Firewall security management software model and analyze network infrastructure and orchestrate security device policies.
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Firewall Security Management Software supports monitoring and configuration of firewalls from a central dashboard. The software may monitor firewalls, physical and virtual, as well as routers, load balancers, and switches. Through real-time event tracking the software can correlate network behavior to potential threats. Firewall security management software can send notifications if it detects changes to security policy or potential vulnerabilities created by policy change. Firewall security management software leverages best practice knowledge to minimize these security issues.
Any standalone or commercial firewall comes with some sort of management functionality. The scope and scale of the software’s management capabilities are what separate firewall security management apart as a distinct category. Firewall security management should be able to support more than a specific firewall product, and should generally support firewall technologies across multiple firewall vendors to be considered a real contender.
Firewall security management software centralizes the administration of many or all of a network’s security policies. This centralized management enables more comprehensive visibility into and control of what actions, traffic, and users are allowed to enter and navigate a network. This creates more airtight digital security at scale. Many of these products have also created automated workflows based on network conditions and triggers. This reduces the need for manual tracking and management of day-to-day activities.
Firewall security management vendors have evolved past their legacy roots. Traditional firewall security management focused specifically on traffic monitoring controls at the borders of a network. Many of these vendors would support the firewalls of a variety of 3rd-party vendors. However, with the rise of the cloud, Network Policy Security Management has emerged as unifying policy controls across on-premise and cloud-based security systems. NPSM software includes both cloud security and other non-traditional networks, such as software-defined networks. While the scope of these systems have grown over time, the consistent through-line across different technologies is the policy management core of firewall security management products.
Beyond supporting a wide range of firewalls, firewall security management software directly integrates with many related network security products. These include SIEM, network monitoring, and IT service management suites. Firewall security management software products support change and configuration across a variety of network environments. They support IoT security, as well as migration to or securing of a public, private, or hybrid cloud. They secure software-defined networks (SDN) and data centers with continuous compliance and real-time security controls.
Top vendors offer the following feature sets to manage firewall policy and configuration:
Support for firewalls across multiple vendors or network policies across security devices
Coordinate policy across firewalls & cloud security infrastructure
Automated network mapping, hybrid-cloud support
Policy planning and rule management
Automated policy orchestration
Connectivity discovery / device detection
Automated firewall policy change management
Continuous monitoring, real-time event monitoring
Single pane of glass monitoring console
Policy compliance auditing
Firewall rule cleanup, misconfiguration detection
Attack path simulation and testing
Anomalous event or behavior identification
Best practice firewall implementation, analysis
Automated policy optimization, workflow
Vulnerability detection, fix recommendation
When comparing different firewall security management solutions, consider these factors:
Firewall Management vs. Network Security Policy Management: Consider whether the business needs to secure purely on-premise firewalls, or if broader network or cloud-based systems need management as well. For many more sophisticated or enterprise organizations, the more all-encompassing network security policy management platforms may be more scalable than more narrow options.
Vendor Inclusion: While most firewall security management products support a wide range of 3rd-party security products, there are few if any truly “vendor agnostic” offerings. Make sure that each product can natively integrate with the existing firewalls and cloud security tools that the business is already using.
Ease of Use: How easy is each product to manage and use? This includes both the intuitiveness of the platform itself, as well as how effectively it can scale up with a number of network devices and policies without increasing in maintenance resourcing accordingly.
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Many firewall security management software vendors offer free trials of their products, after which they’re available for annual subscriptions. Subscriptions are generally designed to support enterprises with their complex networking needs but may come at different pricing tiers. Tiers vary by number of devices to be supported. Also higher tier plans may include more advanced enterprise-specific features. These might include multiple site or geographic-specific controls.
Additionally, some vendors offer some modularity, via inclusion more project-oriented products. Ancillary products more limited in scope might encompass cloud migration, IoT protection, or simpler firewall configuration analysis and compliance checking, as opposed to full-scale policy orchestration.
