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Shortcomings of Next Generation Firewalls (NGFWs)

Time is always a changing constant, and so is the technology that follows. Changes and enhancements in cybersecurity have taken such an exponential leap over the past decades. With focus on improvement, the industry has always pressed for faster and more efficient solutions to cyber threats. In the early 2000s, UTMs (Unified Threat Management) was introduced to the market. This was a big step forward as bundling up security solutions from different areas onto one device allowed for a more convenient and efficient solution. This ideology of security began to fade away as time moved on.

Data became larger, bandwidth became faster, cyber criminals became sophisticated, but the architecture for our cyber solutions did not. This is why NGFWs were introduced. NGFW a third generational firewall technology that detects and blocks sophisticated attacks by enforcing security policies at the application, port and protocol levels. Despite this being the most common road for solution, it does have its drawbacks.

  • Too many devices to secure the network:

With emphasis on security, it has become common practice to spread out security network functions into different devices. This can be seen when looking at most medium to large scale enterprises’ security solutions. For example, many companies will purchase a Secure Web Gateway device separate from the IPS and Firewall. This is due to the intensive amount of hardware power needed to keep up with today’s data flow. Adding more security solutions, will most likely lead to more separate devices in the data center. Sooner or later, there will be too many devices for an administrative team to handle. This is disregarding the fact that they may be from different vendors running with different compatibilities. It is quite easy to conclude the issue from this perspective. The more devices there is, the more administration works need to juggle through.

  • The bigger they are the more they cost:

 To tie in with the previous point, hardware limitations have led to a never ending exponential increase in pricing, especially in today’s world. The common architecture for cybersecurity hasn’t branched off from its hardware counterpart. This means enterprises need to cough up more outrageous prices to completely try and secure their IT infrastructure. This isn’t by chance, as in order for most security processes to be complete (scanning, checking, running) they require intensive hardware that is low in supply and big in demand. The need for multiple devices to secure in addition to the sheer price enterprises would have to pay to deploy, it sky rockets the bill for companies to simply secure their data.

  • End of life appliance and support time

 For many vendors and security suppliers on the market, there is always an “end of life” time attached to each device. End of life is the certain time given to a certain device before it is deemed outdated. With an outdated devices comes with multiple risks. First is the supplier or vendor not being able to support said device due to its outdated status. Second is the big step backward a customer would have to take in terms of technology and hardware. Since technology is always changing, many devices will be behind on much needed advancements in hardware. This becomes an issue when companies realize they would have to repurchase another device a few years down the road, which on its own as discussed previously is expensive.

  • What’s the next step in security?

 Most of the limitations tie in to one thing, the architecture of today’s cybersecurity gateway solutions. The dependency on hardware and reliability on basic security architecture is beginning to hit a plateau in terms of what it can provide. Even with the highest budget possible, it is still evident that there is a wall we cant pass with the current generation of processing power.

To pass these limitations, the industry must look towards changing the ideology of said cybersecurity processes. The simple answer would be to create a solution that doesn’t depend on such intensive hardware to complete requests. This has been introduced into the market already. The current trend for security innovation is parallel processing and multithreaded architecture which is independent of proprietary hardware.

Such a parallel processing and multithreaded architecture surpasses the limitations of NGFW by cutting off its dependency on hardware. With leaps in coding development, we are able to obtain top security and top speed without relying too much on what is powering the requests. An example of this in our industry is TG8. TG8 is a pioneer in said architecture, allowing the industry to break the plateau. In a nutshell, TG8 DPI (Deep packet inspection) Firewalls are advanced cybersecurity gateways that have addressed the shortcomings of NGFWs to provide multifunctional security in one device with hard to beat performances at such a lower cost.