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Next Generation vs Traditional Firewalls

23/11/2022
by Cathy Houghton

If you are in the market for a new firewall at the current time, you might be wondering whether a next-generation firewall or traditional firewall is the right option for your business. Today we’re going to go head-to-head with the next generation firewall vs traditional firewall to share the pros and cons of each option. Here at sonicwall-sales.com, we’ll be happy to support you in finding the right option for your company to ensure you are fully protected in the future.

Next Generation vs Traditional Firewalls

Traditional Firewalls

When discussing the topic of the next-gen firewall vs traditional firewall, you need to take the time to look at both options and the benefits they offer for companies. As with any type of technology and security solution, each generation of firewall brings with it new features and advantages for users. The main aim of a traditional firewall is to monitor the traffic that flows in and out of a network. It will check the destination address, source address, and port to ensure you are only receiving safe traffic. You’ll enjoy packet filtering, stateless or stateful inspection and VPN support when using a traditional firewall. Of course, more recent firewall generations now come with additional features and benefits, but this offers a solid security solution for anyone using a firewall for the first time.

If you do opt to go for a traditional firewall, you need to understand the difference between a stateful or stateless inspection. With a stateless inspection, it will check each packet one at a time, so it won’t know the full context of the packet. That being said, a lot of firewalls use stateful inspections, which are the more advanced option. They can understand the operating state of each packet that attempts to enter the network. It will ensure you only receive safe entries into your system and that anything malicious is filtered out from it.

Next Generation Firewalls

As technology has progressed, we have seen the introduction of next-generation firewalls, such as a virtual network firewall. A SonicWall NSv firewall can help to protect any type of business, and we recommend trying to invest in one of the most advanced options if you are serious about security for your company. The past two years have seen so many challenges and hacks, which is why we are seeing more companies opt for this modern solution now. SonicWall firewall features that are seen within next-generation firewalls are more advanced than traditional firewalls. They go above and beyond to inspect anything coming into your system, offering you protection from even the most sophisticated types of threats.

A next-generation firewall will have more application awareness, which allows it to view a packet and understand the full context and rules for it. An intrusion detection system is also used, which will log the IP address and stop any further traffic from entering the system in the future. This is a very advanced way of offering businesses more protection in the long term and will help to stop malicious packets from getting into your workplace systems. Deep packet inspection is another great feature we see with next-generation firewalls. This means that the firewall goes deeper than just checking the header of each packet and will look at its source and the context of it.

Which is the Best Option for My Business?

For the most part, we always recommend that businesses today do all they can to protect themselves from cyberattacks with the most modern solutions on the market. A Sonic firewall can offer you the protection you need during these challenging times when we see the number of risks from cyberattacks only continue to increase. You may think that your business is protected when you use cloud-enabled technology and security tools, but you still need a firewall to overcome weak spots in the system. Make sure you are doing all you can by investing in a next-generation firewall which offers you all the features we’ve shared above to protect your business over the upcoming years.

As you can see, next-generation firewalls have taken the main benefits of a traditional firewall and increased these significantly with their new features. They offer many great advantages over the firewalls that were popular in the past, which is why we recommend any business opts for this solution in the future. If you are in the market for a new firewall, we recommend you take a look through the options on our site. SonicWall's firewalls are designed for small and medium-sized businesses looking for additional protection during these challenging times we are all facing. Our team will be on hand at any time to ensure that you find the right solution for your needs and protect your business from any potential attacks in the future.

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