Whenever a company wants to protect the IT environment, the firewall is the first feature of the checklist.
However, to choose an effective tool you need to be well-aligned about which characteristics best fit the context of your company.
There are common mistakes when choosing. See below:
Error 1: Incorrect Network Sizing
In order to correctly size technical specifications that will best meet the needs of your company, it is important to know what these needs are.
How many devices are there? How many users? How much throughput will it take to meet all the demands?
These questions are essential to properly size your network and therefore choose the product that fits your needs. After all, what’s the use of deciding it’s time to change your firewall, if you don’t know the size of your network?
Another important aspect: performance.
What features does the firewall need to offer? Intrusion prevention? Content Control? Advanced threat protection? Multilink? And what is the impact of each of them in terms of performance?
NOTE: It is key that each resource should be scaled from the actual requirements of your network. The recommendation here is simple: try the product.
Error 2: Product without proper technical support
One of the big mistakes is choosing a firewall without the certainty that there will be support for a quality experience. This does not mean that there will be no challenges to face, but that if and when these challenges arise, the manufacturer can provide adequate resources.
Therefore, one of the main benefits you should look for in your new firewall is ease of use and a simple experience.
Firstly, the quality of technical support is critical. Does your firewall have technical support?
It is also critical to read product documentation. Are there updated manuals, guides, and other features available to help solve problems faster and more autonomously? For example, videos tutorials?
Another aspect that facilitates the experience with the product is an intuitive interface and ease to create rules to manage traffic. Therefore, even a mature team, used to managing policies from code, will gain more time to manage the network.
You should also consider that even when your team specializes in security, a transition between technologies needs support throughout the process. So, avoid buying a firewall if you are not sure that there will be quality support during the process. If the learning time with the new technology is long because the product is not simple, the support is even more essential.
Error 3: Firewall Is Not Scalable
Although you have correctly sized the actual needs of your network and chosen the product according to the performance that meets every requirement, the environment scenario may change.
At best, the company grows, the number of employees increases, as well as the number of devices. Therefore, the network structure will also be larger, traffic will increase and the firewall will need more performance.
However, if your product is not scalable, that is, if you can not increase the features to gain better performance, then you have a problem.
Scalability can be achieved in several ways:
- By optimizing infrastructure through virtual appliances;
- By enabling high availability and load balancing;
- By adopting of firewall offerings in the cloud.
In all cases, a recommendation is unanimous: try the product. After all, how will you find out if changing your firewall is the best call?
In addition to answering various questions that you have in the process, the test will show the advantages compared to other products. For example, you will know which option performs best, which one is the most cost-effective, has more reliable support, and so on.
Blockbit offers two test models: the demo that simulates a real preconfigured environment, or the trial based on the actual configurations of your network.
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