The future of the firewall

In the early days of the internet, when AT&T's Steven M. Bellovin first used the firewall metaphor, network traffic primarily flowed north-south. This simply means that most of the traffic in a data center flowed from client to server and server to client. In the past few years, however, virtualization and trends such as converged infrastructure have created more east-west traffic, which means that, sometimes, the largest volume of traffic in a data center is moving from server to server. To deal with this change, some enterprise organizations have migrated from the traditional three-layer data center architectures to various forms of leaf-spine architectures.

This change in architecture has caused some security experts to warn that, while firewalls still have an important role to play in keeping a network secure, modern network perimeters have so many entry points and different types of users that stronger access control and security at the host are required. The need for an even greater multilayer approach has led to the emergence of NGFWs.

An NGFW integrates three key assets: traditional firewall capabilities, application awareness, and an IPS. Like the introduction of stateful inspection to first-generation firewalls, NGFWs bring additional context to the firewall's decision-making process.

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