Hybrid mesh firewall platforms address the growing complexity of implementing and managing firewalls across multiple use cases. Security and risk management leaders should use this research to understand this market and guide future investment.
Key Findings
Hybrid workforces and hybrid environments have disrupted the firewall market, creating a need for vendors to support emerging firewall requirements beyond what network firewalls can offer.
While vendors continue to innovate to support multiple firewall use cases, their solutions still lack mature integration and centralized management across related firewall components.
Multiple deployment options are leading to complex pricing challenges, creating procurement challenges in enterprises.
Recommendations
Prioritize the use cases for which you require firewall and overlapping controls both in the short term and long term, and avoid automatically refreshing existing firewalls without new evaluations.
Create a network security team along with different cross-functional teams — including cloud security architects and networking teams — for successful evaluation, selection and implementation of vendors for different firewall use cases.
Differentiate vendors based on their ability to support a cybersecurity mesh architecture to simplify the integration and alignment with existing security architecture.
Strategic Planning Assumption(s)
By 2025, over 50% of network firewall deployments will involve more than two deployment factors from the same vendor — up from less than 10% in 2023.
