Unyielding Defense: Cisco Firewall Achieves AAA Rating From SE Labs
As organizations continue to rely on their networks as the first line of defense against sophisticated threats, it's more crucial than ever to have confidence in the security measures in place. This is where a robust firewall comes into play – an essential component that can quickly identify and block both advanced attacks and exploits of common vulnerabilities.
Enter Cisco Secure Firewall 4225, which recently demonstrated exceptional performance in SE Labs' rigorous Advanced Security Test, scoring a impressive 100% in protection accuracy. This achievement is all the more remarkable considering the severity and sophistication of the threats simulated during the test.
A Threat Landscape Like No Other
SE Labs attempted to push the boundaries with attackers from notorious hacking groups like APT29 and Scattered Spider, known for their relentless and sophisticated attack strategies. These groups often target high-profile sectors such as government, military, and telecommunications.
Testers simulated a full breach where they aimed to steal sensitive information, damage systems, or move laterally and connect to other network systems. However, in all cases with Cisco Secure Firewall, threats could not move beyond the earliest stage of the attack chain. The firewall detected and neutralized all simulated threats before they could execute any malicious actions or cause harm, resulting in 100% protection accuracy.
A Perfect Storm of Security Innovations
Cisco Secure Firewall's exceptional performance can be attributed to its cutting-edge features and technologies. With TLS decryption enabled, the firewall demonstrated powerful efficacy without compromising performance. The industry-leading decryption capabilities improve security while ensuring optimal efficiency.
Furthermore, the testers had no visibility into their target to probe for vulnerabilities, making it impossible for them to use the target as a launch pad for lateral movement. This limitation further highlights the firewall's robust defenses against sophisticated threats.
A Comprehensive Security Solution
Cisco Secure Firewall is part of Cisco's Hybrid Mesh Firewall, a highly distributed security fabric with intelligent centralized management. This provides organizations with an easy-to-manage and scalable security solution that protects their applications wherever they live.
Additionally, the firewall benefits from integration with Cisco Talos, one of the largest commercial threat intelligence teams in the world. This ensures that Secure Firewall stays ahead of modern threats by identifying emerging threats and vulnerabilities, integrating those findings into the product, and providing critical intelligence to security controls.
Awards and Recognition
Cisco Secure Firewall has received a prestigious AAA award from SE Labs for its impressive Total Accuracy Rating of 95%. This is the second year in a row that Cisco Secure Firewall has received this excellent recognition, solidifying its position as a leader in next-generation firewall solutions.
Stay Ahead of the Threats
Cisco Secure Firewall offers an innovative flow offload engine to decrypt and encrypt TLS traffic in hardware, while also providing additional layers of protection with the Encrypted Visibility Engine (EVE). EVE leverages behavioral analytics and machine learning to detect malicious outbound communications even within encrypted traffic.
With Snort 3 and ClamAV detection engines from Talos, Secure Firewall can flag malicious domains, IPs, and file hashes, providing critical intelligence to security controls. The system also detects brand spoofing, malicious senders, and identifies phishing campaigns or malware.
A Proactive Approach to Security
Cisco Secure Firewall is designed to take a proactive approach to stopping threats, fortified by the intelligence of Cisco Talos. This ensures that organizations can implement security best practices for encrypted traffic while ensuring operational efficiency.
As part of this initiative, Talos now offers SnortML, a threat detection engine designed to proactively identify zero-day vulnerabilities. The system finds patterns in common vulnerability types used by threat actors for initial access: command injection, code injection, and SQL injection.
Get Hands-On Experience
Cisco Secure Firewall is now available for testing through the Cisco Secure Firewall Test Drive, an instructor-led 4-hour security course. This allows you to gain firsthand experience with Cisco firewalls and discover new techniques used by attackers that have changed the network security landscape.
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