FireMon State of the Firewall Report Highlights the Important and Changing Role Firewalls Play in Network Security

OVERLAND PARK, KS--(Marketwired - Mar 28, 2016) - FireMon, the leader in network security management, today announced the release of its 2016 State of the Firewall Report. The second annual report is based on a November 2015 survey completed by approximately 600 IT security practitioners from a range of professional roles, organization sizes and industry verticals.

The study found that the firewall remains at the center of today's security infrastructure, but will need to evolve as next-generation firewalls (NGFWs) become the norm, and as emerging infrastructure paradigms such as SDN, cloud and micro-segmentation take hold.

FireMon uncovered three major trends from the survey responses:

Firewalls remain an extremely valuable part of the network security infrastructure, even in the face of new technology paradigms such as the cloud.

• 91 percent of respondents stated that firewalls are as critical as ever or more critical than ever to their security architecture. The same percentage believes that this will continue to be the case within the next five years.
• Two-thirds of respondents stated that firewalls are somewhat or highly valuable to the cloud services they manage. This represents a 10 percent increase over 2015.

NGFWs continue to see broad adoption, adding complexity to security management.

• NGFWs represent at least 50 percent of current firewall infrastructure in nearly half of the organizations surveyed compared to 34 percent in 2015. Only 6.7 percent of organizations have no NGFWs.

Awareness around SDN and its impact on network security has increased.

• 90 percent of respondents recognize that SDN has impacted or will impact networking to a certain degree.

"We're seeing small shifts in IT professionals' perceptions of the firewall as new technologies enter the market," said Jody Brazil, co-founder and Chief Product Strategy Officer at FireMon. "Adoption of SDN and network virtualization in general won't decrease the need for firewalls, but it may open the door to advancements or a new category of network protection. It will be more of a continuous evolution rather than a complete upheaval as so many are quick to claim."

To learn more about these key findings, download FireMon's 2016 State of the Firewall Report HERE.

FireMon will host a webinar to review the report findings on Tuesday, March 29, 2016 from 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM EDT. Register HERE.

Survey Methodology
Survey participants were asked 21 questions about their current firewall infrastructure and management challenges as well as questions about adoption and impact of emerging technologies such as NGFW, SDN and cloud. The survey was sent via email to FireMon's database of customers, prospects and channel representatives. It was also posted on a LinkedIn sponsored ad, on social media and given to channel partners to distribute. Nearly 600 survey responses were collected from October 22, 2015 through November 12, 2015.

About FireMon
FireMon solutions deliver continuous visibility into and control over network security infrastructure, policies, and risk. Using the FireMon Security Intelligence Platform, today's enterprise organizations, government agencies, and managed services providers dramatically improve effectiveness of network defenses, optimizing investments and speeding response to changing business demands. Learn more at www.firemon.com.