Next Generation Firewall: A Comprehensive Analysis and Practical Applications

This chapter provides an extensive discussion on Next Generation Firewalls (NGFWs) and its significance in the recent security infrastructure. Tradition firewalls filters traffic using packet metadata, whereas NGFWs are bundled with security features like application and user awareness, Deep Packet Inspection, Intrusion Prevention System, Virtual Private Network, etc. which enables intelligent threat detection. The evolution of firewalls, the security profiles and configuring these security features are presented in this chapter. An experimentation using machine learning algorithm is carried out to filter traffic and make intelligent decision on whether to allow or deny a traffic. A log record dataset consisting of history of traffic logs is used to train the machine learning model namely XGBoost classifier. The classifier attains AUC Score of 0.998, which shows the significance of integrating machine learning capabilities with next generation firewalls for intelligent threat detection.