Analyst Report

NSS Labs Test Results: Versa Is Firewall Performance Leader and One of Only Three Recommended

In case you missed it, CyberRatings.org – affiliated with NSS Labs, which is their testing arm – published their independent test report on Wednesday comparing seven of the leading enterprise firewalls in the market across 55 different security and performance use cases. The numbers in the resulting CyberRatings Q3 2025 Enterprise Firewall Comparative Report – download available here – underscore Versa’s throughput performance lead in the category and the high level of protection offered by the Versa Next-Generation Firewall, which in this testing was deployed on our CSG5200 appliance.

It’s notable that only three of the firewalls tested earned the “Recommended” rating, including Versa – the other ratings given were “Neutral” or “Caution” (see table below). This also marks the ninth year in a row (since inception!) that Versa has earned that “Recommended” rating.

The methodology used is explained in the report, but in general the firewalls were tested using real-world attack scenarios, enterprise-grade workloads, and adversarial evasion techniques to measure their resilience, reliability, and performance. NSS Labs utilized thousands of samples of malware, exploits, evasion techniques, and false positives on products from Check Point, Cisco, Forcepoint, Fortinet, Juniper Networks, Palo Alto Networks, and Versa. The results speak for themselves, with the Versa NGFW achieving excellent scores across multiple categories, including:

• High security effectiveness – an overall Security Effectiveness score of 99.43%, placing it among the leading three vendors.
• Highest false positive accuracy among Recommended products – Versa’s 99.63% performance was the highest among firewalls receiving a Recommended rating.
• Highest throughput performance – Versa’s firewall was more than twice as fast as any other firewall tested under the real-world conditions used in the benchmarking tests.

The test results and overall ratings are summarized in a table on the first page of the report as follows:

Fastest Throughput in Real-World Conditions

Adding a bit more context on the throughput results, Versa’s Next-Gen Firewall was measured at 7,626 Mbps, performing 2x-4x faster than the other Recommended vendors (and even greater multiples against others). Keep in mind that this is under real-world conditions with many security features enabled, including intrusion prevention, logging, and TLS/SSL decryption. Relative to the latter as an example, the report authors explain, “Since approximately 95% of real-world enterprise traffic is encrypted, the NSS Labs Rated Throughput is calculated with a 95% weighting for TLS/SSL encrypted traffic and 5% weighting for plain-text traffic, reflecting the real-world mix observed in enterprise networks.”

Versa Delivers the Best Price for Performance

One thing not directly discussed in the report is the question of price/performance. This is always a difficult question to get one’s arms around, but for organizations evaluating enterprise firewalls, understanding the price/performance relationship is essential because it bridges the gap between technical capability and financial practicality – enterprises must consider how much performance they obtain for their investment. A firewall that offers strong security and high throughput at a lower price per Mbps enables organizations to scale protection cost-effectively, maximize their security ROI, and avoid overpaying for brand or underperforming technology.

So, as an exercise, we’ve taken the table included near the end of the report showing the three-year total cost for each firewall, and divided those figures by the rated throughput results from the tests. Focusing on just the three firewalls that got a “Recommended” rating (ignoring those with low protection rates or problematic false positive accuracy in the tests), we see that Versa delivers the best price performance by several multiples, with a low $7.74 per Mbps, putting the others in the range of 3x-4x higher (rounding down).

Enterprise Firewall	Total Cost (3-Year)	Rated Throughput	Price per Mbps
Versa Networks CSG5200	$59,044	7626	$7.74
Check Point CP-CGS-9300	$41,313	1709	$24.17
Juniper Networks SRX4300	$114,742	3281	$34.97

To dig into the individual test results and findings in detail, download a complimentary copy of the CyberRatings Q3 2025 Enterprise Firewall Comparative Report here. You’ll find an overview of the Versa Next-Generation Firewall here.