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#3 A firewall by any other name would filter just as many packets
The firewall has certainly evolved in the 20 odd years it has been around – but despite marketing
departments’ best attempts to coin new terms that will make it to next year’s budget – the fact
remains that the need for basic filtering of network traffic has not gone away.
“Next-Generation” firewalls include a slew of advanced features such as application and user
awareness, intrusion-prevention, URL filtering and sandboxing, but the core “old-generation”
firewalling functionality in case you wondered, is still there.
And what about the cloud? There are no firewalls in the cloud right? Amazon Web Services, by far
the leading cloud provider, offers “security groups”. This is software-based functionality that enables
you to set a policy on incoming and outgoing traffic from each AWS instance based on IPs, ports
and protocols. Does this functionality remind you of something?
#4 The numbers don’t lie
Depending on which analyst market research you go by, the firewall market is boasting a 7-10%
annual growth rate. Impressive growth for a multi-billion, 20 year old market.
And I would like to leave you with one last number – as part of my role at AlgoSec, I am fortunate
enough to discuss network security with hundreds of companies, including many of the fortune 50.
How many of these companies have plans to root out their firewalls since they are no longer
relevant? You might have guessed it – a big fat zero.
Pretty impressive for a dead guy.
About the Author
Nimmy Reichenberg - VP Marketing and Strategy
Nimmy Reichenberg has over 10 years’ executive marketing and
business development experience in enterprise technology. Prior to
joining AlgoSec, Mr. Reichenberg served as the VP of Worldwide
Marketing and Business Development at NextNine. Previously Mr.
Reichenberg held various product management and marketing roles at M-
Systems (acquired by SanDisk) and founded the marketing department
for the company's enterprise security solutions. Mr. Reichenberg is a
frequent speaker at information security events and a regular contributor to industry publications.
Mr. Reichenberg has a B.Sc. in Computer Science and an MBA.
13 Cyber Warnings E-Magazine – January 2016 Edition
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