Given the increasing cyberattacks, including an incident involving an IT service provider resulting in the closure of a supermarket chain in Sweden, and another attack on a dairy producer in Salzburg that paralyzed the entire IT infrastructure and production facilities, the question arises about the security and reliability of firewall solutions in companies. In this context, the research question was formulated: "Which firewall solution among manufacturers Claroty, Checkpoint, Palo Alto, Fortinet, and Barracuda best meets the requirements of Cancom Austria AG in terms of security, scalability, integration, adaptability, performance, logging and monitoring, as well as support and maintenance?"
The security requirement involves protecting the network from cyberattacks through robust security mechanisms such as intrusion detection, encryption, and content filtering. Integration refers to how well the firewall collaborates with existing IT and OT systems.
To answer this question, the Weighted Scoring Model was chosen as the method, as it allows for a comprehensive evaluation of various criteria. It was found that the hypothesis that Claroty's firewall solution best meets the requirements of Cancom Austria AG was refuted. Indeed, after applying the Weighted Scoring, the Fortinet firewall proved to be the optimal solution, best meeting the requirements of Cancom Austria AG in terms of security, scalability, integration, adaptability, performance, logging and monitoring, as well as support and maintenance.