CDSA

NSS Labs Puts Out Call for Next-Gen Firewall Group Test

Cybersecurity research and guidance firm NSS Labs is developing the next iteration of its Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) Group Test, and has issued a call for both enterprises and vendors to take part.

NSS Labs estimates that 80.5% of U.S. enterprises deploy NGFWs, and cites estimates that the NGFW market will grow to $4.27 billion in revenues by 2022.

“The NSS Labs NGFW group tests continue to produce surprising findings regarding the security effectiveness of leading products in the market,” said NSS Labs CTO Jason Brvenik. “In our most recent group test, we saw many newer entrants with strong capabilities challenging established players. We continue to evolve our test methodologies to keep pace with changing attack vectors and the needs of the enterprise. We encourage enterprises and vendors to collaborate with us as we continue to examine leading NGFW products in the market.”

NSS Labs’ 2018 NGFW Group Test examined 10 vendor products, examining each for security effectiveness, performance, and cost of ownership (TCO), with six of the 10 demonstrating resistance to the most common evasion techniques. The other four missed at least one evasion technique. That 2018 test expanded testing to include secure sockets layer (SSL)/transport layer security (TLS) performance tests, with all 10 of the products tested for SSL/TLS cipher functionality and performance.

NSS Labs also investigated the impact on NGFW products of attacks using JavaScript and code obfuscation, with all 10 of the tested products impacted to some degree.

There’s no fee for participation in the test, with the methodology available in the public domain. Enterprises that want to provide feedback regarding the NGFW group test can send feedback to [email protected]. Vendors can send feedback via [email protected].

Results of the test are expected in 2019.