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CyberRatings.org Releases 2025 Enterprise Firewall Evaluation Results

Decision Insights Editorial November 12, 2025

CyberRatings.org announced the results of its latest Enterprise Firewall (EFW) evaluation, which was conducted by NSS Labs. The testing results are now available at no cost on CyberRatings.org.

NSS Labs evaluated seven leading Enterprise Firewall products using the Enterprise Firewall Test Methodology v3.0. The tests revealed a performance range for Security Effectiveness from 46.37% to 99.59%.

The firewalls underwent testing under encrypted enterprise-grade workloads, which included 3,326 exploits, 11,311 malware samples, and 5,752 evasion techniques. Testing also involved 6,481 false-positive samples and 55 performance tests, with each firewall required to maintain operational stability throughout these evaluations.

Key Findings

  • Attackers Are Bypassing Defenses: Although average exploit and malware block rates exceeded 96%, three vendors failed critical evasion tests, which lowered their overall effectiveness. Only three of the seven products received a Recommended designation.
  • Evasion Vulnerabilities: Common transport and network-layer evasion techniques were able to bypass multiple widely used firewalls.
  • Encrypted Threats: More than 95% of global web traffic is encrypted, posing challenges for detecting hidden attacks within TLS/SSL sessions.
  • Accuracy Matters: One product demonstrated an 80% false-positive accuracy rate, leading to potential increases in operational costs and decreased trust in security alerts.

“Enterprise Firewalls are constantly evolving to combat new attacker techniques and tools but sometimes that evolution takes a wrong turn,” said Vikram Phatak, CEO of CyberRatings.org. “A vendor can have a near-perfect detection engine, but if attackers can bypass that engine, it gives them a clear path through your defenses.”

NSS Labs served as the Official Testing Partner of CyberRatings, generating the test results and reports for CyberRatings publications. Their tools, including Keysight’s CyPerf, were utilized to assess various functionalities and stability of the Enterprise Firewalls.

The complete Enterprise Firewall Test Reports, Comparative Report, and Security Map are accessible on CyberRatings.org.