Having been in the security field for many years, long enough that I’ve seen the firewall be replaced with the “Next Generation Firewall.” What was special about this change was that it signaled a big milestone as we went from a model that focused on IP addresses to one that targeted applications, users and content. This major shift provided a lot more visibility and context on what was being protected. As you move to the cloud, the “Next Generation Firewall” is no longer “Next Generation” but looks like an antique “Grandfather’s Generation,” which will inevitably take on the same fate as, say, the dinosaurs. In the case of the Next Generation Firewall, application visibility provides the ability to do deep packet inspection to identify and inspect applications. The challenge is that in the cloud most traffic is encrypted which means the network has no ability to inspect it. Even if by some miracle you are able to perform a “Man in the Middle” attack to...