SonicWall NSa 2650 Excels In Firewall Group Test

Almost perfect scores show why it’s right for SMEs.

SonicWall has been rated as Recommended in an independent report from security guidance specialist NSS Labs. Along with nine other next-generation firewalls (NGFWs), the firm’s NSa 2650 product proved to a be formidable opponent, beating many of its competitors in the security stakes.

With a 98.8% block rate, 100% stability and reliability and an overall security effectiveness of 98.8%, the SonicWall NSa 2650 did an excellent job of keeping cyber attacks at bay. Out of the ten NGFWs tested by NSS Labs, only two had a higher overall effectiveness rating, and there were two that only achieved 25%.

The NSa 2650 excelled at blocking all kinds of attacks, but it did particularly well at stopping target-initiated exploit, stopping 99.9% of them. This is an important achievement because, as NSS Labs says in its report, these are the most common type of attack, caused by the victims themselves – like when a user runs a dodgy email attachment and it install a virus. Server-sider attacker-initiated attacks, although less likely to occur, are still a danger, but SonicWall can be proud that it managed to halt 98.7% of NSS Lab’s simulated attacks.

The report also showed that the NSa 2650 was suitably equipped to tackle older threats. Some security companies will retire old security signatures to maximise performance in their firewalls, but that, of course, can leave them vulnerable to such exploits. Thankfully, right across the board, the SonicWall NSa 2650 blocked close to 100% of all of older security exploits.

There was more good news for SonicWall: the NSa 2650 stopped 100% of evasion techniques – ways of disguising and modifying attacks to avoid detection by security products like firewalls. The lowest in the group was the Sophos XG Firewall 750 SFOS, which only managed to stop 25% of such attacks.

With cyber attacks on businesses growing more frequent, having a reliable firewall should be part of any responsible organisation’s overall security plans. With results like these, SonicWall has made a good argument for itself.

We stock a range of SonicWall firewalls, which we can also install, set up and support. If you're thinking about upgrading, get in touch and let us know.