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SonicWall Generation 7 Firewalls: Stability, Security, Scalability

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In the first half of 2023, SonicWall Capture Labs threat researchers recorded a 399% increase in cryptojacking, a 22% increase in encrypted threats, and a 37% increase in IoT malware attacks. And we’ve continued to see attacks increase in sophistication, with the methods used and the speed with which they work both continuing to rise.

What is needed today is a rapid evolution in the way we conduct cybersecurity. Not only will we have to change our behavior with better personal security practices, but we must also deploy more innovative technology that has the capacity and durability to meet the urgent call for better protection.

SonicWall Next-Generation Firewalls Answers the Call

At SonicWall, we aren’t just retreading the path we’ve traveled. We’re also looking at the power and flexibility of new advancements that bring enterprises and SMBs alike to a level where they can stop attacks from many vectors. Our vision for cybersecurity is to protect organizations from the broadest spectrum of intrusions and pre-emptively reduce cyber risk — all while achieving greater protection across devices, new perimeters and network segments more efficiently while lowering the total cost of ownership.

Regardless of your organization’s size, the industry you serve, or where your employees work, you’ll benefit from our relentless dedication to bringing you NGFWs that offer the security, control and visibility you need to maintain an effective cybersecurity posture.

SonicWall NGFWs Designed for Enterprises, Governments and Service Providers

The SonicWall Generation 7 firewalls run on the SonicOS 7 operating system and include advanced networking features such as high availability, SD-WAN and dynamic routing. These firewalls were designed to meet the current high-demand cybersecurity landscape with validated security effectiveness and best-in-class price performance in a one or two rack unit appliance.

Our Gen 7 NGFWs protect organizations of all sizes with comprehensive, integrated security services, such as malware analysis, encrypted traffic inspection, cloud application security and URL filtering. In addition, all 17 Gen 7 NGFWs can be quickly and easily managed by SonicWall’s cloud-native Network Security Manager (NSM), which gives distributed enterprises a single, easy-to-use cloud interface for streamlined management, analytics and reporting.

The Gen 7 collection pushes security and performance thresholds to protect educational institutions, the financial industry, healthcare providers, government agencies, and MSPs/MSSPs. From the smallest home office to the largest distributed enterprise, there’s a Gen 7 NGFW designed to protect your assets — not just on prem, but in data centers, virtual environments and the cloud.

Entry-level NGFWs: The Gen 7 SonicWall TZ Series protect small businesses or branch locations from intrusion, malware and ransomware with easy-to-use, integrated security designed specifically for your needs. The TZ series includes five models, the 270, 370, 470, 570 and 670 — all of which excel at combining enterprise-grade protection with ease of use and an industry-leading TCO.

Image that shows Mid-range NGFWs: Gen 7 Network Security Appliance (NSa).

Mid-range NGFWs: Our Gen 7 Network Security Appliance (NSa) Series offers medium- to large-sized organizations industry-leading performance at the lowest total cost of ownership in their class. The NSa series consists of five models, the 2700, 3700, 4700, 5700 and 6700. Each includes comprehensive security features such as intrusion prevention, VPN, application control, malware analysis, URL filtering, DNS security, Geo-IP and botnet services.

An image that shows High-end NGFWs: The Gen 7 Network Security services platform (NSsp).

High-end NGFWs: The Gen 7 Network Security services platform (NSsp) high-end firewall series delivers the advanced threat protection, fast speeds and budget-friendly price that large enterprises, data centers and service providers demand. The NSsp series consists of four models, 10700, 11700, 13700 and 15700. Each NSsp NGFW features high port density and 100 GbE interfaces, which can process several million connections for zero-day and advanced threats.

An image that shows Virtual Firewalls: The Gen 7 NSv Series virtual firewalls are built to secure the cloud and virtual environments.

Virtual Firewalls: The Gen 7 NSv Series virtual firewalls are built to secure the cloud and virtual environments with all the security advantages of a physical firewall — including system scalability and agility, speed of system provisioning, and simple management in addition to cost reduction. The NSv series consists of three models; 270, 470 and 870, all of which excel at securing virtualized compute resources and hypervisors to protect public clouds and private cloud workloads on VMware ESXi, Microsoft Hyper-V, Nutanix and KVM.

Powered by SonicOS/OSX 7

SonicWall Gen 7 NGFWs run on SonicOS/OSX 7, the latest version of our new SonicOS operating system. This OS was built from the ground up to deliver a modern user interface, intuitive workflows and user-first design principles. In addition, it provides multiple features designed to facilitate enterprise-level workflows, easy configuration, and simplified and flexible management — all of which allow enterprises to improve security and operational efficiency.

SonicOS/OSX 7 features:

Read more details about the new SonicOS/OSX 7.

Overall Solution Value

SonicWall’s award-winning hardware and advanced technology are built into each Gen 7 NGFW to give every business the edge on evolving threats. With a solution designed for networks of all sizes, SonicWall firewalls help you meet your specific security and usability needs, all at a cost that will protect your budget while securing your network.

To learn more about the SonicWall Gen 7 NGFWs, click here.

2018 Holiday Cyber Threat Data: Final Analysis Shows Big Ransomware Spikes in US, UK

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It’s no secret that consumers flock to online retailers during the holiday shopping season between Thanksgiving and the New Year.

Last month, SonicWall provided deep cyber threat data for the nine-day window that included Black Friday and Cyber Monday in the U.S. Over this specific period, SonicWall Capture Labs threat researchers found that SonicWall customers faced 91 million malware attacks (34 percent decrease over 2017) and 889,933 ransomware attacks (432 percent increase over 2017).

But cyberattacks are hardly static. And they definitely don’t cease once Cyber Monday comes and goes. For this reason, SonicWall collected and analyzed threat data from the full December holiday shopping season to complement its Cyber Week threat analysis.

In the U.S., ransomware and phishing volume more than doubled compared to 2017, while malware was slightly down. In December alone, SonicWall Capture Labs threat researchers recorded:

  • 2.7 million ransomware attacks (up 177 percent)
  • 276.4 million malware attacks (down 27 percent from 2017)
  • 797,607 phishing attacks (up 116 percent)

In the U.K., ransomware spiked four-fold while malware and phishing attacks were relatively flat. For December, SonicWall Capture Labs logged:

  • 527,734 ransomware attacks (up 432 percent)
  • 52.1 million malware attacks (down 2 percent from 2017
  • 30,740 phishing attacks (no increase over 2017)

SonicWall will soon publish additional global December cyber threat data across all attack types, including encrypted threats, intrusion attempts and web application attacks.

Real-Time Threat Intelligence with SonicWall Capture Security Center

SonicWall cyber threat intelligence is available in the SonicWall Capture Security Center, which provides a graphical view of the worldwide attacks over the last 24 hours, countries being attacked and geographic attack origins.

The SonicWall Capture Security Center provides actionable cyber threat intelligence to help organizations identify the types of attacks they need to be concerned about so they can design and test their security posture ensure their networks, data, applications and customers are properly protected.

Exclusive Video: SonicWall CEO Bill Conner & CTO John Gmuender

SonicWall President and CEO Bill Conner and CTO John Gmuender walk you through the current cyber threat landscape, explore the importance of automated real-time breach detection and prevention, and address how to mitigate today’s most modern cyberattacks.

Video: Why Layered Security Matters

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Understanding the benefits of certain security technology is always important. But hearing innovation explained by two cybersecurity industry icons provides the context to appreciate how it works and the importance of implementing sound defenses to survive in an ever-changing cyber war.

In this exclusive video, SonicWall President and CEO Bill Conner and CTO John Gmuender walk you through the current cyber threat landscape, explore the importance of automated real-time breach detection and prevention, and address how to mitigate today’s most modern cyberattacks. The video provides:

  • Exclusive cyberattack data for ransomware, malware, encrypted threats, web app attacks, malware attacks on non-standard ports and more
  • In-depth view into the key security layers that power automated real-time detection and prevention
  • Real-world use cases, including remote and mobile security, web application protection, traditional network security, cloud sandboxing and more
  • Detailed breakdown of the SonicWall Capture Cloud Platform

October 2018 Cyber Threat Data: Web App Attacks, Ransomware Continue Upward Trend

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Throughout 2018, we’ve been sharing monthly updates on the cyber threat data recorded and analyzed by SonicWall Capture Labs, highlighting cyberattack trends and tying it back to the overall cyber threat landscape.

Now, cyber threat intelligence from the SonicWall Capture Security Center is even deeper. The tool now provides empirical data on cyberattacks against web applications. In an increasingly virtual and cloud-connected world, protecting web apps is just as critical as defending more traditional networks.

In October, the overall number of web application attacks continued to rise sharply. We tracked over 1.8 million web app attacks, more than double the volume of attacks for the same time period in 2017.

One factor influencing this is the continued growth explosion of the Internet of Things (IoT), which has added billions of connected devices online, each bringing new and unique potential for vulnerabilities and weaknesses.

While the headline-grabbing news often focuses on processor attacks like Spectre or Meltdown, companies that aren’t using security measures, like SonicWall Capture Advanced Threat Protection with Real-Time Deep Memory Inspection (RTDMI), can leave their standard applications exposed and vulnerable to cybercriminals who are always looking for a weakness.

The volume of ransomware attacks also continued its global upward trend in October. So far in 2018 we’ve seen over 286 million worldwide attacks, up 117 percent from 132 million this time last year. On an individual customer level, that’s 57 attacks per day per customer, an increase from only 14 in October last year.

The growing frequency and complexities of cyberattacks paint a dire picture for global businesses of all sizes. The good news is that by assessing your business’s cybersecurity risk, improving overall security behavior, and ensuring that you are utilizing the right cybersecurity solutions for your business, it’s possible to protect your business from most data breaches.

October Attack Data

Globally, the SonicWall Capture Threat Network, which includes more than 1 million sensors across the world, recorded the following 2018 year-to-date attack data through October 2018:

  • 9.2 billion malware attacks (44 percent increase from 2017)
  • 3.2 trillion intrusion attempts (45 percent increase)
  • 286.2 million ransomware attacks (117 percent increase)
  • 23.9 million web app attacks (113 percent increase)
  • 2.3 million encrypted threats (62 percent increase)

In October 2018 alone, the average SonicWall customer faced:

  • 1,756 malware attacks (19 percent decrease from October 2017)
  • 819,947 intrusion attempts (17 percent increase)
  • 57 ransomware attacks (311 percent increase)
  • 8,742 web app attacks (185 percent increase)
  • 152 encrypted threats (12 percent increase)
  • 12 phishing attacks each day (19 percent decrease)

SonicWall Capture Security Center

SonicWall cyber threat intelligence is available in the SonicWall Security Center, which provides a graphical view of the worldwide attacks over the last 24 hours, countries being attacked and geographic attack origins. This view illustrates the pace and speed of the cyber arms race.

The resource provides actionable cyber threat intelligence to help organizations identify the types of attacks they need to be concerned about so they can design and test their security posture ensure their networks, data, applications and customers are properly protected.

September 2018 Cyber Threat Data: Ransomware Threats Double Monthly, Encrypted Threats Still Growing

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We’re into October and based on this year’s reports so far, the threat landscape is continuing to evolve and change as the global cyber arms race grows.

Phishing attacks continue to trend downwards, with September data showing the volume of attacks down 92 percent compared to the same time last year. The reasons for this decline are not 100 percent clear, but may be partly attributed to increased awareness as people are becoming more adept at identifying phony websites and sharing information about common scams.

While phishing is still a threat, particularly as the holiday season approaches, it appears that cyber criminals are continuing to favor attacks involving malware, ransomware, TLS/SSL encrypted attacks and intrusion attempts. SonicWall Capture Advanced Threat Protection sandbox, with Real-Time Deep Memory Inspection (RTDMITM), has discovered 27,680 new attack variants this year, further evidence that cyber criminals are pursuing more sophisticated and coordinated methods of attack.

Globally, the SonicWall Capture Threat Network, which includes more than 1 million sensors across the world, recorded the following 2018 year-to-date attack data through September 2018:

  • 8.5 billion malware attacks (54 percent increase from 2017)
  • 2.9 trillion intrusion attempts (49 percent increase)
  • 262.4 million ransomware attacks (108 percent increase)
  • 1.9 million encrypted threats (56 percent increase)

In September 2018 alone, the average SonicWall customer faced:

  • 1,662 malware attacks (24 percent decrease from July 2017)
  • 791,015 intrusion attempts (19 percent increase)
  • 56 ransomware attacks (99 percent increase)
  • 70.9 encrypted threats (61 percent decrease)
  • 10 phishing attacks each day (92 percent decrease)

 SonicWall Capture Security Center

SonicWall cyber threat intelligence is available in the SonicWall Security Center, which provides a graphical view of the worldwide attacks over the last 24 hours, countries being attacked and geographic attack origins. This view illustrates the pace and speed of the cyber arms race.

The resource provides actionable cyber threat intelligence to help organizations identify the types of attacks they need to be concerned about so they can design and test their security posture ensure their networks, data, applications and customers are properly protected.

Get the Mid-Year Update

Dive into the latest cybersecurity trends and threat intelligence from SonicWall Capture Labs. The mid-year update to the 2018 SonicWall Cyber Threat Report explores how quickly the cyber threat landscape has evolved in just a few months.

GET THE UPDATE

Ransomware Surges, Encrypted Threats Reach Record Highs in First Half of 2018

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To ensure organizations are aware of the latest cybercriminal attack behavior, today SonicWall published a mid-year update to the 2018 SonicWall Cyber Threat Report.

“The cyber arms race is moving faster than ever with bigger consequences for enterprises, government agencies, educational and financial institutions, and organizations in targeted verticals,” said SonicWall CEO Bill Conner in the official announcement.

Cyber threat intelligence is a key weapon in organizations’ fight against criminal organizations within the fast-moving cyber arms race. The mid-year update outlines key cyberattack trends and real-world threat data, including:

Data for the annual SonicWall Cyber Threat Report is gathered by the SonicWall Capture Threat Network, which sources information from global devices and resources including more than 1 million security sensors in nearly 200 countries and territories.

“SonicWall has been using machine learning to collect, analyze and leverage cyber threat data since the ‘90s,” said Conner. “This commitment to innovation and emerging technology is part of the foundation that helps deliver actionable threat intelligence, security efficacy and automated real-time bread detection and prevention to our global partners and customers.”

Get the Mid-Year Update

Dive into the latest cybersecurity trends and threat intelligence from SonicWall Capture Labs. The mid-year update to the 2018 SonicWall Cyber Threat Report explores how quickly the cyber threat landscape has evolved in just a few months.

GET THE UPDATE

May 2018: Cyberattack Volume Continues to Rise, Ransomware Attempts Jump 299 Percent

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The very latest cyber threat intelligence for May 2018 depicts increases in a number of attack areas, particularly when comparing against 2017 cyber threat data. Through May 2018, the SonicWall Capture Labs threat researches have recorded:

Global Cyberattacks — May 2018

  • 2 million malware attacks (64 percent year-over-year increase)
  • 9 million ransomware attacks (78 percent year-over-year increase)
  • 238,828 encrypted threats (142 percent year-over-year increase)

Global Cyberattacks — Year to Date

  • 5 billion malware attacks (128 percent increase )
  • 2 million ransomware attacks (299 percent increase)
  • 2 million encrypted threats (283 percent increase)

To put these numbers in a more practical light, it’s helpful to break them down by customer. In May 2018 alone, the average SonicWall customer faced:

  • 2,302 malware attacks (56 percent year-over-year increase)
  • 62 ransomware attacks (69 percent year-over-year increase)
  • Almost 94 encrypted threats
  • Over 14 phishing attacks per day

With each passing month, cybercriminals continue to perpetrate cyberattacks at an ever-accelerating rate. It is interesting to note that although encrypted traffic is actually down slightly when compared with last year, encrypted threats have more than doubled. This points to cybercriminals who are more aware of the efficacy of encrypting their attacks.

In addition, phishing attacks have increased by almost 40 percent since last month. To better educate your end users and follow secure email best practices, use the phishing IQ test to increase their suspicions when opening emails, particularly from unknown senders.

As the cyber war continues between threat actors and security professionals, arming your organization with the latest cyber threat intelligence is critical to implementing or improving a sound security posture. As long as vulnerabilities exist, there are threat actors working to exploit them.

Find Threat Metrics When You Need Them

Would you like to keep up-to-date on threat metrics, security news and worldwide cyberattacks? The SonicWall Security Center has all of this and more.

VISIT THE SECURITY CENTER

Are You Seeing This? Uncovering Encrypted Threats

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Night vision goggles. Airport x-ray machines. Secret decoder rings. What do they all have in common? Each helps you find something that is hidden, whether it’s an object or code that someone may not want you to discover. Your organization’s security solution needs to perform in a similar manner by inspecting encrypted traffic. Here’s why.

Over time, HTTPS has replaced HTTP as the means to secure web traffic. Along the way there have been some inflection points that have spurred on this transition such as when Google announced it would enable HTTPS search for all logged-in users who visit google.com. More recently, Google began using HTTPS as a ranking signal. Other vendors including YouTube, Twitter and Facebook have also made the switch. If you read articles on the use of Secure Sockets Layer/Transport Layer Security (SSL/TLS) encryption the latest numbers typically indicate that a little over 50% of all web traffic is now encrypted and that percentage is expected to continue growing. At SonicWall, data gathered by our Global Response Intelligence Defense (GRID) Threat Network shows the percentage to be a little higher, around 62%. We found that as web traffic grew throughout 2016, so did SSL/TLS encryption, from 5.3 trillion web connections in 2015 to 7.3 trillion in 2016. Like others, we also expect the use of HTTPS to increase.

On one hand, this is good news for everyone. Securing web sessions, whether the user is making a financial transaction, sending/receiving email or simply surfing the Internet, is a good thing. It’s also good business for organizations such as online retailers who receive sensitive personal and financial information from their customers and need to secure it from hackers. On the other hand, cyber criminals are now hiding their attacks in encrypted web traffic. Threats such as malware, intrusions, and ransomware are able to pass through the network undetected if they’re hidden using encryption. Cyber criminals are also using encryption to receive communications back from infected systems.

Given organizations’ growing trend toward HTTPS and its use by hackers to steal information, it makes sense to have a security solution in place that can decrypt and scan SSL/TLS-encrypted traffic for threats. Not everyone does, however, especially smaller organizations. According to Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Unified Threat Management (UTM) from August 2016, the research and advisory company estimates that “Less than 10% of SMB organizations decrypt HTTPS on their UTM firewall. This means that 90% of the SMB organizations relying on UTM for web security are blind to the more advanced threats that use HTTPS for transport.”

Let’s add a little more fuel to this. By now most people have heard of the “Internet of Things.” The idea is that we have all manner of devices available that can connect to the Internet and send/receive data. No longer is it just our PC, laptop, smartphone and tablet. It’s our TV, car, refrigerator, watch, security camera. Essentially anything that’s Internet-enabled. The number of connected devices is growing rapidly. Gartner forecasts there will be 8.4 billion connected “things” in use in 2017 and by 2020 that number will grow to 20.4 billion. That’s a lot of things that can be potentially taken over by malware delivered through encrypted traffic.

Here’s the big question every organization needs to ask. “Does our security solution (typically a firewall) have the ability to decrypt SSL/TLS-encrypted web traffic, scan it for threats, use deep packet inspection technology to stop malware, and do it all with little or no performance hit?” If your firewall is three years old or more, the answer is likely no. Legacy firewalls may decrypt the traffic and do some threat detection, but not prevention. Or, it may do everything that’s required, just very slowly which isn’t good either. The firewall shouldn’t be a bottleneck.

In his blog titled, “DPI-SSL: What Keeps You Up at Night?” my colleague Paul Leets states, “We must look into encrypted packets to mitigate those threats.” And he’s right. We need to be able to “see” into encrypted traffic in order to identify threats and eliminate them before they get into the network. And it needs to be done in real time. We call this automated breach prevention and it’s what our lineup of next-generation firewalls delivers. To learn more about automated breach prevention and how SonicWall next-generation firewalls decrypt SSL/TLS-encrypted traffic and scan for and eliminate threats without latency, visit the “Encrypted Threats” page on our website. Secret decoder ring not required.

Download Encrypted Threats Best Practices