Barracuda expands cloud-ready NextGen Firewall technology

Barracuda announced availability of Barracuda NextGen Firewall F-Series version 7.0, which is expressly designed for organizations adopting cloud-based applications, operating dispersed network environments, and leveraging public cloud platforms. Barracuda NextGen Firewall Version 7.0 provides security and reliability in these environments, especially for organizations leveraging public cloud platforms like Microsoft Azure and Amazon AWS. Barracuda is demonstrating the cloud-ready NextGen Firewall this week at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference, Booth #1731, in Toronto, where the company also will be honored as Winner for the 2016 Microsoft Azure Certified ISV Solution Partner of the Year.

Organizations are increasingly adopting virtualization, software defined networks and cloud applications such as Office 365, Salesforce and video conferencing. As such, the role of the firewall has evolved from a perimeter-based security device to a distributed security solution that must intelligently optimize traffic to improve network performance and provide reliable access to these mission critical applications for all users across all locations. Barracuda NextGen Firewall is designed from the ground-up for the cloud era. Barracuda NextGen Firewall enables intelligent network perimeters at headquarters, remote and branch offices, and satellite locations to deliver secure, direct, business quality access to applications hosted in private and public cloud environments while minimizing the need to backhaul traffic. Barracuda NextGen Firewall goes beyond next-generation security with features to also improve connectivity and performance.

Native Deployment in Public Cloud Infrastructures

Barracuda NextGen Firewall can be natively deployed in public cloud platforms including Microsoft Azure and AWS, complete with high availability, next-generation security, and central management. With version 7.0, Barracuda NextGen Firewall provides cloud-based central management support in Microsoft Azure for an unlimited number of managed firewalls within a tenant and configuration cluster, allowing organizations to move workloads and applications to Azure. The new version offers administrators an overview of cloud deployments, including dedicated dashboard widgets that display data such as public IP, domain name and DNS name received from the cloud datacenter where the NextGen Firewall is hosted, and the cloud instance type where the firewall is running.

New Botnet & Spyware Protection, Macro Blocking

Barracuda NextGen Firewall F-Series includes advanced next-generation security capabilities such as application and user awareness and control, fully integrated Intrusion Prevention System (IPS), web and email security, and fully integrated Advanced Threat Detection. With the new version, customers also can now prevent data exfiltration from botnets and spyware, with the ability to identify and block infected rogue endpoints in real time. Leveraging Barracuda’s global threat intelligence framework through new DNS sink-holing technology, customers have functionality to help prevent confidential data from leaving the organization. Additionally, the new version offers customers the ability to automatically block macro-enabled office documents, which can easily be used to deploy malware.

Cloud-Ready Connectivity and Management

Barracuda NextGen Firewall customers can scale across multiple locations with a “configure once, deploy many” management model that allows up to thousands of firewalls to be deployed, managed and monitored from a single pane of glass. Additionally with version 7.0, Barracuda NextGen Firewall can improve the wide area network (WAN) performance by including multiple uplink usage, intelligent uplink failover, link balancing and WAN optimization, enabling 99.999 percent uptime with low-cost Internet uplinks. This is particularly valuable in hybrid environments that require fast, reliable connectivity to cloud apps as well as across on-premises and cloud-based network locations. Barracuda NextGen Firewall also offers remote connectivity and Secure Sockets Layer virtual private network (SSL-VPN) capabilities with the CudaLaunch client for Windows and Mac OSX desktop operating systems and applications for iOS and Android for “zero-touch” deployment.

“Security at the network perimeter and at the endpoint was considered ‘good security’ years ago,” said Klaus Gheri, Vice President of network security at Barracuda. “As threats became more targeted, traditional port blocking firewalls were no longer enough – and the next-generation firewall was born. Today, we’re at another crossroad, where the next-generation firewall must move beyond application and user aware security. The Barracuda NextGen Firewall was built for the cloud era. Designed from the ground-up for dispersed networks, the Barracuda NextGen Firewall redefines the traditional next-generation firewall by enabling an intelligent network perimeter that offers fast, secure, reliable and affordable access to business applications from anywhere and any device.”