IDC Marketscape

The nature of hybrid work and cloud-native applications has added a lot of complexity to deployment models for firewalls, whether they are deployed in the data center, in the cloud, or at the edge. Fortunately, hybrid firewalls have emerged as a flexible solution to this fragmenting of the enterprise perimeter, as they are easily able to integrate with first-party and third-party endpoint, data security, and SASE products.

AHEAD and Cisco bring you IDC’s 2025 Vendor Assessment on enterprise hybrid firewalls to help your organization choose a next-gen firewall that can easily integrate into SASE solutions for long-term network security gains in a Zero trust framework.

No matter which firewall you select, AHEAD’s network practice brings rich experience, progressive networking skill sets, and senior certifications (including 45+ CCIEs) to complex firewall migrations. Our firewall services include:

1. Firewall design and configuration, including security policies site-to-site and remote access VPN, routing, threat defense, URL filtering, and logging destinations aligned to best practices.
2. Migration and cutover during scheduled maintenance windows with coordinated on-site smart hands and remote engineering for efficient, low-risk transitions.
3. Managed firewall operations that leverage AHEAD’s Managed SOC for proactive monitoring, threat hunting, incident triage, and firewall management across your environment.
4. Automation-first approaches via Ansible, Terraform, and Python that accelerates configuration, reduce human error, and support scalable firewall governance.