The Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) appliance has been the cornerstone of network security for the past two decades. It applies deep packet inspection (DPI) and multiple security engines to inspect both inbound and outbound traffic and enforce a company’s security policy. The main characteristic of a NGFW is application awareness: the ability to detect and enforce policies on applications usage based on packet content rather than packet headers (source and destination IP addresses, ports, and protocols).
A cloud-based NGFW (also known as Firewall as a Service) delivers a powerful, application-aware, enterprise-grade, elastic and scalable solution without the challenges of legacy appliance-based solutions.