WatchGuard firewall takes top spot in NSS Labs tests

WatchGuard Technologies' firewall product has achieved commendations from NSS Labs for the third year in a row.

WatchGuard's Firebox M670 achieved high security effectiveness and low total cost of ownership according to NSS Labs Next Generation Firewall Group Test.

The product blocked all 406 evasion attempts – one of only two products in the tests to do so. The Firebox M670 also blocked 96.69% of 1784 attacks that NSS Labs conducted.

"Often times, customers view security services as simple check boxes that are relatively identical across vendors throughout the industry. But there are many important technical differentiators that make certain security services more effective than others," explains WatchGuard Technologies senior vice president of engineering, Jack Waters.

WatchGuard extends the recognition to its wider product line. It believes that continued focus on the evasion resiliency of its IPS engine and other security controls serves as major differentiator as just two vendors achieve the zero-evasion benchmark.

All WatchGuard Firebox appliances in the UTM and NGFW family run the same Fireware operating system and security services as the M670, and thus benefit from the same efficacy, stability, performance and total cost of ownership strengths, the company states.

Engineered for midsize and distributed enterprises that are struggling to effectively and affordably secure networks in the face of explosive bandwidth rates, encryption traffic, video use and connection speeds, the M670 delivers total protection and visibility in an easy-to-deploy and manage appliance.

"We believe our NSS Labs results prove that WatchGuard's focus on improving evasion resiliency on the NGFW serves as a substantial differentiator in the market and has bolstered the level of network protection our customers enjoy," continues Waters.

NSS Labs testing focuses on the main differentiators for next generation firewall (NGFW) products: security, performance/functionality and cost.

For security effectiveness, NSS Labs engineers with deep expertise use multiple commercial, open source and proprietary tools, including NSS Labs' network live stack test environment.

The testing goes beyond simple delivery of attacks to incorporate evasion techniques, which are a means of disguising and modifying attacks at the point of delivery to avoid blocking by security products.

"The firewall market is one of the largest and most mature security markets. However, it's evolving quickly as trends like Web 3.0 push critical applications through the firewall," comments NSS Labs founder Vikram Phatak.

"With a Recommended rating for three consecutive years, WatchGuard's security products and services are a strong option for any business looking to bolster their security architectures.

The Firebox family of products is available through WatchGuard's global community of channel partners.