Security Effectiveness Ranges from 46.37% to 99.59%
CyberRatings.org (CyberRatings), the non-profit organization dedicated to providing confidence in cybersecurity products and services through independent testing, today announced the results of its latestEnterprise Firewall (EFW) evaluation. Tests were conducted byNSS Labs and are now available at no coston the CyberRatings.org website.
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Attackers are bypassing defenses. Only three of seven products earned a Recommended rating.
NSS Labs performed independent evaluations ofseven leading Enterprise Firewall productsusing theEnterprise Firewall Test Methodology v3.0. The testing revealed a striking disparity in performance -Security Effectiveness ranged from 46.37% to 99.59%.
Firewalls were tested underencrypted enterprise-grade workloadsusing3,326 exploits,11,311 malware samples,5,752 evasion techniques spanning 53 evasion categories, 6,481 false-positive samples, and55 performance tests. Each firewall was required to maintain operational stability throughout testing.
Key Findings
— Attackers Are Bypassing Defenses: While average exploit and malware block rates exceeded 96%, three widely deployed vendors failed critical evasion tests that significantly reduced their effectiveness. Only three of seven products earned a Recommended rating.
— Evasion Vulnerabilities: Common transport and network-layer evasions, techniques that can be applied to nearly every attack, bypassed some of the world's most widely used firewalls.
— Encrypted Threats: More than 95% of global web traffic is encrypted. Detecting attacks hidden within TLS/SSL sessions remains a crucial differentiator; some products showed marked performance degradation when inspecting encrypted traffic.
— Accuracy Matters: One product recorded only 80% false-positive accuracy, potentially increasing operational costs and reducing trust in security alerts as customers disable protections to reduce noise.
“Enterprise Firewalls are constantly evolving to combat new attacker techniques and tools but sometimes that evolution takes a wrong turn,” saidVikram Phatak, CEO of CyberRatings.org. “A vendor can have a near-perfect detection engine but if attackers can bypass that engine it gives them a clear path through your defenses.”
The test results are as follows:
NSS Labs is the Official Testing Partner of CyberRatings, generating the test results and reports for CyberRatings publications. NSS Labs developed tools and Keysight's CyPerftoolwere used to test thesecurity, performance, TLS functionality, and stability of Enterprise Firewalls.
The Enterprise Firewall Test Reports, Comparative Report and Security Map are available at CyberRatings.org.
About CyberRatings.org
CyberRatings.org is a 501(c)6 non-profit organization dedicated to providing confidence in cybersecurity products and services through our research and testing programs. We provide enterprises with independent, objective ratings of security product efficacy to make informed decisions. To become a member,visitwww.cyberratings.organd follow us on LinkedIn.
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