The first device, when a company purchaser order to keep the company data security, is the firewall. Although there are software firewalls, the hardware firewalls are more reliable.
However, we can find many brands of firewall in the market, which is better?
In this post, you can get 5 tips of selecting an enterprise firewall. Enjoy it.
- Don’t believe those beautiful functions.
Information technology is becoming more and more complex, and the competition in firewalls market is becoming fierce. Therefore, in order to improve the market competitiveness of their products, firewall vendors often integrate more functions into their firewall products to increase market selling points.
In this regard, we want to see if these additional features are needed for our business. For example, some firewall products will integrate VPN functions, but VPN services can be implemented not only on firewalls but also on routers. If enterprises have high requirements for VPNs, they can deploy a dedicated VPN server instead of buying a firewall that can implement VPNs.
In addition, some additional functions can consume firewall resources. When too many services are implemented on a firewall, the overall performance of the firewall will decrease. So, when we choose a firewall, we don’t need more functions, but more practical functions.
- Don’t believe the data in the lab too much.
In the specification of a firewall, there are some figures, such as throughput, concurrent sessions, etc. We shouldn’t believe these figures too much.
On the one hand, these figures are experimental data. In other words, the data is obtained under a relatively reasonable situation with relatively few interference factors. However, the network environment of many enterprises now does not meet the laboratory standards. When we use a firewall in a real environment, it often affects the effective throughput of the firewall because there are too many hosts in the network.
On the other hand, we cannot just look at a certain indicator. When choosing a firewall, you need to refer to dozens of indicators. If the throughput can reach 10G, but other indicators are poor, this kind of firewall is not suitable.
Therefore, the network administrator must test the firewall product in combination with his company’s network environment to know whether this firewall is suitable for the company.
- Don’t believe the reviews too much.
When we selecting a product, we like to read those reviews online. We like to know how other customers think about this product. Is it good or bad? We want suggestions!
However, we need to know that the firewall vendors may hire writers to help them sell their devices. We can read these reviews, but we shouldn’t believe their words all.
- Don’t focus on the big brand.
We must say, Cisco is the biggest networking products vendor in the world, but Must we buy Cisco Firewalls? Cisco is the leader, in the meantime, its devices are more expensive. You may say, “I have too much budget, I don’t care the price.” However, is it worth to spend so much money?
No matter how much budget we have, we still consider if it’s necessary. If we only want a simple firewall, the cheap one can achieve. We don’t need an axe to cut a cake! There are some cost-less brands you can select, like Fortinet, Juniper, etc.
- Don’t forget real needs of your company.
Many people have a bad habit when purchasing network equipment. He does not first consider what the enterprise needs to achieve, but first looks at the network equipment. For example, when an enterprise needs to purchase a firewall, they do not first consider what the enterprise will use the firewall to achieve, but they will first investigate the firewall market to see the differences between the various firewall products and what functions they can achieve.
How can you choose the right firewall product when the requirements are not clear? It’s like going to buy shoes. If you don’t know the size, how can the shoes fit well? Unless you are particularly lucky.
Therefore, when purchasing a firewall, first consider what purpose your company needs to achieve with the firewall, and then choose products that can provide corresponding functions according to these purposes.
After reading these tips, do you know how to choose a right firewall now? Leave your comments.
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