A new study of nearly 600 IT practitioners by FireMon called the 2016 State of the Firewall Report has shown that while respondents recognise that the firewall needs to evolve, it still remains a central part of today’s security infrastructure. Emerging infrastructure paradigms such as Software Defined Networking (SDN), cloud and micro-segmentation will drive this evolution. In fact, 90 percent of respondents recognised that SDN has impacted or will impact networks, pointing to an important shift in the way they are secured. And over two thirds said that firewalls were critical to securing their cloud services.
Next-Generation Firewalls (NGFWs) represent at least 50 percent of current firewall infrastructure in nearly half of the organisations surveyed compared to 34 percent in 2015. Only 6.7 percent of organisations have no NGFWs.
“We’re seeing small shifts in IT professionals’ perceptions of the firewall as new technologies enter the market,” said Jody Brazil, co-founder and Chief Product Strategy Officer at FireMon. “Adoption of SDN and network virtualisation in general won’t decrease the need for firewalls, but it may open the door to advancements or a new category of network protection. It will be more of a continuous evolution rather than a complete upheaval as so many are quick to claim.”
To learn more about these key findings, download FireMon’s 2016 State of the Firewall Report HERE.
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