Recognises applications, not ports200+
Almost everything is HTTPS on 443, so a port-based rule can only permit or deny all of it.
Zedmos NGFW
A next-generation firewall, built and run on your terms
Zedmos NGFW is a complete firewall: our own FreeBSD-based operating system, an inline inspection engine attached straight to the interfaces, and a policy model that decides once per session. Installed from an image onto hardware you choose.
- Firewall platform
- Inspection engine
- Connectivity
- Operations
What Zedmos does to your traffic
The complete firewall, with the same engine and the same policy model as the plugin — on an operating system we maintain, installed from one image.
Is it dangerous?
Threats, blocks and antivirus findings for the same traffic, one tab away — signatures and intelligence applied before the session was allowed to continue.
What is it carrying?
Web requests, DNS queries and TLS sessions of the same flows, each on its own tab — including what was inspected inside an encrypted connection.
What is it?
Each flow carries the application the engine identified and the category it belongs to — classified by what crosses the wire, not by the port it used.
Whose is it?
The device and its category sit on the same row as the flow, with the hardware address beside them, so a policy can name a person or a group instead of an address.
The capabilities it adds
Grouped by the question each one answers. The same set on OPNsense, on pfSense and on Zedmos NGFW — one engine, one policy model, three ways to run it. Each has a fuller technical write-up under Resources.
What is this traffic, really?
TLS inspection, applied selectively
Bump what you choose to; leave banking and health traffic alone by rule.
Client fingerprinting
JA3, JA4 and ALPN identify the software behind a session even when it is not decrypted.
QUIC and HTTP/3
The protocol most of the web moved to, seen and controlled rather than left as a gap.
DNS over TLS and over HTTPS
Encrypted resolution routes around a classic firewall's name-based rules. Not around this one.
Live sessions, with the reason
Every flow on screen as it happens, carrying the decision and what drove it.
Should it be allowed through?
Intrusion detection and prevention
Signatures evaluated inline on the same appliance — a match is a block, not a morning alert.
Threat intelligence, shipped daily26
Indicators gathered and cross-checked, then pushed to every firewall you manage.
Files scanned in flight
Attachments and downloads examined before they land, not after.
Sixteen things a rule can do16
Allow, log, rate-limit, quarantine, reset, drop — and the rest, on both platforms.
What are people typing into AI?
The shadow-AI inventory
Which assistants are in use and by whom — answered without reading a single prompt.
Prompts checked before they leave
Source code, credentials and regulated data caught on the way out, not in a breach report.
The verdict is reached on your premises
Deterministic matchers plus a local model. Sending content away to ask whether it may be sent is a contradiction.
Three postures, one engine
Watch and record; strip the sensitive part and redirect; or block outright. The rule's action verb is the only change.
Every assistant, including yours
ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot, Perplexity, Mistral — and an in-house endpoint you declare yourself.
Is an agent acting on its own?
Who is really at the keyboard
Browser, SDK or script, autonomous agent, MCP client, or none of these — every request is placed in a class before an action is chosen.
Classified from what it sends
The user agent, the shape of the request envelope and the address it is posted to — a raw API endpoint and a chat surface are told apart.
Tool calls are their own decision
A request carrying tool definitions, calls or results is what turns an assistant into something that acts. It can be allowed, recorded or refused on that ground alone.
Unsanctioned providers, reached by script
Programmatic access to a provider nobody approved is its own case, separate from someone opening the same site in a browser.
Marked, not silently dropped
Marking forwards the request and records it with a reason and a sensitivity class on the AI activity page — so a class can be watched for a week before anyone decides to block it.
Is confidential data leaving?
Detectors you switch on deliberately61
Card numbers, secrets, health and financial data, and national identity formats for twenty-two countries.
Uploads and messages both
A file attached to a web form and a paragraph pasted into a chat are the same risk.
A block you can defend
The record names the rule, what was detected and where — without keeping the content itself.
Fail closed where it matters
A control that lets traffic past when it cannot evaluate it is not a control on the path that matters.
Who and what is on the network?
Devices are recognised — and assessed
A managed laptop and a personal phone share a subnet and look identical to an address rule. For an enrolled remote device, your own Intune or CrowdStrike says whether it is healthy.
Users and groups from your directory
Active Directory, Entra ID or SCIM — and, for a remote person, your own OpenID Connect provider at enrolment. An entitlement follows the person, not their DHCP lease.
Quarantine without cutting off
A device restricted to what it needs to be fixed is a device you can still fix.
Policy by zone and schedule
Different rules for a guest network, a server segment, and outside business hours.
Where should it go, and what happened?
Each flow out the right link
Scored on loss, latency and jitter — a link that is up and losing packets is not a healthy link.
Encrypted overlay between sites
WireGuard, OpenVPN or GRE in four shapes — one hub, a hub pair, direct tunnels between spokes, full mesh — provisioned from one topology view rather than hand-built per firewall.
Rules change without a restart
A policy edit takes effect without dropping a packet or interrupting a session.
A feed your SOC already reads
Reports and live sessions on screen, and CEF, LEEF or syslog over TLS to whatever you run.
What is shipping now
Taken from the package repositories rather than typed into this page, so it does not drift the way a hand-written version string does.
- Zedmos for OPNsensePlugin, from the package repository
- 26.10.1_101
- Zedmos for pfSensePlugin, from the package repository
- 26.10.1_101
- Zero Trust ConsoleSelf-hosted, installed by you
- 1.3.0
The console and the firewall are released on their own schedules, so their numbers do not track each other. Which version each of your firewalls is running is in your console.
- 200+
- Protocols classified
- 26
- Threat categories
- 16
- Policy actions
The appliance at a glance
Dashboard · 1 of 11
Load, memory, disk and uptime beside the state of the engine services and the cloud link, with live throughput, a per-interface traffic graph and the top applications, remote hosts and devices.
How it behaves in the path
Inspection that runs on the box
Traffic is classified, inspected and decided on the same appliance that routes it. No packet, no payload and no session record is sent to Zedmos.
One policy model
Applications, categories, domains, users, groups, devices and zones select traffic; sixteen actions decide what happens to it. The same model on both platforms.
Encrypted traffic, handled honestly
TLS inspection with fingerprinting and selective bumping, plus visibility and control over QUIC, DNS-over-TLS and DNS-over-HTTPS.
Your engineers can be certified on it
Four exams with published objectives, a pass mark and a credential that can be verified by anyone holding the number. A partner or an appliance maker can staff a practice on this rather than on one person’s familiarity.
ZCA-101
Zedmos Certified Associate
Fundamentals: what the engine does, where it sits in the network, and the vocabulary the rest of the ladder assumes. Self-paced, and the entry point to every other credential.
60 · 90 min · 70% to pass · 24 months valid
ZCP-201
Zedmos Certified Professional
The working certification: install it, place it correctly, write policy that does what you meant, read the reports, and keep it updated. Assumes hands-on time with a real appliance.
80 · 120 min · 75% to pass · 24 months valid
ZCS-SASE-301
Zedmos Certified Specialist
Multi-site and remote access: overlay design, hub selection, failover behaviour, per-user enrolment and the routing decisions that follow. Assumes ZCP and a working multi-site estate.
60 · 90 min · 78% to pass · 24 months valid
ZCS-MSP-302
Zedmos Certified Specialist
Running many customers from one console: tenancy and access scoping, enrolment at scale, policy templates and the drift they produce, entitlement and billing, and keeping one customer's incident inside one customer's estate. Assumes ZCP and a live multi-tenant deployment.
60 · 90 min · 78% to pass · 24 months valid
Replacing something already in the rack
One page per incumbent, built from that vendor’s own documents and public records — licensing, lifecycle, management, jurisdiction and exploit history, each row with its source.
FortinetFortiGateSophosSophos Firewall (XGS)Palo Alto NetworksPA-Series, PAN-OS, PanoramaSonicWallTZ, NSa, SonicOS, NSMWatchGuardFirebox, Fireware, WatchGuard CloudCisco MerakiMX, Meraki DashboardCheck PointQuantum, Smart-1, Infinity PortalZscalerZero Trust Exchange, ZIA, ZPACato NetworksCato SASE Cloud, SocketsAll comparisons
Read it in full
This page makes the argument. These say how it is actually done, screen by screen and setting by setting.
Engine architecture
The inspection pipeline itself: the fast path, classification, policy evaluation and the transmit layer.
Capability index
Every capability with its own page: how it works, what is under it, and what it is measured at.
Installation guide
From a bare appliance to a running engine, step by step.
Questions and answers
What is Zedmos NGFW?
A complete next-generation firewall: ZedmOS, a FreeBSD-based operating system, the Zedmos inline inspection engine attached directly to the interfaces, and a policy model that decides once per session. It is installed from an image onto x86 hardware you choose.
Does Zedmos NGFW send my traffic to a cloud for inspection?
No. Traffic is classified, inspected and decided on the appliance that routes it. No packet, payload or session record is sent to Zedmos. The console distributes policy and collects records; it is not in the packet path.
Which inspection features does Zedmos NGFW include?
Classification across more than 200 protocols, intrusion detection and prevention reading the Suricata rules format, TLS inspection with JA3/JA4 fingerprinting and selective decryption, control over QUIC, DNS-over-TLS and DNS-over-HTTPS, data loss prevention with 69 detectors, an AI gateway, per-application routing across uplinks, and WireGuard, OpenVPN and GRE overlays. One policy model with 16 actions and 26 threat categories.
How is Zedmos NGFW licensed?
Per firewall, with no hardware in the licence. Three tiers: Free (three firewalls for thirty days), Team (per firewall) and MSP (multi-tenant, unlimited firewalls, billed monthly in arrears). Prices are quoted on request. A lapsed licence makes the console read-only and never stops the firewall.
How does Zedmos compare with Fortinet, Sophos or Palo Alto Networks?
Zedmos is software on hardware you own rather than an appliance with a subscription bundle; management is self-hosted or hosted in Frankfurt rather than in a vendor cloud; the vendor is German and answers under EU law; and the exploit record is published: zero entries in the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalogue. The comparison pages set each vendor's own documents beside Zedmos, with a source for every row.
Can I evaluate Zedmos without replacing my firewall?
Yes. The same engine installs as a package on an OPNsense or pfSense CE box you already run. Existing rules, interfaces, NAT and VPNs are untouched, and it uninstalls from the settings page in one step.
Demo & pricing: info@zedmos.com
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