March 3, 2026 – With the proliferation of AI technology, the global firewall industry is undergoing profound changes. Attackers are leveraging AI to scale operations: In January, hackers used generative AI to breach over 600 firewall devices across 55 countries in just five weeks, highlighting the persistent risks of weak passwords and exposed management interfaces. Concurrently, a new vulnerability in a major vendor‘s product allowing authentication bypass was actively exploited.

On the defensive side, technology is rapidly advancing. AI and machine learning have become standard embedded capabilities in next-generation firewalls for traffic analysis and anomaly detection. Market focus is shifting from individual devices to "network security policy management" to unify policy governance across zero trust and hybrid cloud environments. Vendors are also expanding firewall applications in industrial control and research sectors by integrating micro-segmentation and AI runtime security.

In the new normal where AI powers both attacks and defense, dynamic and intelligent policy management is becoming a critical cornerstone for building resilient security systems.