Barracuda announces new ‘cloud-generation’ firewalls

Barracuda has expanded public cloud functionality for its Web Application Firewall and NextGen Firewall.

Essentially, what this means is customers can take advantage of utility-based consumption and automated security controls for DevSecOps workflows that provides for an easy migration path to public cloud.

The announcement comes at a good time as earlier this year Barracuda sponsored a survey that revealed more than 40 percent of organisations are currently running a portion of their infrastructure in the public cloud.

Respondents cited easy integration with legacy technology (61 percent), strong protection of applications (54 percent), and strong protection of access to applications in the public cloud (48 percent) as important drivers for their cloud adoption.

It's no surprise that today's organisations are facing an increasingly sophisticated threat landscape with 50 percent reporting being hit with some sort of cyberattack.

Barracuda asserts its new cloud-generation firewalls provide the flexibility to enable customers to cost-effectively deploy security at critical points, including in the cloud, in hybrid or multi-cloud environments, and throughout the development lifecycle.

"Perimeter-based firewalls create tightly-coupled environments that scale vertically, which makes perfect sense on-premises but is entirely the wrong model for the public cloud. This is really about using the right tool for the job," says Tim Jefferson, vice president of public cloud at Barracuda.

"Customers should look to automate the orchestration, deployment and configuration of security architectures that are loosely coupled and scale elastically. In today's hybrid environments, customers need consistent security across on-premises and cloud-based environments—Barracuda cloud-generation firewalls help address this requirement.

Some of the new capabilities include:

• Usage-based billing using the AWS Marketplace Metering Service Billing - Barracuda NextGen Firewall is now available as a metered billing service in the AWS Marketplace, joining the Barracuda Web Application Firewall, which became available with the same service last year.
• DevSecOps with Puppet Labs – The REST API framework can be used to automate the configuration of the Barracuda Web Application Firewall, which now includes Puppet Labs integration within AWS, making it easier for customers to integrate security controls into their cloud native applications on AWS.

"Real-time, proactive security throughout the development process is critical for tighter application security in today's threat environment," says Samm DiStasio, vice president, business development, Puppet.

"Barracuda is our first security partner in public cloud to help us bridge the security gap in DevOps. Our integration with Barracuda Web Application Firewall helps speed up application delivery by automating management of critical security policies."

Barracuda says its cloud-generation firewalls are engineered to provide network and application security for cloud-only and hybrid cloud environments and organisations looking scalability and automation benefits of the public cloud should demand cloud-generation firewall functionality, including:

• Well-architected for the public cloud - gives customers all the benefits of the cloud without compromising their security posture
• Support for cloud-specific use cases - support unique requirements of the cloud including horizontal scalability, distributed policy sets, fully meshed connectivity, and north-south traffic management
• Match Customer's Cloud Consumption Models - licensing that allows customers to deploy security in alignment with their current public cloud consumption model.

"We are using Barracuda firewalls provisioned through the AWS Marketplace to effectively guard our applications against web-based attacks and application-layer attacks," says Max Longin, Founding Partner of Club Automation.

"The Barracuda solution plugs s into our AWS environment, and is doing its job of minimising the attack surface area and helping our customers keep club member cardholder data protected.