Abstract:
This thesis described the necessity, deployment considerations, performance evaluation
and the possible outcomes of using the next-generation firewalls (NGFW) in an enterprise
network environment. A firewall is the most important component for any system considering
their information security because it’s the first line of defense against every known and unknown
security attacks. Security threats come with a big deal to any enterprise network, these threats
always try to penetrate into the system’s confidentiality, integrity, and availability. Firewalls are
designed to provide security against these threats, however, it can be more effective by timely
implementation and fine-tuning of the configurations according to the network requirement. In
this thesis, we have described how security threats are vulnerable to systems with their
possible impacts. We also differentiated between different types of firewalls based on their
features and capacities which could help anyone to choose the optimal one for any network
environment. And, finally we have also shown how to better handle these firewalls to mitigate
the impact of the latest security attacks without considering network performance using NextGeneration firewall technologies. Our proposed network model using NGFW improved a lot of
segments of an existing network which was previously running without a firewall. Our
experimental results could give a clear idea about how much improvement could be gained in
network performance and security by using our recommended Next-generation firewalls.
