Within the third generation of firewall technology, a next-generation firewall is designed to address advanced security threats at the application level using intelligent, context-aware security features. An NGFW combines traditional firewall capabilities such as packet filtering and state-of-the-art inspection with others to better decide what traffic to allow.

A next-generation firewall can filter application-based packets and inspect packet-containing data. In other words, it operates in the OSI model at up to layer 7, whereas previous firewall technology only operated to level 4.

What are the next-generation firewall features?

Next-generation firewall specifications vary by provider, but they generally include some combination of the following features:

1. Application awareness or the capacity to filter traffic and apply complicated application-based rules. This is a key feature of firewalls of the next generation: they can block traffic from certain applications and maintain greater control over individual applications.
2. Inspection of deep-packets inspects the data contained in packets. Deep-packet inspection represents an improvement over traditional firewall technology, which only inspected the IP header of a packet to determine its source and destination.
3. Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) which monitors malicious activity on the network and blocks it where it occurs. Such monitoring can be based on signatures, policies, or anomalies.
4. The high performance that allows the firewall to monitor large amounts of non-slowdown network traffic. Next-generation firewalls include some security features that require processing time, so to avoid disrupting business operations, high performance is essential.
5. External intelligence threat or communication with a threat intelligence network to ensure that information about threats is up-to-date and help identify bad actors.

What are the benefits of a next-generation firewall?

Firewalls of the next generation provide far better and more robust security than a traditional firewall. Traditional firewalls are limited in their capabilities as they may be able to block traffic through a particular port but they cannot apply application-specific rules, protect against malware, or detect and block anomalous behavior.

As a result, attackers can evade detection by entering a non-standard port, something that would prevent a next-generation firewall. Their context-aware nature and ability to receive updates from external threat intelligence networks, next-generation firewalls can protect against a wide and ever-changing array of advanced threats, and may even use smart automation to keep security policies up-to-date without requiring the intervention of busy IT personnel.

Additionally, firewalls of the next generation offer streamlined security infrastructure that is easier and cheaper to maintain, update, and control. They combine multiple security features into one solution and report incidents through a single system of reports. The alternative to maintaining many different safety products places an additional burden on IT personnel and increases the potential for security breaches.

Why do I need a next-generation firewall?

Targeted and sophisticated security threats cause more damage than ever to internal networks. Traditional firewall technologies rely heavily on port/protocol inspection, which is inefficient in a virtualized environment where addresses and ports are dynamically assigned to them. By comparison, a next-generation firewall uses deep-packet filtering to inspect packet contents, provides filtering of layer 7 applications, and can even monitor and block suspect activity. Those capabilities are a must in a complex, dynamic environment to ensure security.