We performed a comparison between Cisco Secure Firewall and Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Features: Cisco Secure Firewall is commended for its threat defense, dashboard visibility, seamless integration with other Cisco products, and ease of use. Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls are highly regarded for their embedded machine learning, robust security capabilities, and intuitive interface.
Both the Cisco Secure Firewall and Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls have numerous areas for improvement. The Cisco Secure Firewall needs enhancement in network performance, policy administration, advanced features, management interface, patching and bug fixing, integration with other tools, and centralized management. Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls can improve in terms of customization, next-generation capabilities, rule creation, monitoring interface, bug fixing, configuration simplicity, support processes, ACC tool, IPv6 support, VPN functionality, GUI interface, training materials, SSL inspection, and external dynamic list feature.
Service and Support: Customer opinions on the customer service of Cisco Secure Firewall vary, as some customers appreciate the technical support they receive, while others encounter delays and challenges. Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls also receive mixed reviews for their customer service. While some customers commend the expertise of their support team, others express frustration with contacting the team and enduring lengthy wait times.
Ease of Deployment: The setup process for Cisco Secure Firewall can be more or less complex depending on the user's familiarity and environment. The initial setup for Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is described as simple, uncomplicated, and effortless. Users appreciate its user-friendly and efficient design, with readily available training materials for easy comprehension.
Pricing: Reviewers have differing opinions on the setup cost of Cisco Secure Firewall. Some consider it expensive due to additional expenses for licensing, support, and hardware. Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls are generally acknowledged to have higher pricing. Reviewers note that Palo Alto Networks offers competitive hardware prices and discounts for multi-year licenses.
Comparison Results: Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is the preferred choice when compared to Cisco Secure Firewall. Users find the initial setup of Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls to be straightforward and easy. Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls stands out for its embedded machine learning capabilities, strong security features, and user-friendly interface.
"Its stability is the most valuable."
"The customization potential is quite impressive."
"Our project needs to link two sides through the internet. One of these was in Cairo and the other in another city. We used FortiGate as the integrating solution between the two locations, i.e. the Fortinet 30E & 100E."
"I am "headache free" that I don't have to categorize all the websites and that security has been pre categorized by the people, and that the services are getting updated. At least one part of my problem is over."
"We are using the FortiGate 100D series. VPN, firewall, anti-malware, OTM, and intrusion prevention are useful features."
"Some of the valuable features are the firewall, IPS, web filter, and gateway capabilities. Additionally, it is easy to use and flexible."
"The reporting you receive out of this appliance is excellent. You will not need an external management system."
"Mainly the FortiGate reporting system is very good. It guides us through all the expectations of security. Fortinet provides us all that we need for security. Also, Fortinet FortiGate is a next-generation firewall. It is much more advanced than others."
"Cisco ASA has an okay CLI with a nice GUI."
"The user interface, the UI, is excellent on the solution."
"Integration with all the other Cisco tools is valuable."
"I work with Cisco and other partners, but the Cisco team is the best team in our country. When I call them, they always help us."
"There are no issues that we are aware of. It does its job silently in the background."
"I think that the firewall feature is the most valuable to me as it is one of the oldest features for this solution. We also appreciate how stable the VPN is."
"The stability of the solution is very good. We can see that it gets even better with every release."
"Cisco Secure Firewall improved our organization. We have it in every one of our French offices."
"Application layer firewalling has been the most valuable feature because it gives thousands of application IDs that we can use to control traffic into and out of our environment. The second most important feature has been the GlobalProtect VPN feature."
"The best feature is the packet inspection; compared to solutions like Cisco and FortiGate, Palo Alto's packet inspection is much less CPU intensive, allowing it to detect threats embedded within packages more quickly and efficiently."
"Comments have some delay, but overall, it's a good product."
"In general, its performance and ease of use are the most valuable. Its performance is good, stable, and reliable. The user interface is friendly and easy to use. Customers find it easy to work with and easy to learn."
"Security is the biggest thing nowadays, including threat response, incident response, and root cause. We found that a lot of the logging and dashboard capabilities offered by Palo Alto fill the missing skill gap that you run up against. It makes it easier for our tier-two staff to get involved in some of the deeper root cause analysis. The dashboards, logs, and reports make it easier for our staff to dive right in and not get lost in what tools they should use. It's easy because they're all right there."
"One of the simple features I like about Palo Alto firewalls is that it's extremely easy to find out what's happening in the network. The reporting is phenomenal, and it's easy to find which threats have been detected and what traffic is going through the box. When a customer notices something is wrong, you can quickly check the amount of traffic going through the firewall around that time. If there is anything out of the ordinary, you can decide it needs to be investigated further."
"I like the sandbox feature, and it's very good. It kills each malware deployment in the sense of signatures within five minutes. So, we can secure our network and infrastructure very well within the stipulated time. The WildFire functionality is very good because a few files are also getting blocked. It's critical as malware attacks are also getting ignored, and the logging is very well maintained in this firewall. The most valuable solutions in this field are application-based firewalls. That is the main criteria of the firewall and functionality. We can get all the logs related to this and each and every packet. I like that the firewall is working as an application. The application-based entity we have deployed is well maintained and working very well. We were able to find lots of vulnerabilities when we deployed it, but we could not disclose all. But there were vulnerabilities we could block by updating the firewall and taking actions on clientside machines. So, we got to know that we have lots of vulnerabilities inside the organization too, and we took lots of steps and resolved the number of vulnerabilities. Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is an all-in-one solution. It provides every entity log, which is a very good functionality of this firewall. It gives every packet and aspect that the firewall is performing through its logs, and it does it very well. This firewall's unified platform helped eliminate multiple network security tools. If anyone uses P2P sites, cryptocurrency websites, or any illegal sites, we can block it easily. It gives us a proper alert for these kinds of sites, and it properly secures our network. Monitoring is the best thing we are doing here, and we can block this kind of vulnerability as soon as it comes to us."
"I like all the threat alerts and WildFire. I also like scanning because everything that comes into our network via customers is scanned. We're an electric company, so every one of the bills is scanned and emailed in and out of our network."
"From a reporting perspective, there's room for improvement. They're providing FortiAnalyzer through which one can get some enhancements, but the visibility and reporting still need slight improvement."
"We sometimes have issues with FortiGate's routing table in the latest firmware update. We had to downgrade the device because our customers complained about bugs."
"There are some cloud-based features that could be much more flexible than they currently are."
"The customization could be improved. Cisco, for example, is much better at this. They need to work to be at least as good as they are."
"Fortinet FortiGate is a firewall solution and once it's deployed, you can rest assured that your system is secure."
"I would like to see improvements in the product's application rules."
"The feature which gives us a lot of pain is ASIC architecture."
"A couple of things I've seen that need improvement, especially in terms of a hard coding. The driver-level active moment really is out-of-the-box and we have to have contact the customer support and sometimes it is difficult to resolve."
"The phishing emails could be improved."
"The solution needs to have better logging features."
"Most of the time, when I try to run Java, it is not compatible with ASA's current operating systems."
"The solution has not had any layer upgrades. It does not have layer five and upwards, it only has up to layer four. This has caused some problems for us."
"ASDM needs to be able to customize applets."
"Cisco missed the mark with all the configuration steps. They are a pain and, when doing them, it looks as if we're using a very old technology — yet the technology itself is not old, it's very good. But the front-end configuration is very tough."
"The inclusion of an autofill feature would improve the ease of commands."
"The one thing that the ASAs don't have is a central management point. We have a lot of our environments on FTD right now. So, we are using a Firewall Management Center (FMC) to manage all those. The ASAs don't really have that, but they are easy to use if you physically go into them and manage them."
"The pricing could be improved upon."
"Its price can be better. They should also provide some more examples of configurations online."
"I think visibility can be improved."
"Customers don't want to buy extra things for extra capabilities"
"Currently, they don't have email protection. They can maybe add it in the future. Currently, if you want to do so, you need to go with another solution."
"I'm thinking about a new feature. They have decryption. It's a good idea to use decryption on Palo Alto. It would be good if they had offloading of the traffic, and if they could decrypt the traffic and offload it. Like, for example, ASM on our site. We have an SSL decryption to offload the traffic. We could use that on Palo Alto."
"Personally, I feel that their dashboards for reporting and things like that need some improvement."
"In the cloud, the HA could be a lot better. Its price could also be better. It is very expensive."
More Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls Pricing and Cost Advice →
Cisco Secure Firewall is ranked 4th in Firewalls with 404 reviews while Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is ranked 6th in Firewalls with 162 reviews. Cisco Secure Firewall is rated 8.2, while Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Cisco Secure Firewall writes "Highlights and helps us catch Zero-day vulnerabilities traveling across our network". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls writes "We get reports back from WildFire on a minute-by-minute basis". Cisco Secure Firewall is most compared with Palo Alto Networks WildFire, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX, Sophos XG and Juniper SRX Series Firewall, whereas Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is most compared with Check Point NGFW, Azure Firewall, Meraki MX, Sophos XG and OPNsense. See our Cisco Secure Firewall vs. Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls report.
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Pricewise Cisco. But PA has better rating.
Palo Alto is better.
In my Oppinion, Palo Alto is better than Cisco. You can refer in NSS Lab 2018 & 2019 DCSG-SVM, NSS-labs-NGIPS-Comparative-Report, and some report from Forester about Zero Trust Architecture, and Gartner SASE report to discus more advantages of Palo Alto in the future