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When you are concerned about your network security, the first thing you need to think about is the firewall. It acts as the primary defense line for your network architecture. A firewall device defines your network perimeter and performs an inspection of the traffic that crosses that perimeter.

The enterprise firewall market is valued at $14.93 billion in 2025. Moreover, industry analysts expect it to reach $34.43 billion by 2033 (GlobeNewswire).

Primarily, a firewall solution checks for malicious content, data leakage, and other threats that your network traffic might contain. Hence, you need to invest in a firewall to ensure optimum cyber protection.

Therefore, read on to get a better idea of why a firewall is important and how to choose one for your network architecture.

Why You Need to Invest in a Good Firewall Device?

A firewall is the most important component of your business’s network security architecture. It creates a solid boundary between the public Internet and your business’s corporate network. This way, different types of traffic can be prevented from crossing that boundary.

However, you will have unique needs depending on your network security and business goals. Hence, an enterprise firewall shall be your best choice. It will offer you the scale and capabilities you need to help you protect your enterprise network against various types of cyber threats.

What Are the Major Types of Firewalls?

The following are the major types of firewalls that you will have access to in the form of a firewall device:

1. Packet Filtering

These firewalls use the information within a network packet’s header. This way, the firewall device determines whether it should permit traffic to cross the network boundary. For instance, in some cases, an organization might block SSH traffic from external sources.

2. Proxy Service

With the help of a proxy firewall, you can access additional privacy and security on both the client and the server sides.

The proxy service firewall primarily works at the network application layer to limit traffic. Apart from that, it also conceals the IP addresses of the systems behind the firewall.

3. Stateful Inspection

This is a progressive version of the packet filtering firewall. The stateful inspection firewall works similarly to a packet filtering firewall. Moreover, it also stores state data and uses it to make access decisions.

For instance, by using a stateful firewall, you will be able to detect and block a DNS response to a nonexistent request. Meanwhile, this is not possible with a packet filtering firewall.

4. Next Generation Firewall

A Next Gen Firewall (NGFW) uses the capability of a packet filtering firewall and combines it with application-level inspection. Also, it adds threat prevention capabilities to the network system’s firewall.

Apart from that, an NGFW also comes with an intrusion prevention system (IPS). In addition, it also contains functionalities for email and web scanning.

How to Choose the Right Firewall Device for Your Network?

Now, you have seen that firewalls are of different types. Moreover, each of these firewall systems comes with different functionalities. The following are the ways through which you must choose the right firewall device for your network security:

1. Consider the Size of Your Business Network

Your firewall depends a lot on the size of your business. Hence, on the basis of the firewall's protection capability, there will be a particular maximum throughput. This acts as a threshold for your network.

So, if your traffic volume exceeds this threshold, your firewall device will fail to keep up due to latency.
This is why you will need to choose a firewall of the right size to meet your business network's needs and demands. For instance, if your business is an SMB, it will have lower throughput needs than an enterprise business.

In addition, enterprise firewalls have different needs for enterprise businesses depending on their size. On the other hand, a corporate data center will have its own needs and requirements.

2. Factor in Your Business Distribution

Before remote work came out, most organizations had all their employees and IT infrastructure in one place. However, the growth of cloud networks made major changes. For instance, if your organization has a remote workforce, having a hardware firewall device is not enough. It will not be able to protect your network at every location.

Moreover, using a corporate firewall to connect remote offices with cloud applications and the Internet does not make sense. This will not be a good option to ensure a good user experience.

If you choose a cloud-based firewall-as-a-service, you will be able to protect your users and assets. Also, you will be able to deploy them in no time as compared to on-premises firewall devices.

3. Choose Between In-House and Managed Firewall

A firewall needs constant configuration and maintenance. Also, you must regularly update and monitor it for events and alerts that notify you of potential security concerns. However, this is possible only through IT and security expertise.

For instance, if your organization does not have in-house security, you might consider MDR Services. Apart from that, a third-party firewall provider will also come with extra support for incident response on the basis of detected intrusions.

4. Better Threat Visibility and Ease of Usage

Many organizations have their big network system architectures. Also, each of these contains multiple standalone solutions. Although such a system might provide good threat coverage, it is also difficult to manage and monitor.

Hence, you must ensure that your NGFW has good threat visibility and policy management within a single console. The system must be able to get more information from security alerts with the help of actionable threat intelligence.

5. Device Protection

Nowadays, many corporate IT network architectures are becoming diverse. They have data centers on-premises and consist of cloud applications. In addition to that, many businesses also connect IoT devices to their network.

In general, these devices have their unique security risks and requirements. Hence, depending on the assets you want to protect for your organization, you must choose a firewall device that offers special functionality.

Also, your firewall needs to understand and intercept different types of traffic that your devices generate. This way, you will be able to ensure more security.

Choose Your Enterprise Firewall Wisely

If you want to keep your network system architecture secure, you will need to choose the right firewall device. However, if your firewall is not the right size and lacks crucial security features, it will negatively impact your organization by making its data vulnerable to attack.

When choosing a firewall device for your business enterprise, you must consider security features, throughput, and other factors.

Do you have more suggestions on choosing a firewall for business networks? Consider sharing your ideas and opinions in the comments section below.