Will 'WildFire' Be the Future Face of Firewalls?

Early this month, US based Palo Alto Networks introduced its next generation firewallWildFire. This latest security product is built with an integrated approach to address the full malware lifecycle from preventing infections, identifying unknown, or targeted malware as well as pinpointing and disrupting any active infections.

According to Nir Zuk, Palo Alto Networks founder and CTO, the network security market is estimated around $8-10 bn globally. Traditionally, the market of network security is largely dominated around the web, email, and internet security.

But blocking web applications is not enough for security today because you can get threats from other web applications such as WebEx, Instant Messenger (IM), Skype, Microsoft SharePoint, Facebook, and others, said Zuk.

Our next generation firewall (WildFire) takes the network security to a new level and expands to the internet, web mail, instant messengers, and web applications, he added.

Quoting Gartner predictions, Zuk pointed out that WildFire is replacing the traditional firewalls and claimed, Palo Altos firewall will have 60% market share by 2014.

Interestingly, Palo Alto Networks is relatively a new player in the network security market however within 6 years in the industry, the company has generated over $200 mn revenues with 5,000 plus customers globally.

Competitors offer security only for the internet, emails, or web by blocking web applications, but we have found ways to secure web applications rather than block them, Zuk commented on how WildFires technology is more advanced than the other vendors firewalls.

We are the first firewall vendor to bring out the targeted attack solutions, while the industry is good at wild attacks, he claimed.

Zuk further argued that VPN was developed some 15 years agowhen there was no Wi-Fi connectivity, but today there is Wi-Fi.

Palo Alto Networks VPN security creates a virtual private cloud and protects data via our firewalls, which provides security not only at network level but also protects against the data center leakage, exploits, and targeted attacks, he added.

The former CheckPoint engineer, at the age of 16 started writing viruses however he soon realized his future was in developing security software and technology. And thats how Zuk started Palo Alto Networks with the help of 25 people and raised $9.4 mn.

Problem is that the world doesnt have enough researchers and security analysts which can detect and monitor targeted attacks, observed Zuk.