Palo Alto Networks, Check Point top Products in Gartner Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Network Firewalls - 2014

As is probably no big surprise to those in the industry and those purchasing network security products, Palo Alto Networks (PAN) and Check Point had the top rated products in the 2014 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Network Firewalls.  The report came out in April.  These are the only two companies in the Leaders Quadrant, with Palo Alto Networks leading on Completeness of Vision and Check Point for Ability to Execute. Fortinet and Cisco were the closest to the in the Challengers quadrant.   The report, ID:G00258296 is available on the PAN web site for those who register. http://connect.paloaltonetworks.com/gartner-mq-2014

Palo Alto Networks pretty much was the originator of the acronym NGFW or Next Generation Firewall, and PAN and Check Point Software Technologies companies compete for many of the same customers. Last year, PAN   introduced their Wildfire infrastructure, enabling the PAN firewall to detect and stop Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs) This is offered to customers via the public cloud or can be deployed as a private cloud.   Gartner also wrote that PAN    was consistently on most NGFW competitive shortlists.  PANS Advanced Persistent Threat Solution   was not among those recently tested by NSS Labs in their April Breach Detection Study.   

Check Point was cited by Gartner as being the market share leader in firewall installed base. They offer an extensive line of security appliances and were also delivered the industry’s first flexible, extensible security architecture, the Check Point Software Blade Architecture.   Check Point’s Anti-Bot Software Blade detects bot-infected machines, prevents bot damages by blocking bot C&C communications. This isn’t a comprehensive Advanced Persistent Threat Solution, but it helps protect the network.

PAN’s product portfolio isn’t quite as extensive Check Point’s,   they do offer a virtualized firewall platform in addition to the more traditional appliance offering, threat subscriptions for URL filtering, and a management platform.  

Fortinet was rated a Challenger by Gartner. They stated Fortinet was “not often beating Leaders in mainstream enterprise selections based on features and vision, nor causing Leaders to react to Fortinet.”

Cisco was rated a Challenger as well.  Gartner didn’t seem them displacing   PAN nor Check Point on the basis of visions or features.  They saw Cisco winning firewall business through channel “execution and “aggressive discounting”.

Juniper Networks completed the trio of companies in the Challenger quadrant.  McAfee was a leader in the Niche quadrant.

Offerings from F5, Arkoon-Netasq, and AhnLab were the furthest down and to the left in the Magic Quadrant.

Check out the complete report.  For an assessment of all sixteen vendors in the report. Some names you’re familiar with may be missing due to consolidation. Gartner also has some brief information on why virtualized firewall penetration is a less than two percent.  “Security-minded enterprises are also rightly skeptical of running firewalls within a hypervisor that is between the threat and the firewall,” according to Gartner. 

 Regarding the Leaders quadrant from the Gartner Magic Quadrant Endpoint report - “A leading vendor isn't a default choice for every buyer, and clients should not assume that they must buy only from vendors in the Leaders quadrant.  Some clients believe that Leaders are spreading their efforts too thinly and aren't pursuing clients' special needs.”

For more details on the Magic Quadrant and how it is created, read “Magic Quadrants and MarketScopes: How Gartner Evaluates Vendors within a Market”.     Sometimes a leader is not the best solution for a particular customer.  Despite that, you will see many   presentations where the vendor uses being in the Leaders quadrant   as a reason to buy from that particular vendor.  Who would have thought that they would do that? www.gartner.com

Some of NSS Labs reports are available at no charge.  www.nsslabs.com

craig kensek

Palo Alto Networks Tosses the Gauntlet at Check Point Software Technologies

Palo Alto Networks is offering a $2,000 PA-2000 Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) appliance to qualified companies who take a meeting with them to discuss their solutions.  They also have a series of Five TechBuster videos comparing their NGFW’s to Check Point's products. These videos include Episode 2,  “Check Point Firewalls Have Better Price/Performance than Palo Alto Networks", and Episode Five,  “Check Point Application Control is as Easy to use as Palo Alto Networks”.  You have to love it when the 800-pound gorillas go mano a mano.  You also wonder what SonicWall is saying on the sidelines about all this. 

http://www.paloaltonetworks.com/cam/techbusters/pa-200/

According to Palo Alto Networks, the Palo Alto Networks™ PA-200 is targeted at high-speed firewall deployments within distributed enterprise branch offices.  The PA-200 manages network traffic flows using dedicated computing resources for networking, security, threat prevention, and management.

Palo Alto Networks outperformed  Check Point Software Technologies on the NSS Labs 2012 Next Generation Firewall Value Map.  This report was released during RSA 2012, San Francisco.  It is available online.  The report measures Block Rate versus Price per Protected-Mbps.  SonicWall also outperformed Check Point. 

 http://kensek.blogspot.com/2012/03/sonicwall-palo-alto-networks-top.html

 

What’s a little Next Generation name calling between friends? Particularly when the Palo Alto Networks founders came from Check Point.

Palo Alto Networks reported their fiscal Q1 2013 revenues during the first week of December.  Total revenue for the fiscal first quarter grew 50 percent year-over-year to $85.9 million, compared with $57.1 million in the fiscal first quarter of 2012.  They suffered a GAAP net loss for the fiscal first quarter of $3.5 million.  The market wasn’t pleased.  The stock fell below $47 shortly after the announcement after peaking around $72 in early December. 

 

It'll be a battle in  2013 in the NGFW marketplace.   SonicWall, owned by Dell,  has NGFW products that extend to the enterprise.  Fortinet has been claiming since January that they have the world’s fastest firewalls.  While Fortinet had a high Block Rate in the NSS test, their Price per Protect Mbps was the highest of any company’s product tested, with the exception of Juniper Networks.

Fun and Excitement on the Next Generation Firewall Front

The Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) market place  is getting a little more exciting these days.  NSS Labs  has released their NGFW Comparative Analysis 2012.  It’s available on their website for $3,500, pre coupon!

Key Findings of the   NSS  NGFW Comparative Analysis 2012  Report

1. Few NGFWs are ready for “prime time”: Only 50% of the NFGWs tested scored over 90% in security effectiveness vs. 75% of major IPS vendors in the dedicated IPS group.
2. Convenient configurations mean less protection: NSS Labs research shows that IPS features in NGFWs are seldom tuned and the devices are often deployed using vendors’ default or recommended policy settings, creating significant gaps in coverage between NGFWs and dedicated firewall and IPS devices.
3. Vendor claims are often exaggerated: Of the eight  products tested, five performed well below vendors’ throughput claims.  Maximum connection rates were lower than preferred in all products tested - revealing a major concern; NGFWs must improve performance before they are ready for large enterprise deployments

This Comparative Analysis Report  2012 consists of five sections, covering the following topics in-depth: Security Value Map (SVM), Security, Performance, Management,   and Total cost of ownership (TCO).  

Tested Products

•     Barracuda F-900
•     Check Point 12600
•     DELL SonicWALL SuperMassive E10800
•     Fortinet FortiGate 3140B
•     Juniper Networks SRX 3600
•     Palo Alto Networks PA-5020
•     Sourcefire 8250
•     Stonesoft FW-1301

Only two products were positioned in the Leaders portion of the December 2011 Gartner Magic Quadrant for the “Enterprise Network Firewall”.   Gartner takes great care to explain that products in other portions of the Magic Quadrant  can be best for a given customer.

NGFW Events  over the Last Several Months

In early July, Dell SonicWALL announced that their NGFW appliance was the first   to receive NGFW certification. SonicWall was a top performer on the NSS Next Generation Firewall Security Value Map.

https://www.icsalabs.com/press-release/dell-sonicwall-receives-first-next-generation-firewall-evaluation-icsa-labs

In early October, Barracuda Networks  raised $130 million from Sequoia Capital and Francisco Partners.  The proceeds will help them   with  expansion and provide cash to founders and early employees. 

“They’ve done a wonderful job of putting together a value proposition and creating a solution that’s often a 10th the cost” of traditional products, said Jim Goetz, a partner at Sequoia and a Barracuda director.  Initial Public Offering (IPO) in the offing?  Barracuda has a base of 150,000 customers.  They won SearchSecurity's Readers' Choice Bronze Award for Best of Web Application Firewalls 2012 in mid October (this is different from their NGFW solutions).  Barracuda topped both Fortinet and Juniper on the   NSS 2012 "Next Generation Firewall Security Value Map". This was released during RSA San Francisco.

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In early October, Check Point issued a press release stating that IDC Data in the latest IDC Worldwide Q2 2012 Security Appliance Tracker, that they lead the global market with 20.9% Firewall and UTM appliance revenue share.  They also stated that they are the leader in Firewall and UTM factory revenue in US with  a 22.1% share and Western Europe with a  29.8% share.

Fortinet rolled out their Fortinet second generation FortiASIC-SoC2 this week.  Groundbreaking performance!  Double the processing capacity!  They also rolled out their new Fortinet FortiOS 5.0 operating system.  Enabling more security!  Additional intelligence to fight advanced threats and secure BYOD (Bring your own Device) environments!  On the    "Next Generation Firewall Security Value Map",   Fortinet had  great Block Rate but a high Price per Protected Mbps.   

The rumor mill has Juniper Networks reportedly considering putting itself   up for sale.  Early names floating around as acquirers, EMC (this one is being panned), Brocade, and Arista.  Nonetheless, the stocked jumped 11% because of the rumors. 

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2012/101812-juniper-sale-update-263504.html?t51hb&hpg1=mp

A Juniper Networks patent suit is slowly working its way through the system, with a trial date set for February 2013.  There are a handful of patents being contested.  Palo Alto Networks founders Nir Zuk and Yuming Mao left Juniper to start Palo Alto Networks.  Juniper Networks was outperformed by everyone on the "Value Map".

Channelnomics has a nice summary about Juniper Networks, Palo Alto Networks suit  at http://channelnomics.com/2012/10/19/patent-list-grows-slow-juniper-palo-alto-suit/

 

Palo Alto Networks has been as high as $73 this year since closing at around $51 when they went public. They closed at $62 on October 19.

Look for lots of spin to take place with the  NSS  Comparative Analysis report over the next couple of months.  It's a comprehensive document. 

Becoming Learned on  the NGFW

Sourcefire is making NSS’s evaluation of their product available at https://info.sourcefire.com/2012NSSLabsNGFW.html

It’s several months old, but an additional nice source of information is the  NSS “2012 Next Generation Firewall Security Value Map”, released by NSS Labs during RSA San Francisco.  http://o-www.sonicwall.com/us/en/14233.html , which graphs Block Rate versus Price per Protected Mbps.

Want to learn more about evaluating NGFWs?  NSS has a relatively neutral document “What do You Need to Know about Next Generation Firewalls” at https://www.nsslabs.com/can-next-generation-firewalls-stand-heat

Learn about “Next Generation Firewalls for Dummies” and get a subtle push for the Palo Alto Network NGFW solution at http://connect.paloaltonetworks.com/ngfw-4dummies-EN

A Fortinet 2011 take on “Next-Generation Security for Enterprise Networks” is available at http://www.fortinet.com/next_generation_security_for_enteprise_networks.html

Gartner Magic Quadrant for Secure Web Gateways - May 2012

Gartner released its Magic Quadrant for Secure Web Gateways on May 24    ID:G00234572.  You can’t say that there was a clear winner among the companies in the Leaders Quadrant.  Zscaler remained the highest ranked with respect to Completeness of Vision, and Cisco from the perspective of Ability to Execute.  Websense and Blue Coat were sandwiched in between with McAfee also in the Leaders Quadrant.  

Among the usual suspects, Webroot was dropped from the grid (must meet those revenue thresholds, people) and M86 Security is now part of Trustwave.  Barracuda is now in a more favorable position than Trend  Micro in the Challengers part of the quadrant.  Overall, though, there  wasn’t a lot of movement between the companies represented on the Quadrant.  

Companies evaluating alternatives  should look at the report for the Strengths and Cautions highlighted by Gartner.  It’s also interesting  to look at the previous year’s report,   to see whether vendors you’re evaluating dealt with any of the Cautions Gartner brought up for vendors you may have  under evaluation. 

According to Gartner, The market is  led by  on-premises solutions with 87% of the market with SWG as a service representing the remainder.  Gartner  see’s  the SaaS alternative growing at 35% in fiscal 2012.

Next Generation Firewalls (NGFW) from companies such as  SonicWall and Palo Alto Networks were not included in the reports,  as these are primarily firewalls.  People interested in the growing evolution of this technology and SWG’s, should acquire the Gartner Report  "Next-Generation Firewalls and Secure Web Gateways Will Not Converge Before 2015,"  ID Number: G00212272.  Palo Alto Networks   positions  their NGFW solutions  as making the need to acquire a secure web gateway unnecessary. Unrelated side note - There have to be discussions by Palo Alto Networks people and the "smartest guys in the room" about their pending IPO (Initial Public Offering) after the recent Facebook IPO. Predictions - there will be a Harvard Business School case study and the phrases "pop" and "money on the table" will appear in a lot more articles on future IPOs.

How Do You Use A Gartner Magic Quadrant?

The below is from a Research Methodologies piece  on utilizing Magic Quadrants.  Too often,  a pic of the quadrant will make its way onto a slide deck with no explanation. 

 

Clients use Magic Quadrants as a first step to understanding the technology providers they might consider for a specific investment opportunity.Keep in mind that focusing on the leaders' quadrant isn't always the best course of action.  There are good reasons to consider market challengers.  And a niche player may support your needs better than a market leader.  It all depends on how the provider aligns with your business goals.

http://www.gartner.com/technology/research/methodologies/research_mq.jsp

 

Those wanting a full copy of the report can go to Gartner or register with vendors such as Zscaler for read access to the report. Let the issuing of press releases begin. 

 http://www.zscaler.com/Gartner-Magic-Quadrant-Secure-Web-Gateway.html?src=WEB_HOME

 

Dell to Acquire SonicWALL

Dell announced today their intention to acquire SonicWALL from equity investor firm Thoma Bravo. Thoma Bravo had take SonicWALL private in 2010. They have also recently had purchased secure web gateway company Blue Coat Systems and taken it private. This acquisition, according to Dell, will enable them to offer customers a broader range of enterprise offerings. SonicWALL revenues for the last 12 months were about $260 million. www.sonicwall.com

“Dell’s distribution, reach, and brand are well-recognized across the industry. This transaction aligns well with Dell’s mid-market design focus and allows us to accelerate growth of our flagship SuperMassive Next-Generation Firewall solutions with Large Enterprise customers,” said Matt Medeiros, president and CEO, SonicWALL. “Additionally, SonicWALL is recognized as a leading security solutions provider for small and medium businesses through our UTM solutions. Dell’s phenomenal breadth and reach into small and midsize companies provides a significant opportunity to expand our customer base.”

Before being taken private by Thoma Bravo, SonicWall’s strengths were in serving the SMB marketplace with advanced network security and data protection solutions. They have expanded their portfolio to include Next-Generation Firewalls (NGFW), providing these in a form factors scalable to the enterprise.

SonicWALL and Palo Alto Networks were the top performers in a recent NSS Labs analysis, the “2012 Next Generation Firewall Security Value Map™” (NGFW). The value map illustrates Block Rate versus Price per Protected Mbps. The SonicWall SuperMassive E10800 and the Palo Alto Networks PA-5020 NGFWs were the “winners”.

http://kensek.blogspot.com/2012/03/sonicwall-palo-alto-networks-top.html

Effect on Product Development for SonicWALL - To the extent Dell leaves the development team intact to do their own thing, disruptions should be minimal.

Effect on the SonicWALL brand - No one has said whether the company name SonicWALL will be going away, yet. . Nothing has been said as to whether Dell will use the McAfee/Intel model of having the company be a wholly owned subsidiary of Dell.

Other products SonicWALL brings to Dell - Besides firewalls, NGFWs, and Unified Threat Management (UTM) solutions, secure remote access, email security, backup and recovery, and policy, and management and reporting. Dell is acquiring a nice set of security solutions.

Effect on the SonicWALL channels - SonicWALL has 15,000 resellers providing global coverage. Dell plans to “take the very best of the SonicWALL channel programs” (sounds like a reduction…..) and combine it with Dell’s PartnerDirect program. Dell’s existing PartnerDirect members will be able to sell SonicWALL solutions.

SonicWALL was a public company until 2010, when Thoma Bravo acquired it for $717 million. Investors and analysts are estimating the purchase price to be between $1 billion and $1.5 billion. Healthy return by Thoma Bravo for a 2-year investment! Dell will be funding the deal with cash.

It would be interesting to hear what they’re saying about this at Palo Alto Networks, Check Point Software Technology, Barracuda Networks, and Juniper Networks. IMHO, the Palo Alto Networks IPO (Initial Public Offering) valuation may drop by a bit.

http://content.dell.com/us/en/corp/d/secure/2012-03-13-dell-sonicwall-acquisition.aspx