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Best hardware firewall for small business??

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CaptainObvious
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PostPosted: Wed Aug 04, 2010 11:11 pm    Post subject: Best hardware firewall for small business?? Reply with quote

Hello all,

I just took a job with a new company as the lone IT do-it-all man. The network is managed by an outside company. One of my big goals is to bring eventually bring everything in house. I am trying to find out the best options for all hardware and appliances. The network encompasses no more than 75 PCs. What would be the recommended hardware firewall to install? I have been looking into a few different models from Cisco and Barracuda...just a little lost...Thanks!
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Jafer
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PostPosted: Sat Oct 30, 2010 2:41 am    Post subject: best network corporate firewall Reply with quote

The best firewall on the market in my opinion for a small network is either Fortinet, Mcafee or Sonicwall. Sonicwall in particular are very competitive for pricing and are specialist in the small to medium sized networks. On the other hand with Fortinet you simply get more features than any other firewall. Mcafee are very good as well. Firewalls such as Cisco and Checkpoint for me are over priced and over rated, but they do well from the experts point of view such as Gartner. Juniper is another great firewall but a little expensive.

Hope this helps anyone reading.

I have wrote an aricle about this which goes into more depth - http://www.internet-computer-security.com/Firewall/Which-Network-Firewall.html
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capi
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PostPosted: Sat Oct 30, 2010 3:25 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'd like to cast a second recommendation for Juniper. I find their firewalls to be very well thought out; JunOS has obviously seen a lot of attention to detail and is very pleasant and productive to work with (certainly more so than Cisco stuff). They also have more features than you'll ever need. I suggest you look at their SRX branch firewall line.
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ryansutton
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PostPosted: Sat Oct 30, 2010 7:44 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Havn't used Baracuda, most of my clients use a Cisco PIX for their firewall & they work great. If you are going to support it yourself, you need to have a good understanding of the Cisco IOS. You don't want a Cisco router to go down if you don't know the commands to troubleshoot it!
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Mike_tech
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PostPosted: Fri Nov 12, 2010 1:27 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Cisco has the best hardware firewalls and Kerio has the best software firewalls for corporate networks.
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CoreDefend
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PostPosted: Mon Nov 15, 2010 3:44 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

From the business perspective; Cisco is going to be expensive. Since you are taking over from an existing architecture; what other routing/switching devices exist on the network?

Since you are managing a SMB, make sure your choice has unified threat management. Check if the device has a spam filter, IDS/IPS, Internet Content filter, etc...

Most of the firewalls have the same features, just named differently. Additionally, (if you have the time) the firewall vendors will provide a trial system that you can test in your environment.

A properly configured device will get the job done. From testing perspective; we did a pen test which included a Fortinet device; and it did its job. You have the opportunity to make the network yours; make it count.
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Jaguubig
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PostPosted: Fri Nov 19, 2010 4:19 pm    Post subject: Hi Reply with quote

@Jafer, Yeah i think that would be the best
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krugger
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PostPosted: Fri Nov 19, 2010 5:02 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The main question is what do you want to defend against? Do you have servers behind the firwall or just workstations?

If it is just a couple of Windows workstations put up a TMG that can act as a proxy with malware inspection, url filtering and so on.

If you want to go with a hardware based firewall a Juniper SRX or a Stonegate firewall is a good choice.

The advantage of going for a proprietary system is the complementary services. If you only intend to have some layer 3 rules like most people, who don't bother to go through the documentation, maybe a simple server with iptables is enough.
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PhiBer
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PostPosted: Sat Nov 20, 2010 11:18 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I am a huge fan on the Sonicwall TZ 210 and NSA line of firewalls. They are very robust, easy to configure, and are very competitavely priced.

From dealing with Cisco's, Watchguards, Astaro's, and CheckPoints, I prefer the Sonicwall line of firewalls for small to medium sized businesses.
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