet FortiGate
Overview: Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) is Cisco's end-to-end software solution and core operating system that powers the Cisco ASA product series. This software solution provides enterprise-level firewall capabilities for all types of ASA products, including blades, standalone appliances and virtual devices.
Cisco Firepower NGFW
Average Rating: 7.9
Top Comparison: Fortinet FortiGate
Overview: The Cisco Firepower Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) prevents breaches, and can quickly detect and mitigate stealthy attacks using deep visibility and the most advanced security capabilities of any firewall available today - all while maintaining optimal network performance and uptime.
Sophos XG
Average Rating: 8.1
Top Comparison: Sophos UTM
Overview: Sophos XG Firewall is next gen firewall that is optimised for today's business, delivering all the protection and insights you need in a single, powerful appliance that's easy to manage.
Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls
Average Rating: 8.4
Top Comparison: Fortinet FortiGate
Overview: Palo Alto Networks' next-generation firewalls secure your business with a prevention-focused architecture and integrated innovations that are easy to deploy and use. Now, you can accelerate growth and eliminate risks at the same time.
Palo Alto Networks VM-Series
Average Rating: 8.7
Top Comparison: Fortinet FortiGate
Overview: The VM-Series is a virtualised form factor of next-generation firewall that can be deployed in a range of private and public cloud computing environments based on technologies from VMware, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, Citrix and KVM.
Juniper SRX
Average Rating: 7.3
Top Comparison: Fortinet FortiGate
Overview: High-performance security with advanced, integrated threat intelligence, delivered on the industry's most scalable and resilient platform. SRX Series gateways set new benchmarks with 100GbE interfaces and feature Express Path technology, which enables up to 1 Tbps performance for the data centre.
SonicWall TZ
Average Rating: 7.5
Top Comparison: Fortinet FortiGate
Overview: The secure, sophisticated SonicWALL TZ is widely deployed at small businesses, retail, government, remote sites and branch offices. It combines high-performance intrusion prevention, malware blocking, content/URL filtering and application control.
Cisco ASAv
Average Rating: 7.9
Top Comparison: Cisco ASA NGFW
Overview: The Adaptive Security Virtual Appliance is a virtualised network security solution. It supports both traditional and next-generation software-defined networks (SDN), as well as Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) environments. The ASAv provides policy enforcement and threat inspection across heterogeneous, multisite environments.