Firewall software acts as a barrier between a trusted internal network and untrusted external networks, such as the internet, by monitoring and controlling incoming and outgoing network traffic based on predetermined security rules.
They are crucial for network security as they help prevent unauthorized access to or from private networks, ensuring that only legitimate traffic is allowed.
Firewalls help network security and cybersecurity professionals by providing a first line of defense against various cyber threats, including malware, hackers, and unauthorized access attempts. They can also enforce network security policies, such as restricting access to certain websites or applications, and logging and monitoring network traffic for suspicious activity.
Firewalls, as crucial elements in network security, have evolved significantly from their inception in the late 1980s. Initially, firewalls were physical appliances dedicated to scrutinizing and managing incoming and outgoing network traffic based on predetermined security rules.
These hardware-based firewalls were critical in defining network boundaries and were primarily deployed in large enterprises to secure fixed perimeters.
Over time, with the advent of cloud computing and the increase in mobile connectivity, the rigid physical boundaries once protected by hardware firewalls became less relevant. This shift led to the development and adoption of software-based firewalls, which are more flexible and can be integrated directly into a variety of hosting environments, including on-premises servers and cloud platforms.
Today, software firewalls not only offer comprehensive security features but also adapt dynamically to changing network architectures and threat landscapes, marking a significant transformation in how network security is approached.
Overall, firewall software plays a critical role in safeguarding networks from cyber threats and ensuring the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of data.
Best Firewall Software: What To Look For
When choosing the best firewall software for an organization, several factors, features, and capabilities should be considered:
- Security Features:
- Intrusion Detection and Prevention (IDP): Detects and blocks malicious activities and attacks on the network.
- Deep Packet Inspection (DPI): Analyzes the contents of data packets to detect and block malicious traffic.
- Antivirus/Antimalware: Scans for and blocks viruses, worms, and other malware.
- Application Control: Controls access to specific applications to prevent unauthorized usage or access.
- Scalability:
- Ensures that the firewall can handle increasing amounts of network traffic as the organization grows.
- Look for features like clustering or the ability to add additional units to scale capacity.
- Ease of Use:
- A user-friendly interface and management tools simplify configuration, monitoring, and troubleshooting.
- Look for features like intuitive dashboards, wizards, and automated policy management.
- Performance:
- Throughput: The amount of data the firewall can process per second.
- Latency: The delay in processing data packets, which should be minimal to avoid network slowdowns.
- Impact on Network Speed: The firewall should not significantly reduce network speed or create bottlenecks.
- Compatibility:
- Ensure the firewall is compatible with the organization’s existing network infrastructure, including routers, switches, and servers.
- Consider compatibility with operating systems and software applications used within the organization.
- Cost:
- Consider both the upfront cost of the firewall hardware and software and any ongoing subscription or maintenance fees.
- Compare costs across different vendors and consider the long-term cost of ownership.
- Vendor Reputation:
- Choose a vendor with a proven track record of providing reliable and secure firewall solutions.
- Consider factors such as customer reviews, industry awards, and the vendor’s history of security vulnerabilities.
- Support and Updates:
- Ensure the firewall vendor provides regular updates and patches to address new security threats and vulnerabilities.
- Consider the availability of technical support and the quality of support services provided.
- Compliance:
- Ensure the firewall meets regulatory requirements and industry standards relevant to the organization’s operations.
- Examples include GDPR, HIPAA, PCI DSS, and other regulations and standards specific to the organization’s industry.
- Integration:
- Consider how well the firewall integrates with other security tools and systems within the organization’s network.
- Look for compatibility with existing security infrastructure such as SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) systems, antivirus solutions, and network monitoring tools.
By carefully evaluating these factors, organizations can select a firewall solution that meets their security requirements, integrates with their existing infrastructure, and provides scalability and ease of use for effective network protection.
Best Firewall Software Used By Security Professionals
1. Netgate pfSense Plus
pfSense® Plus software is the world’s most trusted firewall. The software has garnered the respect and adoration of users worldwide – installed well over seven million times. Made possible by open source technology. Made into a robust, reliable, dependable product by Netgate.
pfSense is a software that serves as a firewall, router, traffic classifier, DHCP server IPv4/6, OpenVPN server and client, Wireguard server and client, Certificate Management and Authority, User Manager, DMZ and multi-WAN, all with logging to aid traffic analysis and debug.
STATS & SPECIFICATIONS:
- Stateful Packet Inspection (SPI)
- IP/DNS-based filtering
- Anti-spoofing
- Captive portal guest network
- Time-based rules
- Connection limits
- NAT mapping (inbound/outbound)
IDEAL FOR:
- Small businesses
- Mid-market organizations
PRODUCT WEBSITE: Netgate pfSense Plus software
2. Fortigate NGFW
FortiGate NGFW is the world’s most deployed network firewall, delivering unparalleled AI-powered security performance and threat intelligence, along with full visibility and security and networking convergence.
STATS & SPECIFICATIONS:
FortiGate NGFW is available in many different models to meet your needs ranging from entry-level hardware appliances to ultra high-end appliances to meet the most demanding threat protection performance requirements. This ensures that enterprise campus, core data-center, or internal segments, FortiGate can fit seamlessly into your environment.
IDEAL FOR:
- Mid-market organizations
- Enterprises
PRODUCT WEBSITE: Fortinet Next-Generation Firewall
3. Sophos Firewall
Consolidate your network protection with our integrated and extensible platform to secure your hybrid networked world. Sophos Firewall is much more than a firewall — it’s the heart of the world’s best network security platform. Consolidate and simplify your cybersecurity with a single vendor, cloud management console, and agent.
STATS & SPECIFICATIONS:
- Automatic response to active threats
- Powerful protection and performance
- Work from anywhere, safely and securely
- Managed through a single console
IDEAL FOR:
- Mid-market organizations
- Small businesses
PRODUCT WEBSITE: Sophos Firewall
4. Check Point Next Generation Firewalls (NGFWs)
AI-Powered Security Gateways: Protect your network with Quantum gateways, the most effective AI-powered firewalls, featuring the highest rated threat prevention, seamless scalability, and unified policy management.
STATS & SPECIFICATIONS:
- Block the most evasive threats automatically: Firewalls have the highest security rating with a 99.8% block rate against zero day attacks, leveraging 50+ AI engines and real-time global threat intelligence
- Resiliency and hyperscalabliity for efficient operations: Scale your network security up to 1 Tbps throughput, with intelligent firewall clustering, automatic load balancing, and 99.999% resiliency
- One unified policy to manage your entire network security: The gold standard in policy and threat visibility provides consistent and granular access control of users, firewalls, apps, cloud, and more in a single console
IDEAL FOR:
- Enterprises
- Mid-market organizations
PRODUCT WEBSITE: Check Point Next Generation Firewalls (NGFWs)
5. Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewall
Securing your network requires the right protection in the right place. Our NGFW platform protects your entire business, no matter the size or complexity. With a unified network security architecture and the ability to leverage deep learning in real time, our firewalls can help you see and secure everything.
STATS & SPECIFICATIONS:
- Deep learning stops the most evasive threats: With the first Next-Generation Firewalls to introduce inline deep learning, a subset of traditional machine learning, you can move beyond the structured data analysis of machine learning and analyze data more in the way a human would.
- Zero-delay signatures provide updates in seconds: With zero-delay signatures, every internet-connected NGFW in a network is updated within single-digit seconds of an analysis, ensuring the first user to see a threat is the only user to see that threat.
- ML-powered visibility across IoT and other connected devices: Quickly and accurately profile any IoT device to reveal its type, vendor, model, firmware and more while using cloud scale to compare device usage, validate profiles and fine-tune models so devices don’t go unmanaged.
- Maximize security and minimize downtime: Use AIOps to deliver high ROI — improve your security posture without adding staff or buying new equipment, and avoid costly outages by predicting firewall health.
IDEAL FOR:
- Enterprises
- Mid-market organizations
PRODUCT WEBSITE: Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewall
6. Cloudflare Magic Firewall
Cloud-native network firewall for your enterprise WAN. Enforce consistent network security policies across your entire WAN, including headquarters, branch offices, and virtual private clouds. Deploy fine-grained filtering rules globally in under 500ms — all from a common dashboard.
STATS & SPECIFICATIONS:
- No appliances to manage: With firewall-as-a-service (FWaaS) delivered from the Cloudflare global network, your security scales with your business needs. No more artificial choke points or downtime for appliance upgrades. A single dashboard and policy management interface simplifies firewall configuration and ensures consistent security policies from Toronto to Tokyo.
- Filter unwanted traffic before it reaches you: With Magic Firewall, your filtering policies are applied on the Cloudflare global edge network. Unwanted traffic is filtered in the cloud before it reaches your network, preventing it from congesting your network links or exploiting zero day vulnerabilities in your environment. Intelligent L3 DDoS protection can be enabled for your Internet traffic using Magic Transit.
- Integrated with Cloudflare One: Magic Firewall provides the cloud firewall foundation for Cloudflare One, our comprehensive solution for SASE.
IDEAL FOR:
- Mid-market organizations
- Small businesses
PRODUCT WEBSITE: Cloudflare Magic Firewall
7. Zscaler Internet Access
Secure Internet and SaaS Access. AI-powered protection for all users, all devices, all web and SaaS apps, all locations. Zscaler Internet Access™ is the world’s leading secure web gateway (SWG), delivering cloud native, AI-powered cyberthreat protection and zero trust access to the internet and SaaS apps.
STATS & SPECIFICATIONS:
- Cloud native and multitenant: Stop advanced threats with full TLS/SSL inspection at cloud scale and lightning speed.
- Delivered at the edge: Stop backhauling traffic—Zscaler applies consistent policies and security controls from more than 150 global data centers, close to every user and office.
- Built for zero trust: Move from IP-centric to identity-centric, context-aware access policies, supporting a robust, dynamic zero trust strategy.
- AI-powered inline security: Deliver unmatched defense-in-depth against advanced cyberthreats leveraging data from the world’s largest security cloud.
IDEAL FOR:
- Enterprises
- Mid-market organizations
PRODUCT WEBSITE: Zscaler Internet Access
8. Arista NG Firewall
NG Firewall simplifies network security with a single, modular, software platform designed to fit the evolving needs of your organization. Designed specifically for organizations with limited IT resources and budgets, NG Firewall provides a browser-based, responsive and intuitive interface enabling you to quickly gain visibility into the traffic on the network. From content filtering to advanced threat protection, VPN connectivity to application-based shaping for bandwidth optimization, NG Firewall delivers a comprehensive, enterprise-grade network security platform for organizations in any industry.
STATS & SPECIFICATIONS:
- Protect: Proactively block malware, phishing, spam, hacking and other exploits from reaching users and devices on the network.
- Filter: Get a handle on every rogue application, encrypted web request, malware distribution point and rash of spam.
- Perform: Ensure network performance, maximum uptime and QoS to increase productivity.
- Connect: Maintain visibility and control over remote workers, branch offices and guest Wi-Fi to keep users connected and data safe.
- Manage: Create policies by user, group, device, and time to control access. Get complete visibility into network activity and traffic.
- Additional Apps: Get expert help from our support team and create complete configuration backups to protect against network disruptions.
IDEAL FOR:
- Mid-market organizations
- Small businesses
PRODUCT WEBSITE: Arista NG Firewall
9. Cisco Secure Firewall Threat Defense Virtual
Cisco® Secure Firewall Threat Defense Virtual (formerly FTDv/NGFWv) combines Cisco’s proven network firewall with Snort IPS, URL filtering, and malware defense. It simplifies threat protection with consistent security policies across physical, private, and public cloud environments. Get deep visibility into your network and quickly detect threat origin and activity. Then, stop attacks before they impact your operations.
STATS & SPECIFICATIONS:
- Automated risk ranking and impact flags: Prioritize threats by gaining comprehensive visibility of your environment. Reduce the noise and volume of events to focus on high-impact alerts requiring immediate action. Set rule recommendations that correlate host profiles with a level of vulnerability to automate impact analysis and contextualize the data, leveraging the best-of-breed Snort 3 IPS.
- License portability across clouds: Deploy appliances everywhere, from your data center to your branch office, with the portability of one license to support virtual and physical solutions across public or private clouds (VMware, KVM, OpenStack, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), government clouds) and hyperconverged infrastructure (Cisco HyperFlex, Nutanix AHV). Expand, contract, and relocate workloads over time spanning physical, virtual, and public cloud infrastructures with one license.
- Unified management and automated threat correlation: Stop more threats by containing known and unknown malware with our IPS license, Malware Defense license and URL Filtering license. Reduce the complexity of managing multiple security products through a unified management of integrated tools.
IDEAL FOR:
- Enterprises
- Mid-market organizations
PRODUCT WEBSITE: Cisco Secure Firewall Threat Defense Virtual
10. WatchGuard Network Security
WatchGuard Firebox is a comprehensive advanced network security appliance that puts IT security professionals back in charge of their networks with widely deployable, enterprise-grade security and threat visibility tools suitable for any organization, regardless of budget, size, or complexity.
STATS & SPECIFICATIONS:
- FireboxV: WatchGuard FireboxV brings best-in-class network security to the world of virtualization, enabling your virtual environments to be just as secure as your physical one.
- Firebox Cloud: WatchGuard Firebox Cloud provides the same award-winning UTM security available in our Firebox appliances to protect servers running in public cloud environments.
IDEAL FOR:
- Mid-market organizations
- Small businesses
PRODUCT WEBSITE: WatchGuard Network Security
11. Azure Firewall
Azure Firewall is a cloud-native and intelligent network firewall security service that provides the best of breed threat protection for your cloud workloads running in Azure. It’s a fully stateful firewall as a service with built-in high availability and unrestricted cloud scalability. It provides both east-west and north-south traffic inspection.
STATS & SPECIFICATIONS:
- Built-in high availability: High availability is built in, so no extra load balancers are required and there’s nothing you need to configure.
- Availability Zones: Azure Firewall can be configured during deployment to span multiple Availability Zones for increased availability. With Availability Zones, your availability increases to 99.99% uptime.
- Unrestricted cloud scalability: Azure Firewall can scale out as much as you need to accommodate changing network traffic flows, so you don’t need to budget for your peak traffic.
- Application FQDN filtering rules: You can limit outbound HTTP/S traffic or Azure SQL traffic to a specified list of fully qualified domain names (FQDN) including wild cards. This feature doesn’t require TLS termination.
- Network traffic filtering rules: You can centrally create allow or deny network filtering rules by source and destination IP address, port, and protocol. Azure Firewall is fully stateful, so it can distinguish legitimate packets for different types of connections. Rules are enforced and logged across multiple subscriptions and virtual networks.
- Full visibility and protection: Transport Layer Security (TLS) inspection prevents malware from being transmitted through encrypted connections.
- Unified management: Centrally manage security across all virtual networks with a common set of network and application rules.
IDEAL FOR:
- Enterprises
- Mid-market organizations
PRODUCT WEBSITE: Azure Firewall | Azure Firewall Overview
In Conclusion…
Choosing the best firewall software for your organization is a crucial decision that requires careful consideration of several factors. The security features offered by the firewall, such as intrusion detection and prevention, deep packet inspection, antivirus/antimalware, and application control, are key in ensuring comprehensive protection against cyber threats.
Scalability is also key, as the firewall should be able to handle current and future network traffic requirements. An intuitive interface and management tools can greatly simplify configuration and monitoring tasks. Performance metrics such as throughput, latency, and impact on network speed should be evaluated to ensure optimal network performance.
Also, compatibility with existing infrastructure, cost considerations, vendor reputation, support and updates, compliance with regulations, and integration capabilities are all important factors to weigh when selecting the best firewall software for your organization’s security needs.