SAN FRANCISCO – A new survey indicates that 55 percent of users globally, and 64 percent in the U.S., are leveraging Next-Generation Firewalls to augment their current security deployments, rather than replacing legacy technology.
The survey, conducted by Ponemon Institute, and sponsored by Sourcefire, also highlights the need for NGFWs to prioritize quality of Intrusion Protection Systems (IPS) so that customers can work to achieve comprehensive security without significantly affecting performance.
“This survey validates that current NGFW technologies need to evolve in order to be truly context-aware network security platforms,” said Marc Solomon, Senior Vice President of Marketing at Sourcefire. “In order for these technologies to be effective, they need to include an intelligent, next-generation IPS solution powered by awareness, context, automation and an agile architecture.”
Respondents also ranked IPS as the most important component of the NGFW for data protection, and ranked firewall as the least important feature for protecting their data from unauthorized access. Given that, the fact that more than 62 percent of current NGFW users surveyed suffer performance degradation when first-generation IPS is deployed as part of the NGFW device, is of significant concern.
In terms of how NGFWs are being used, 39 percent of NGFW users are implementing application control in monitoring and reporting mode. 25 percent of these users say application control is deployed only in simple allow/block mode. And 40 percent of respondents do not granularly configure application control due to performance concerns.
“The dramatic increase in sophisticated and targeted attacks, as well as specific compliance demands, are putting even more pressure on organizations to ensure that their data remains secure,” said Dr. Larry Ponemon, Chairman and Founder of the Ponemon Institute. “Today’s results indicate the challenges facing current Next-Generation Firewall implementations and the key areas, including evolved IPS and supplemental strategies, where users require increased vendor investment.”
This survey looked at current NGFW implementations in five countries. Ponemon surveyed information security managers, network administrators, CIOs and CISOs at enterprises sized up to 75,000 employees. The respondents represented 15 different industries including financial services, retail, health and pharmaceutical, government, hospitality, education, transportation, and defense and energy.
This column was written by Mark Cox of ConnectIT, an IntegratedMar.Com
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