List of the Top 10 Firewall Software for Elastic Observability in 2025

Cloudflare serves as the backbone of your infrastructure, applications, teams, and software ecosystem. It offers protection and guarantees the security and reliability of your external-facing assets, including websites, APIs, applications, and various web services. Additionally, Cloudflare secures your internal resources, encompassing applications within firewalls, teams, and devices, thereby ensuring comprehensive protection. This platform also facilitates the development of applications that can scale globally. The reliability, security, and performance of your websites, APIs, and other channels are crucial for engaging effectively with customers and suppliers in an increasingly digital world. As such, Cloudflare for Infrastructure presents an all-encompassing solution for anything connected to the Internet. Your internal teams can confidently depend on applications and devices behind the firewall to enhance their workflows. As remote work continues to surge, the pressure on many organizations' VPNs and hardware solutions is becoming more pronounced, necessitating robust and reliable solutions to manage these demands.

Zscaler stands out as a pioneer with its Zero Trust Exchange platform, which utilizes the most expansive security cloud in the world to optimize business functions and improve responsiveness in a fast-evolving landscape. The Zero Trust Exchange from Zscaler enables rapid and safe connections, allowing employees the flexibility to operate from any location by treating the internet as their corporate network. Following the zero trust principle of least-privileged access, this solution provides robust security through context-aware identity verification and stringent policy enforcement. With a network spanning 150 data centers worldwide, the Zero Trust Exchange ensures users are closely connected to the cloud services and applications they depend on, like Microsoft 365 and AWS. This extensive infrastructure guarantees the most efficient routes for user connections, ultimately delivering comprehensive security while ensuring an outstanding user experience. In addition, we encourage you to take advantage of our free service, the Internet Threat Exposure Analysis, which is designed to be quick, secure, and private for all participants, helping organizations pinpoint vulnerabilities and effectively bolster their security defenses. Our commitment to safeguarding your digital environment is paramount, and this analysis serves as an essential step toward enhancing your organization's resilience against potential threats.

A multilayered endpoint security system that employs behavior-based analysis provides powerful protection against both known and new threats. It ensures thorough real-time monitoring of your entire software ecosystem, no matter where it is located. Designed specifically for small to medium-sized businesses, the FortiClient endpoint protection service is offered through the cloud. This integrated endpoint protection platform features automated next-generation threat defense, allowing for visibility and control over your software and hardware assets within the larger security infrastructure. It facilitates the detection and correction of vulnerable or compromised systems across your attack surface, enhancing overall safety. As a vital part of the Fortinet Security Fabric, FortiClient links endpoints to improve the early detection and prevention of complex threats. Security incidents, such as zero-day malware attacks, botnet discoveries, and identified vulnerabilities, are relayed in real time. By adopting this all-encompassing strategy, the solution not only protects your assets but also simplifies the management of security protocols, ensuring a more secure operational environment. Furthermore, this proactive approach enables organizations to stay ahead of potential threats, fostering a culture of resilience against cyber risks.

Securing networks poses considerable difficulties, with many current solutions being complicated and difficult to implement effectively. Explore how Cisco Meraki can simplify your security protocols! Esteemed worldwide, it is favored by top brands for its reliable offerings. With over a million active networks, organizations around the globe depend on Meraki for superior service and support. All Meraki devices are managed securely and centrally from the cloud via a consolidated web dashboard. Our intuitive and feature-rich framework empowers clients to save time, reduce operational costs, and tackle new business challenges with ease. Recognized as the gold standard for straightforward management and efficient, dependable Wi-Fi, it guarantees strong security and connectivity for your most important assets, regardless of your location. Enjoy unmatched performance and reliability at the heart of your network, complemented by remote monitoring and identity-based configuration for every device in your system. This cutting-edge approach not only boosts security but also enhances network efficiency, making it an ideal solution for businesses of any scale, ensuring they can thrive in a constantly evolving digital landscape.

Experience unmatched visibility, strong security measures, and swift response capabilities designed to empower your network management. Gaining enhanced insight into dangerous behaviors, irregular traffic trends, and advanced threats enables you to regain control of your network environment. State-of-the-art protection technologies, incorporating deep learning and intrusion prevention systems, guarantee the safety and integrity of your organization. Automated threat response mechanisms swiftly identify and isolate any compromised systems, effectively preventing the escalation of security breaches. The XG Firewall streamlines the process of providing secure network access for employees, no matter where they are located. With Sophos Connect, deploying and configuring a user-friendly VPN client is a breeze, allowing seamless connectivity for your remote workforce. This functionality permits secure access to corporate resources from devices running both Windows and macOS operating systems. Additionally, our compact and economical XG 86(w) and SD-RED devices offer excellent SOHO protection, featuring always-on dedicated or split-tunnel VPN options that are easy to manage and implement with various customizable features. This thorough strategy not only fortifies your network but also ensures it remains flexible and prepared to tackle the continuously changing threat landscape. Ultimately, investing in these advanced solutions keeps your organization safe and adaptable in a dynamic digital world.

The pfSense initiative offers a cost-free network firewall solution, built upon the FreeBSD operating system and featuring a tailored kernel. Additionally, it encompasses various third-party open-source software packages. Thanks to its package management system, pfSense can deliver functionalities that rival or exceed those of standard commercial firewalls, all without any imposed restrictions. As a result, it has supplanted numerous leading commercial firewalls in installations worldwide, such as those from Check Point, Cisco PIX, Cisco ASA, and Juniper, demonstrating its growing popularity and reliability in the cybersecurity landscape. This shift reflects the increasing trust users place in open-source solutions for their network security needs.

Sophos UTM takes threat prevention to new and impressive levels. At the heart of Sophos Sandstorm lies an advanced deep learning neural network, a sophisticated form of machine learning that proficiently recognizes both known and unknown malware without relying on conventional signatures. Importantly, Sophos UTM 9.4 is among the first products to integrate our cutting-edge next-gen cloud sandboxing technology. Sandstorm significantly boosts defenses against ransomware and targeted assaults while offering extensive visibility and analytical tools. It promptly and accurately identifies evasive threats before they can penetrate your network. Additionally, it provides remarkable value by delivering enterprise-grade protection without the hassle of high costs or complexities. You can enhance the security of your web servers and Microsoft Enterprise Applications against cyber threats while ensuring secure access for external users through reverse proxy authentication. Our innovative all-in-one solution also offers complete SMTP and POP message protection against spam, phishing attacks, and data breaches, which significantly elevates your overall cybersecurity strategy. In summary, Sophos UTM empowers organizations with powerful tools to effectively protect their digital assets and maintain a strong security posture. With these capabilities, businesses can confidently navigate the ever-evolving landscape of cyber threats.

Google Cloud firewalls are deeply woven into the fabric of cloud networking, providing both scalability and precision tailored to meet the unique security needs of your organization. They offer a flexible and customizable framework, enabling you to enforce security measures at different tiers, such as organization, folder, and project, while granting you adaptable control over your firewall rules and policies. Moreover, your security management can be significantly enhanced through features that provide visibility and optimization, delivering critical insights into firewall rule usage and identifying potential improvement areas. In addition, by utilizing network tags and service accounts, you can create detailed controls that effectively oversee both north-south and east-west traffic, ensuring that comprehensive security is maintained throughout your network. This comprehensive strategy not only strengthens your security posture but also streamlines the management of your cloud infrastructure, making it easier to adapt to evolving security challenges. Ultimately, this robust approach empowers businesses to operate confidently in a secure cloud environment.

AWS WAF functions as a protective web application firewall aimed at defending your web applications or APIs against common web-based threats that could endanger their availability, security, or lead to excessive resource consumption. The service empowers you to control how traffic interacts with your applications by enabling the creation of security rules that can block standard attack vectors, such as SQL injection and cross-site scripting, alongside custom rules to filter out specific traffic patterns that you may identify. To streamline the setup process, AWS provides Managed Rules for AWS WAF, which consist of pre-configured rule sets curated by AWS or third-party vendors available in the AWS Marketplace. These Managed Rules focus on addressing vulnerabilities, including those highlighted in the OWASP Top 10 security risks, and are regularly updated to respond to emerging threats. Furthermore, AWS WAF includes a robust API that allows for the efficient automation of the creation, deployment, and management of security rules. Notably, AWS WAF operates under a pay-as-you-go pricing structure, meaning you incur charges based on the number of rules you set up and the volume of web requests your application handles. This adaptable pricing strategy gives you the ability to customize your security measures in accordance with your application’s unique traffic and complexities, ensuring that you can effectively protect your digital assets. This comprehensive approach to web security makes AWS WAF an essential tool for modern web applications.

The Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software is the core operating system for the Cisco ASA Family, delivering powerful enterprise-grade firewall capabilities across multiple configurations such as standalone devices, blades, and virtual appliances, making it ideal for a wide range of network environments. Furthermore, the ASA Software collaborates seamlessly with other critical security technologies, providing comprehensive solutions that can evolve with the dynamic nature of security needs. This synergistic approach empowers organizations to uphold superior protection against new threats while enhancing the performance of their networks. In addition, the flexibility of ASA Software ensures that it can meet the specific demands of various industries and operational scales.