The McAfee Next Generation Firewall

In a recent Gartner research note, “Defining the Next-Generation Firewall,” they state that “Changing business processes, the technology that enterprises deploy, and threats are driving new requirements for network security”. And they go on to say that “To meet these challenges, firewalls need to evolve into what Gartner has been calling ‘next-generation firewalls.” McAfee agrees, and in response to these changes has released version 8 of McAfee Firewall Enterprise.
Gartner says, “The stateful protocol filtering and limited application awareness offered by first-generation firewalls are not effective in dealing with current and emerging threats.” The application awareness made possible by McAfee’s AppPrism allows the firewall to once again do what it was made to do: enforce corporate policy and protect the network.
David Strom has done a nice job of comparing and contrasting McAfee Firewall Enterprise V8 with a traditional first-generation firewall, in this case the Cisco ASA series firewall. The video is definitely worth watching and can be found here.