Using a combined fuzzy-AHP and topsis decision model for selecting the best firewall alternative

Covid-۱۹ pandemic forced all the world to make significant changes in their daily routines. As a result, internet and digital technologies started to be used more actively by individuals and businesses. Due to this digitalization, everyone is more open to digital threats. In order to provide the security of the network, firewalls should be used. Firewalls act as a barrier between the internal and the external networks. Thus, it is more important than ever to choose the right firewall for each network. In this study, an integrated Fuzzy-Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and TOPSIS model is introduced to find out the most suitable firewall. A survey is designed and used to generate the data of this study. This study distinguishes from other studies by proposing a solution which ranks the firewall alternatives using a combination of fuzzy-AHP and TOPSIS models. As a result, among the five different firewall alternatives, the second one is found out to be the best. A solution proposal ranking the firewall alternatives is new in the literature. This approach is used in many different Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) problems before but not in firewall selection. Hence, this study can be considered quite innovative in terms of the problem it handles and the model used. It offers a new solution related to a decision making problem that has started to gain more importance with the current digitalization process due to Covid-۱۹ pandemic.