Why Traditional Firewalls Can’t Keep Up with Modern Threats
The online security threat landscape has changed exponentially over the years. Not only are data breaches an everyday occurrence now, breaches can take months to identify. And if that isn’t scary enough for you, consider that the average cost of a serious data breach costs businesses roughly $4 million.
It’s not just data breaches you have to worry about. Even old-school methods like phishing scams make their way around again every so often. As soon as you think your standard firewalls are capable of handling such basic attacks, new strategies emerge that make them more effective than they ever were before.
Much of that has to do with social engineering, combined with utilizing your own internal assets (such as your employees) against the best interests of your organization.
There’s also the threat of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. These attacks cause massive data loss and unplanned downtime – so much so that companies simply will never fully recover from them. Research conducted by Kaspersky shows that 26% of all DDoS attacks are successful in shutting down a business permanently.
You can never be too careful when it comes to protecting your organization. Your firewall is typically your first line of defense against random digital threats and direct cyberattacks. That’s why traditional firewalls are just not enough to protect against modern cyber threats.
Yesterday’s Firewalls Aren’t Enough for Today
Once upon a time, traditional firewalls were fully capable of handling incoming and outgoing connections from your company’s private network to the public internet.
That was also during a time you could count the number of internet-capable computers in your business on one hand.
These traditional firewalls were effective in controlling the web traffic that passed through certain points within a network. For the most part, they did their job efficiently.
Today, however, there are so many different types of connections happening within your organization that traditional firewalls simply can’t keep up. Firewalls are bombarded with incoming connections from mobile devices, laptops, desktops, fax machines, and the hundreds (possibly thousands) of different business productivity applications. Of course, all of this occurs on a daily basis.
Traditional firewalls just aren’t able to keep up with the nearly infinite network connections being made at any given moment. They’re great for blocking traffic from specific IP addresses, but even IP addresses can easily be spoofed anyone with rudimentary IT knowledge.
That’s why the next generation firewall is the next logical step in the evolution of network security at the enterprise level.
Next Generation Firewall Security You Can Count On
Gone are the days where you could block specific ports and services in an effort to control what applications have access to your network. Sure, you could implement certain internet-use policies, such as a “No Facebook” or “No Personal Email” rule, but let’s face it – they don’t really work. They only create unnecessary resentment among your workforce.
For complete control and transparency over your network, you to utilize next-generation firewall security. Your business will have more visibility into what’s connected to your network, and how it functions.
Built-in threat prevention reduces the pathways available for attacks, so there’s a greatly minimized risk of applications running amok on the network. Next-generation firewalls provide very best in enterprise-grade antiviruses, application controls, spam filtering, and deep packet inspection tools. You’ll also be able to quickly identify which IP addresses are tied to each device, and which users they belong to.
These tools are all you need in one convenient place – which provides you with the greatest ease of access and use.
Benefits of Next Generation Firewalls
All the tools and resources available with next-generation firewalls can provide unparalleled protection for your company. They don’t slow down your network operations and don’t add any unnecessary latency or complexity to your IT security operations.
In summation, with next-generation firewall protection from RWA you get:
– Integrated Intrusion Protection
– Ability to identify local traffic back to the user and device
– Application visibility and control
– Simplified security infrastructure (anti-virus, spam, packet inspection, etc. all together)
– A more secure organization without slowing down business operations
Evolve Your Firewall Security With The Help of RWA
If your organization is still running on a traditional network security infrastructure, especially when it comes to firewall security, it’s time to put serious consideration into making a transition.
Organizations that haven’t yet made the transition to next-generation firewalls are low-hanging fruit for cyber threats. Hackers, cyberattackers, and all the looming digital threats aren’t waiting for your company to implement the next generation security tools, platforms, and strategies.
Rather, they’re more than happy to infiltrate your organization now, while you still haven’t made any necessary shifts to a more effective and comprehensive network security solution.
Luckily, you don’t have to wait for them to strike. Now is the time to speak with professional next-generation firewall consultants at RWA. We’ll help you determine the perfect solution for your business, and we’ll highlight how that will protect your most valuable company assets.