Enterprise firewall vendors reinforce their relevance as enforcement and visibility points for AI-era traffic patterns as well as beneficiaries of AI-assisted operations (such as policy optimization, triage support, and automation). The pervasive role of enterprise firewalls underscores why the market remains mature yet evolving. Enterprise Firewall Solutions Market Maturity And Key Dynamics Enterprise firewall solutions is a mature market.

Supplemental Material Research Methodologies For Forrester’s Q1 2025 Web Application Firewall Solutions Forrester Wave™ Customer Reference Survey, Forrester surveyed 21 reference customers submitted by the participants in The Forrester Wave™: Web Application Firewall Solutions, Q1 2025. Forrester asked reference customers about their perceptions of their vendor, their satisfaction with technical functionality and use cases, and their top priorities and adoption trends.

In our evaluation of web application firewall (WAF) solution providers, we identified the most significant ones and researched, analyzed, and scored them. This report shows how each provider measures up and helps you select the right one for your needs.

Palo Alto Networks pioneered the next-generation firewall (NGFW) and continues to adapt in the evolving network security space. Precision AI, Palo Alto Networks’ proprietary AI system, automates tasks with data from ML, deep learning, and AI models to enhance platform experience. Its ambitious roadmap, driven by customer feedback, highlights capabilities that align with its vision for a secure future in the quantum and AI era.

Web Application Firewall Solutions: Core Use Cases This table highlights the top core use cases and indicates the objective and top differentiators of each. This graphic has an associated spreadsheet that includes all data presented. Please access the spreadsheet for details. Figure 3 Web Application Firewall Solutions: Extended Use Cases This table highlights the top extended use cases and indicates the objective and top differentiators of each.

Once referred to as “next-generation firewalls (NGFWs),” these solutions have grown in capability since NGFWs were introduced in 2007 to meet changes in the threat landscape, incorporate technology advances, and meet the needs of organizations adopting Zero Trust. Organizations adopting Zero Trust look to EFWs to enforce Zero Trust access across hybrid topologies.

Contrary to expectations the enterprise firewall continues to thrive. and vendors have made significant progress in keeping up with rapid innovations. Learn more in this preview of the recently published report, The Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Firewall Solutions, Q4 2024.

Security pros in the launch phase of Forrester’s “secure what you sell model” use web application firewalls (WAFs) to deflect a range of application- and API-based attacks. As part of the research for The Forrester Wave™: Web Application Firewalls, Q3 2022, we collected data from customer references about their top priorities and adoption trends.

Networking giant Cisco envisions a return to dominance with a strategy pairing hybrid work firewalls and hybrid multicloud security. Yet the vendor still has unfinished business: Customers are slow to fully migrate from legacy ASA firewalls to the Cisco Secure Firewall Threat Defense (FTD) NGFW product family. Cisco also suffered supply chain woes during the pandemic, significantly delaying certain product lines.

But the enterprise firewall vendors all reported significant growth in the past year, even though the employees who left the perimeter en masse two years ago have yet to return. In our pre-Wave report, Now Tech: Enterprise Firewalls, Q2 2022, the average jump in firewall-associated revenue was 26% year over year. The “big” firewall vendors have gotten much bigger than the smaller vendors.