NSS Labs reports 2026 Cloud Network Firewall test results on Security Effectiveness
7 companies named across 5 categories, one of 42 articles referencing NSS Labs. Previous coverage: NSS Labs appoints Reena Choudhry as go-to-market specialist (Oct 2026).
Companies mentioned
Best suited for
- Seniority
- C Level / Executive Team
- Job function
- Chief Information Security Officer
- Persona
- Security Architect
- Buyer role
- Decision Maker / Budget Holder
- Decision stage
- Which to buy
- Adoption curve
- Early Majority
- Technology maturity
- Market Correction
- Industry
- Information Technology / Cybersecurity / Network Security / Firewalls (NGFW & Hybrid Mesh Firewall)
Our classification, not the publisher's statement. Best suited for, not only for.
NSS Labs’ 2026 Cloud Network Firewall testing found that four specialist network security vendors achieved Security Effectiveness ratings near 99.7% to 99.95%, while native cloud-provider firewalls scored 77.45% for Google Cloud and 0% for both AWS and Microsoft Azure, due to specific inspection and architecture gaps.
Research Overview
The NSS Labs 2026 Cloud Network Firewall test compared cloud network firewall products from multiple security vendors and native offerings from major cloud providers.
The published results report an overall Security Effectiveness rating and separate component outcomes, including capabilities related to routing, TLS, stability, malware and exploit blocking, and evasion resistance.
Key Findings
Four security vendors—Fortinet, HPE Juniper, Palo Alto Networks, and Versa—recorded Security Effectiveness between 99.74% and 99.91%. Check Point scored 99.95%, but was categorized as Neutral due to cost per protected Mbps.
The three native cloud-provider firewalls scored 77.45% for Google Cloud and 0% for both AWS and Microsoft Azure.
Technical Breakdown
The test states that Security Effectiveness is not limited to the percentage of attacks blocked and that routing, TLS functionality, and stability act as multipliers in the calculation.
The result can fall to zero if foundational inspection capabilities fail, and the component results differ across products rather than following a single pattern.
Operational Impact
In the test, AWS recorded 0% for both malware and exploit blocking, producing no prevention effectiveness to preserve. Azure blocked 100% of malware samples and 27.31% of exploits, but did not inspect TLS in the tested configuration, leaving its TLS factor at zero and producing an overall Security Effectiveness score of zero.
Google blocked 100% of malware samples and 99.82% of exploits, with evasion resistance at 55%, which reduced overall Security Effectiveness to 77.45%.
Leadership Perspective
The blog characterizes the findings as evidence that firewall convenience and basic access control do not, by themselves, demonstrate threat-prevention effectiveness. It argues that procurement questions should focus on the job the control must perform, including inspection of encrypted traffic, exploit and malware prevention, and evasion resistance.
The article also notes cost and throughput differences reported in the test, stating that cloud-native convenience does not remove the need to evaluate Security Effectiveness as a separate purchasing criterion.
This Blog Summary is a fact-based summary of the vendor blog.
Blog post, originally published by Bob Walder at nsslabs.com.