ATLSECCON 2026

I seek to share observations on what has worked and what has not worked in the 30 years of commercial firewall usage.

This space has changed through four key evolutions which I break out as foundational/ mass market adoption / refinement of functional capability and now modern architecture (including SSE and what Gartner is calling Hybrid Mesh Firewall).

This talk will briefly provide a history of early technology, delve into thematic evolutions of note and will conclude with a summary of the current landscape.

Notable call outs will be what drove evolution/ adoption and further advances.
The talk concludes with why firewalls will or will not remain a cornerstone of our security architectures.