Advanced Threats Boost Demand for Next-Generation Firewalls, UTMs: Report

NGFW and UTM Market Predicted to Top $5 Billion by 2018

The dynamic nature of security threats and network traffic has challenged the efficacy of legacy firewall systems, boosting demand for next generation firewalls (NGFW) and unified threat management (UTM) solutions, a new report from market research firm Frost & Sullivan said.

As organizations look to adopt the sophisticated network controls offered by NGFWs and UTMs, demand for these appliances will continue to grow from a market size of $3.25 billion in 2013, to $5.32 billion in 2018, the research firm predicted.

In addition to solving deficiencies ingrained within existing firewalls, NGFW and UTM platforms provide greater contextual data about network traffic, which businesses can utilize to create and enforce effective network security policies, Frost & Sullivan explained.

“Next-gen firewalls are chock full of features and functionality that provide newfound levels of policy granularity and controls – Application Control, IPS, anti-malware, email security and more – all in one box,” Nimmy Reichenberg, VP of Marketing and Strategy for AlgoSec, explained in a SecurityWeek column last year. 

“Enterprises find tremendous value in the deployment flexibility of NGFW and UTM solutions,” said Frost & Sullivan Senior Network Security Analyst Chris Rodriguez. “These solutions deliver several vital network protection functions that can be deployed and scaled in a number of ways to best meet changing regulations and end-user needs.”

While most organizations are aware of the need to replace and upgrade legacy firewalls, they must understand all of the deployment options available to them, Frost and Sullivan said.

“For instance, popular perception maintains that NGFWs provide application-aware, user identity-aware controls and integrated threat detection. However, many NGFW products can be installed with subsets of functionality as security and performance requirements dictate.”

In his column, Reichenberg warned that with this increased control comes more complexity that must be addressed in advance.

 

“For example, without properly sizing the NGFW capabilities you plan to use for the environment, firewall performance can drop off significantly,” he wrote. “And without careful design and maintenance, a poorly optimized NGFW policy could take what was a single rule allowing http, and become a policy that includes 10,000 new rules, one per application – creating more opportunity for error and risk.”

“Threats today are much more sophisticated and targeted than what we were dealing with when stateful firewalls were first developed,” Reichenberg’s column concluded. “Now next-generation firewalls provide us with more visibility and control, but as with most technology, you can’t just drop them into your network without careful planning and consideration as they can introduce new levels of complexity.”

Frost and Sullivan also advised NGFW and UTM vendors to simplify their marketing messages.

“Enterprises are striving to reduce business risks; therefore, marketing messages should communicate the addition of new features without losing sight of broader security and networking goals,” the firm said.

“End users prefer NGFW and UTM solutions integrated with security technologies such as Web and email security or intrusion prevention systems,” Rodriguez continued. “This demand for consolidated firewall products that also provide a high degree of performance and security efficacy will drive merger and acquisition activity in the global market.”