Juniper Networks received a “AAA” rating in the first-ever Cloud Network Firewall evaluation by CyberRatings.org, a nonprofit member organization that provides transparency and expert guidance on cybersecurity risks via research and objective product testing.
This is the latest in a series of third-party tests, analyst reports and customer wins that validate Juniper’s Connected Security portfolio, which sets the bar for security effectiveness, performance, scale and cost savings across a wide array of use cases – from Zero Trust data centers and workload protection – to secure SD-WAN and SASE transformation.
CyberRatings tested Juniper Networks vSRX Virtual Firewall deployed within an AWS environment, a deployment scenario that has become a popular use case with public cloud usage expected to grow 20.4% in 2022, according to Gartner (Forecast: Public Cloud Services, Worldwide, 2020-2026, 1Q22 Update). Juniper vSRX achieved top scores across all five tested categories:
- AAA in Threat Prevention: 100% exploit block rate with 0 false positives
- AAA in Performance: 974 Mbps overall rated performance
- AAA in Management & Reporting Capabilities
- AAA in TLS/SSL Functionality: Supporting 100% of the tested cipher suites and encryption use cases
- AAA in Routing & Policy Enforcement
Perfect Security Effectiveness & Low TCO
The CyberRatings results noted that Juniper vSRX achieved the highest rating of “AAA” for Threat Protection with Juniper blocking 100% of tested exploits and evasions without a single false positive, citing that “Threat Protection was excellent.” Additionally, Juniper’s overall rated performance was 974 Mbps, just shy of achieving the AWS test environment’s maximum throughput of 1,000 Mbps. While the AWS test environment limited throughput to 1Gbps, the 17-core vSRX can handle nearly 40 Gbps with the same level of excellent threat protection as tested by CyberRatings.
Given the sharp rise in application vulnerabilities and targeted exploits, a firewall that does not handle SSL/TLS well leaves traffic vulnerable to session intercepts, such as person-in-the-middle attacks. Juniper vSRX received a “AAA” rating for SSL/TLS functionality, with CyberRatings noting that all nine tested cipher suites were supported. Juniper vSRX also passed all additional encryption tests, including decryption validation and preventing insecure ciphers, which included null and anonymous — or unsigned — ciphers.
Top-notch security and performance typically come with an expensive price tag. However, the vSRX is competitively priced, with a 1-year TCO-per-protected-Mbps of $56.66. In their report, CyberRatings mentions that cost of labor and OPEX was not included in this calculation, but should be factored in by organizations, pointing directly to management and how cloud network firewalls enhance or detract from the experience of those operating them.
Management & User Experience
CyberRatings used Security Director, Juniper’s unified management portal, to deploy and configure the vSRX. Launched in May 2021, Security Director Cloud provides organizations with cloud-based unified management and offers a seamless way for organizations to extend their Zero Trust policies across new architectures through a single policy framework. CyberRatings gave Juniper an “AAA” rating for Security Director’s management and reporting capabilities, noting that logging was robust and UI navigation was straightforward.
Samantha Madrid, Group VP of Security Business & Strategy at Juniper Networks, said, “Juniper is an undisputed leader in Cloud Network Firewall, and we are incredibly proud of this achievement. Our vSRX not only scored a ‘AAA’ rating, but also received the highest possible results in every category in the CyberRatings test,” “Customers are telling us that in light of on-going geo-political difficulties and economic constraints, 100% security effectiveness coupled with performance that lowers OpEx costs is more important than ever.”
The Juniper vSRX Virtual Firewall offers full next-generation firewall capabilities, including application security, industry-leading IPS, advanced threat prevention and secure connectivity for remote users. It is natively integrated with Juniper Cloud Workload Protection to leverage intelligence from real-time attack prevention, for threats like Log4j, and detect and stop future attacks further upstream in the security stack, extending Juniper’s Connected Security strategy to the cloud.
“The cloud is where organizations continue to invest, and with that continued shift, securing those environments becomes crucial,” said Vikram Phatak, CEO of CyberRatings.org. “We’re thrilled that we can provide the market with reliable testing and objective results, so organizations are equipped with the best possible data to help them make sound security decisions.”
