Consumers no longer buy a security offering (such as a
firewall or an antivirus) as a static product. Instead, most modern
cybersecurity products rely on cloud services that provide ongoing protection.
As a result, consumers are purchasing a product, plus a vendor’s commitment to
continuing protection in the future.
In an independent test of the Versa Networks Cloud Network
Firewall (CNFW) Versa-FlexVNF-21.2.3 on Amazon Web Services by
CyberRatings.org, Versa Networks achieved the highest rating (AAA) in Cloud
Network Firewall Comparative evaluation.
“We are thrilled that Versa achieved a AAA rating from CyberRatings.org —a member organisation dedicated to quantifying cyber risk and providing transparency on cybersecurity product efficacy through testing and rating programmes. A product rated ‘AAA’ has the highest rating assigned by CyberRatings. This means that the product’s capacity to meet its commitments to consumers is extremely strong,” says Andre Kannemeyer, Chief Technical Officer at Duxbury Networking, distributors of Versa Networks technology in South Africa.
The CyberRatings.org 2022 Product Test report for Cloud
Network Firewall included:
1. The
evaluation of vendors based on capabilities considered essential in a firewall
including basic routing, access control, SSL/TLS decryption, threat prevention
(exploits), evasion, performance, stability and reliability, and management.
2. Key
findings from the test based on the performance of security vendors with AWS as
the public cloud service.
3. Recommendations
on customers can enhance their security and performance capabilities; and how
customers can identify and assess potential vendors for the appropriate
solution.
The instance used for this test was c5.9xlarge (36 vCPU, 72 GB memory, and 10+ Gbps network Bandwidth). “Threat protection was excellent; Versa blocked 35 out of 35 evasion techniques and 977 out of 977 exploits. The device passed all stability and reliability tests. The HTTP rated throughput was 1 000 Mbps; TLS/HTTPS rated throughput was 929 Mbps, giving Versa an excellent combined rated throughput of 965 Mbps. With excellent security and performance, this product is a strong offering and should be considered by enterprises,” said the report.
The report covered several areas, where Versa had a flawless
score:
• Authentication
— The management console supports four role-based access control (RBAC) methods
for the following users: Dashboard Operator, Operator, Security Admin, Super
Admin. Additionally, these user profiles can be edited, and custom roles can be
created — providing administrators with a lot of flexibility when creating
admin accounts, restricting access to certain parts of the organisation, and
read-only access to features like reporting. The system supports third-party
authentication through Active Directory, RADIUS, TACACS+, KERBEROS, and LDAP.
• Policy —
Versa supports creating and saving multiple policies. Admins then create
multiple groups and apply policies easily configured from the GUI.
• Logging —
This is very robust and includes everything from policy changes, deployment,
unsuccessful logins, hardware failure, and malicious traffic. Log file
maintenance includes archiving, rotating log files, restoring, and reporting
from the archive. Furthermore, Versa offers extensive integration with third
parties for log handling.
• Alert
handling — All alerts are delivered to and handled by a single pane of glass.
• Reporting
— The system provides summary reporting on all alerts in a single central
management console. It also offers built-in reports covering typical
requirements such as a list of bandwidth used, users, top applications, and SLA
violations, and it supports reporting format standards such as Syslog, CEF, and
IETF.
• Change
control, rollback, and revision history are available.
• Routing
and policy enforcement AAA — Access control is the primary responsibility of a
firewall. This test validates that the firewall enforces security policies over
a range of policy environments, from simple to complex.
• SSL/TLS
functionality AAA — As of 13 May 2022, data collected by W3Techs showed that over 79.3% of web traffic is
encrypted (HTTPS). To confirm that the firewall was correctly decrypting
SSL/TLS traffic, CyberRatings conducted a functional validation test prior to
performance testing. Cipher suites are selected based on the published current
frequency of use and security status .
• Threat
prevention — A cloud network firewall is a mechanism used to protect a trusted
network from an untrusted network while allowing authorised communications to
pass from one side to the other, thus facilitating secure business use of the
Internet. Versa blocked 100% of exploits and provided 100% resistance to
evasions.
• Long-term
stability is essential for a firewall, where failure can produce network
outages. These tests verified the firewall’s stability and its ability to
maintain security effectiveness while under normal load and while passing
malicious traffic. The product was required to remain operational and stable
throughout these tests and to block 100% of previously blocked traffic, raising
an alert for each. Again, Versa scored 100%.