Firewalls are one of the best methods for identifying and stopping cyberattacks, including advanced threats like malware, ransomware and encrypted threats.

But firewalls must be regularly updated to keep pace with the fast-moving cyber arms race. Explore the top 10 reasons to upgrade to the latest SonicWall TZ next-generation firewall to save costs, increase speeds, boost performance and productivity, and mitigate the most advanced cyberattacks.

Stop the Most Advanced Threats

Advanced cyber threats are on the rise and affect all businesses and organizations. The cloud-based, multi-engine SonicWall Capture Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) sandbox service provides high security effectiveness against advanced persistent threats and new attacks, including ‘never-before-seen’ ransomware, malware and side-channel attacks. Each day, Capture ATP subscribers discover and stop over 1,000 new attacks each business day.

Why upgrade: SonicWall Capture ATP is only available for SOHO 250, TZ350, TZ400 and above firewalls, as well as the NSa and NSsp line. This service is not available for legacy firewalls, including TZ105, TZ205 and TZ215 firewalls.

Inspect More Encrypted Traffic without Slowing Performance

Never be forced to choose between performance and security. With the increased network bandwidth requirements from SaaS apps, video streaming and social media, firewalls with faster deep packet inspection (DPI) better secure networks without performance degradation.

In fact, through the first three quarters of 2019, SonicWall registered 3.1 million encrypted attacks. This marked a 58% year-over-year increase from 2018.

Simply, faster DPI performance provides organizations with a greater capacity to utilize higher internet speeds and support more concurrent users — all without sacrificing security.

Why upgrade: SonicWall TZ350 and TZ400 firewalls offer significantly faster DPI performance than the TZ 105 (up to 24x), TZ 205 (up to 15x) and TZ 215 (up to 10x).

Inspect Encrypted Traffic without Increasing Costs

The vast majority of web traffic is now encrypted. And without the proper security controls in place, traffic encrypted by TLS/SSL standards provides cybercriminals a backdoor to your network.

That’s why deep packet inspection of encrypted traffic (DPI for TLS/SSL) is mandatory for businesses of all sizes. Unfortunately, some firewall vendors upcharge you for proper TLS/SSL inspection capabilities (or don’t offer it at all).

Why upgrade: SonicWall TZ350 and TZ400 firewalls include the DPI-SSL license (by default) to inspect encrypted traffic at no additional cost, thereby reducing capital expense. Unfortunately, the TZ105, TZ205 and TZ215 do not support inspection of encrypted traffic.

Secure Growing Remote Workforce

Modern-day mobility and BYOD require companies to provide employees with secure access to data — anytime and anywhere. A larger number of secure VPN connections is essential to support the increasing number of remote users. But based on the firewall(s) you have deployed, you may have a limit on how many remote employees you can protect at a single time.

Why upgrade: The latest SonicWall TZ400 firewall supports 10 times the number of SSL-VPN clients as the TZ 205 and TZ 215 (100 vs. 10). The TZ350 firewall enables 7.5 times as many SSL-VPN clients as the TZ 205 and TZ 215 (75 vs. 10).

Support Faster Wi-Fi Speeds

The world is wireless. Wi-Fi speeds — and users’ appetite for connectivity — are increasing exponentially. The 802.11ac wireless standard delivers the performance, range and reliability of high-speed wireless technology for an enhanced user experience. But in a properly secured environment, they must be paired with a firewall that can support 802.11ac wireless standards.

Why upgrade: The SonicWall TZ350 and TZ400 firewalls support the 802.11ac wireless standard as well as SonicWave 802.11ac Wave 2 access points for high-speed wireless networking. Unfortunately, the legacy TZ105, TZ205 and TZ215 firewalls only support the slower legacy 802.11n wireless standard and do not work with the latest SonicWave wireless access points.

Reduce Support Costs

Single sign-on (SSO) technology helps improves employee productivity and reduce IT support costs by enabling users to safely gain access to connected systems with a single ID and password. Simply, the more users can access with a single ID, fewer support calls, IT tickets and complaints will be generated. This equals real savings to your organization.

Why upgrade: The SonicWall TZ350 and TZ400 firewalls enable twice the population of users (500 vs. 250) to benefit from the use of single sign-on.

Protect More Concurrent Users

There should rarely be a limit on how many users you are able to protect. A higher number of concurrent connections provides greater scalability by enabling more simultaneous user sessions to be active and protected by the firewall.

Why upgrade: The newest SonicWall TZ350 and TZ400 firewalls enable a much larger number of concurrent connections per second, plus deep packet inspection of TLS/SSL-encrypted connections, compared to the TZ105, TZ205 and TZ215.

Increase Speed to Keep Pace with Threat Processing

Modern cybersecurity requires firewalls that can manage network traffic quicker to deliver the high performance needed for modern-day threat processing. Legacy firewalls can’t process as much traffic volume, sometimes hindering performance and efficiency. This can lead businesses not getting the full use out of their promised internet speeds.

Why upgrade: The SonicWall TZ400 firewall, for example, has double the number of security processors as the TZ205 and TZ215 (4 vs. 2). In addition, TZ350 and TZ400 have higher speed processors (1.2 GHz and 800 MHz, respectively), compared with 400/500 MHz processors in the previous TZ205 and TZ215 firewalls. These speed boosts keep your business humming and safe from modern threats.

Boost Memory for Added Users, Logs & Policies

The number of users who require security on your network grows by the day. Unfortunately, the on-board memory of legacy firewalls can only support a finite footprint of users on the network. Advanced firewalls offer more onboard memory to allow for more rules and policies, users and log messages to be stored on the firewall, making reporting easily accessible.

Why upgrade: The SonicWall TZ350 and TZ400 firewalls have up to four times the onboard memory of the TZ205 and TZ215 (1 GB vs. 256 MB/512 MB). This increased capacity empowers organizations to use a single TZ firewall to protect a larger userbase with deeper and more robust rules and policies.

Boost Performance, Security with Additional VLANs

Creating a greater number of virtual local area networks (VLAN) enables organizations to segment users and devices into additional groups, improving performance and security while reducing hardware costs. The ability to scale these VLANs depends on a number of factors, most notably how many may be protected by a firewall.

Why upgrade: The SonicWall TZ400 firewall provides the ability to create up to five times the number of VLANs as the TZ 205 and TZ 215 (50 vs. 10/20). The TZ350 firewall enables the creation of 2.5 times more VLANs than the TZ 205 (25 vs. 10).

About SonicWall TZ Next-Generation Firewalls

Get high-speed threat prevention in a flexible, integrated security solution with the SonicWall TZ Series. Designed for small networks and distributed enterprises with remote and branch locations, SonicWall TZ next-generation firewalls offer five different models that can be tuned to meet your specific needs.

Advanced networking and management features, such as Secure SD-WAN and Zero-Touch Deployment, make it easy to bring up new sites as you need. Add optional capabilities, including PoE/PoE+ support and 802.11ac Wi-Fi, to create a unified security solution that protects your network and data from the latest threats over wired and wireless connections.