Organizations removing legacy firewalls due to high costs and failure to prevent cyberattacks: Study

More than 60% of organizations believe that legacy firewalls are ineffective in preventing damaging cyberattacks against applications, data centers, and data in the cloud, according to a Ponemon-Guardicore study, titled Rethink Firewalls: Security and Agility for the Modern Enterprise. As a result, 53% of survey respondents are actively looking to replace legacy firewalls with modern security solutions that are more cost effective, provide greater flexibility and can match the speed and agility digital transformation requires.

Digital transformation and the rapid adoption of cloud infrastructure has pushed the boundaries of traditional network security tools. The report demonstrates how legacy security technologies – such as network and 'next-gen' firewalls – hinder agility and fail to secure data and applications across data centers and cloud environments.

"The findings of the report reflect what many CISOs and security professionals already know – digital transformation has rendered the legacy firewall obsolete," said Pavel Gurvich, co-founder and CEO, Guardicore. "As organizations adopt cloud, IoT, and DevOps to become more agile, antiquated network security solutions are not only ineffective at stopping attacks on these properties, but actually hinder the desired flexibility and speed they are hoping to attain."

Rethink Firewalls – Key Study Takeaways

• Legacy Firewalls are Failing to Enable Zero Trust: Zero Trust has emerged as an effective framework to help modern organizations protect cloud infrastructure, distributed workforces and applications. According to the report, while 49% of respondents have implemented a Zero Trust model of security to some extent, 63% believe their organizations' legacy firewalls are failing to enable Zero Trust across the enterprise.
• Firewalls Fail to Stop Attacks, Leave Organizations Vulnerable:  Legacy security technologies fail to minimize the attack surface and increasingly leave organizations vulnerable to cyberattacks. 61% of respondents say their organizations' firewalls could not contain a breach of its data center perimeter, while 64% believe that legacy firewalls are ineffective against modern attacks like ransomware.
• Legacy Firewalls Hinder Agility, Cost Too Much to Maintain: Organizations increasingly believe that firewalls are damaging to digital transformation, lacking the flexibility and speed required for modern environments.  Fifty seven percent of respondents indicate it can take from three weeks to more than a month to change firewall rules to accommodate an update or new application. This is driving firewall attrition, with more than 53% organizations moving away from firewalls due to costs and complexity.

"The findings of the report show the number one concern of firewall buyers is whether they can actually get next-gen firewalls to work in their environments. As organizations move into the cloud, legacy firewalls do not have the scalability, flexibility or reliability to secure these environments, driving up costs while failing to reduce the attack surface," said Dr. Larry Ponemon, Chairman and Founder, Ponemon Institute. "As a result, organizations are reaching the conclusion that firewalls are simply not worth the time and effort and they're actually negatively impacting digital transformation initiatives. This is driving a move toward modern security solutions like micro-segmentation, which can more effectively enforce security at the edge."