How to Pick the Right Firewall for your Business

Firewalls come in all shapes and sizes, and with recent technology advancements, they can be broken down into three types;

Hardware firewalls: These are dedicated physical devices that would sit behind your router, ensuring that all traffic inbound (ingress) and outbound (egress) is checked. These firewalls have dedicated computer and storage and so scale and perform well based on the requirement. The firmware in them allows for many functionalities and capabilities around security, and so, depending on what you need, the firmware can provide a high level of protection from traffic. One of the drawbacks of hardware-based firewalls is that the firmware needs to be constantly updated and many hardware devices need to be upgraded if you need greater bandwidth and throughput. 

Software firewalls: Software-based firewalls are generally installed on servers or virtual images. They have the same level of capabilities and services as hardware but depend on the underlying host device installed on. A key downside of software firewalls is that the traffic has to enter your network and travel to the host device before its scanned so there is an element of risk if there is an intelligent attack. In addition, any issue with the host device means that the firewall could suffer outages. 

Cloud firewalls: Cloud-based firewalls are a hybrid option between software and hardware and essentially run as a virtual image with dedicated or shared compute resources. They can be clusters or set up as a pair in an outage event and are generally easier to update. 

Once you have decided on the firewall type, you can then look at which product has the functionalities that you need. The following section lists the more common capabilities;