A Winning NGFW

Cisco Firepower NGFW recognized with Best of Interop 2016 Award for Security

Each year at Interop, a group of the most influential IT practitioners, analysts and professionals vote on the technologies that are having “the most significant technical impact on their segment and are helping to move business technology forward.” Cisco took home top honors in four categories this year, including Firepower NGFW for security.

Let’s look at a couple of the reasons why Firepower NGFW is a winner.

Traditionally, the act of “improving” network security has involved adding yet another security appliance to the dozens of existing products that all needed to be managed and monitored separately. The amalgamation of technologies and consoles quickly becomes a management nightmare for shorthanded IT teams. More boxes add more complexity, but does that always mean better security?

What if we could create a solution that improves security effectiveness while actually reducing complexity and saving time?

That was the challenge that we took on when building Cisco Firepower Next-Generation Firewall (NGFW). Unveiled in February, Firepower NGFW is the first threat-focused, fully integrated NGFW. It’s the only NGFW with market-leading protections from integrated functions such as Next-Generation IPS and Advanced Malware Protection. It offers unified policy management of firewall functions, application control, threat prevention, and malware protection from the network to the endpoint, all with a single management console.

Simpler security with software licenses

We know security isn’t easy – but does it always have to be so complex? Let’s say for example you’d like to add advanced malware protection and sandboxing. Not a bad idea – threats like ransomware aren’t going away anytime soon. One option is to buy, deploy and manage another security appliance for sandboxing. But wouldn’t it be easier to utilize what you have in place? We sure think so. We suggest using the Firepower NGFW you have in place and merely activating the software license that turns on Advanced Malware Protection (AMP).

It is fast and easy – advanced threat protection is in place in minutes with nothing more to manage. It is far more cost effective too.

In case you were wondering, our Advanced Malware Protection stops more breaches than anyone. We’re just saying.

Firepower NGFW utilizes Cisco’s ‘Smart Licensing’ – making software additions a breeze. We now have this easy and flexible software license approach for URL filtering, AMP and next-generation intrusion protection (NGIPS) – just activate the license on any NGFW and you are up and running.

Let’s also consider protecting mobile users – a task for most IT teams today. Many other NGFW vendors require you to not only deploy an endpoint agent on all laptops, but just to make life complicated, add an additional database and server to make it all work. And they make you really want to pull your hair out with an additional management pane too.

Firepower NGFW protects mobile users by deploying a lightweight endpoint agent, seamlessly tied together by the cloud. We feel this approach is best – seamlessly connecting the network and endpoint with nothing extra to deploy or manage.

Gain focus with streamlined management

Firepower NGFW consolidates all security functions in a single management interface. Why does this matter? It matters because teams gain more insight and focus with all security managed from one place. Unlike competing solutions with separate panes for managing firewalls, advanced malware and endpoint, we put in all in one spot making it easier to focus.

All of our security functions – from access controls, to intrusion policy, to file disposition, and even remediation workflow are tied together. This reduces complexity with one NGFW appliance offering unified visibility and policy management so teams have a single robust console for device management, event handling and policy enforcement.

We continuously maintain a ‘map’ of network assets, and then use that context to uniquely prioritize threats and their impacts. This lets people know what they need worry about and what they don’t. And we even automate security, activating appropriate security measures based on what is happening in a network – all without requiring human intervention.

Since the unveiling in February, we’ve heard great feedback about Firepower NGFW from customers and partners alike. It is truly a resounding recognition that Interop has named it the new security product that has made the most significant impact on the industry.

Let your IT team be more productive and stop more threats so that your business can focus on what you do best. Learn more on the Firepower NGFW webpage or watch it in action on TechWiseTV.