You might have used Open Source Next Generation Firewalls in the corporate, enterprise, in any small or large setup or cloud, and might have always thought that the tool is great but the interface is just basic and mostly not user-friendly and reports and other functionalities are sometimes very basic.
On the other hand, commercial firewalls are also adding features by using the 4IR technologies specifically AI (Artificial Intelligence). Now the question here is can we still bring the intelligence to the existing Open Source Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) that is currently being deployed? the answer is Yes.
Zenarmor is an AI-Based Cloud threat intelligence system that is an upgrade to an open-source firewall by which you can stop zero-day malware and phishing attacks in real-time. It also detects and blocks new Botnets instantly. The deep content inspection also prevents evasive threats.
Don’t worry if dashboards or various modern controls are missing in your open-source firewall. I have also been facing the same challenge most of the time, but then I got to know Zenarmor.
What is Zenarmor?
Zenarmor is an initiative of Sunny Valley Networks, which is an extension to upgrade the powerful open-source firewalls and make them modern and better than many commercial Firewalls available today.
Zenarmor easily upgrades these open-source firewalls to an enterprise-class Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) in a matter of seconds. The combination of Zenarmor and these powerful open-source firewalls creates a tremendous synergy and has brought the revolution in UTM Devices.
Key Feature of Zenarmor
There are various features but some of the key features are listed below;
- L7 Application Control,
- Policy-based Web Filtering
- AI-based Cloud Threat Intelligence,
- Cloud-based Management
- Industry’s best network reporting and analytics and many more…
Why Zenarmor?
Zenarmor has a rapidly growing user base and is already protecting over a million endpoints worldwide, including home users, academic institutions, large enterprises and even government agencies. Free Edition is available to anyone who wishes to enhance their network security.
When you want to bring intelligence to your Next Generation Firewall NGFW, Zenarmor is the best product available in the market today.
Zenarmor for Open Source Firewalls
Opensource NGFW is great and used by many IT professionals across the globe, but adding intelligence to combat modern-day cyber attacks is always a concern, thanks to Zenarmor which can quickly empower existing firewalls with state of the art next generation security capabilities
Zenarmor’s lightweight and powerful, appliance-free technology allows organizations to launch instant firewalls on demand and easily secure environments as small as home networks or scale to multi-cloud deployments.
Packet inspection core is powerful enough to protect against encrypted threats while also being so lightweight and nimble that it can even fit in very resource-constrained environments.
The technology behind Zenarmor is industry’s first packet inspection engine that can do native TLS inspection.
Zenarmor technology enables cyber security tools with utmost visibility, packet classification, and fine-grained policy enforcement for any type of traffic.
More packet intelligence means better decision-making. Better decision-making means better success rates in detecting & preventing cyber attacks.
Time to Upgrade your Open Source Firewall
It is the best time to upgrade your existing Open Source firewall and say it is a modern next-generation firewall. You can quickly install to empower your existing firewall.
You can quickly install Zenarmor on open source firewall and get the industry’s best reporting of your network. You can visualize the network reports in real time. From the big picture drill down per connection detail and then you can start looking at anomalies visually when they occur. Which will not only help you to be on top of everything that is going on in your network but will also help you to stay up to date with what is going on in your network.
Zenarmor will help you to improve the business productivity with application control, all the misbehaving applications will be controlled regardless of port numbers as these are already identified in the database.
On the other hand, policy-based web filtering is pre-configured to save you time and effort.
Why Upgrade Open Source Firewall?
I am sure you know the reason, by looking at what Zenarmor can do I have listed a few features that will for sure help you to understand the reason to upgrade the open source firewall with Zenarmor Extention
- Zero-day attack campaigns and real-time protection
- TLS inspection to prevent evasive threats
- Block and control misbehaving applications
- Policy-based web filtering
- Active Directory Integration
- Parental Control
- Integration with existing tools.
Secure the User not the IP Address
When I say modern firewall, our whole purpose is to ensure that the user and device is protected. Managing IP addresses is challenging, but when you enforce the policy using existing LDAP or Active directory, you can have better control and Zenarmor can help you do it.
Centralized Console of all your instances
You can manage your firewall from anywhere using the Zenarmor Cloud and start accessing and managing easily. You and your team will have better control and access to the network and security.
How to Get Started?
You will simply need to follow the below few steps to get started
- Sign up for the account Zenconsole Cloud Portal
- Get started with the free edition (chose the platform that you are currently using)
- Install the Package on the existing firewall.
- Refresh the cloud console.
Zenarmor for pfSense
As I have been using pfSense for a long time, so my choice for Opensource firewall is always pfSense. You will simply need to open the shell and type the below command to get the Zenarmor Package for PfSense Firewall
curl https://updates.sunnyvalley.io/getzenarmor | sudo sh
Now you need to connect and start managing your pfSense using Zeconsole
# zenarmorctl cloud register
Conclusion
Any open-source platform comes with challenges because you rely not on commercial vendors but on your internal team or community. The same goes for firewalls where you want to enjoy the unlimited features of open-source firewalls but at the same time, you want to have hassle-free deployment. But thanks to Sunny Valley Networks for building Zenarmor to make the Opensource NGFW deployment hassle free.