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Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls vs Palo Alto Networks WildFire comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
6.8
Fortinet FortiGate offers favorable ROI with cost savings, efficiency, and ease of deployment, enhancing productivity and reducing ownership costs.
Sentiment score
7.6
Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls offer strong ROI through enhanced security, threat prevention, and operational efficiency despite a high initial cost.
Sentiment score
7.5
Palo Alto Networks WildFire efficiently prevents threats, reduces costs significantly, and integrates seamlessly for comprehensive real-time security.
Clients are now comfortable and not wasting productive hours on IT support.
The automation part is giving us a cost benefit and speed; we can react faster.
It's a very useful tool to mitigate and protect your enterprise.
Their user-friendly interface and Panorama central management, which provides a comprehensive overview, make them an ideal investment.
The solution helped reduce downtime, which is crucial in time-sensitive industries like manufacturing.
The service generates a low rate of false positives, reducing the overhead of managing false positive events.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.7
Fortinet's support is generally responsive and helpful, though some users experience slow response times and complex issues.
Sentiment score
7.4
Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls' support experiences vary, with mixed reviews on responsiveness, expertise, and regional satisfaction influencing customer opinions.
Sentiment score
7.3
Palo Alto Networks WildFire support excels for large companies, with varied quality and responsiveness for others, depending on region.
They offer very accurate solutions.
The quick resolution of issues with Fortinet FortiGate is due to the support of the company and the fact that the equipment is easy to work with.
I would rate the technical support for Fortinet FortiGate a ten out of ten.
Their response time is within one hour.
They offer fast and competent assistance.
They provide fast response and rapid remediation of problems.
There is a lack of SLA adherence, and third-party partners do not provide prompt responses.
The service response times are aligned with standards, responding within a few hours based on the problem's criticality.
The support is quite difficult to access promptly.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.2
Fortinet FortiGate is praised for scalability, effective in both large and small businesses, but hardware scaling can be challenging.
Sentiment score
7.2
Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls are scalable, with mixed reviews on hardware limitations and better scalability through cloud deployments.
Sentiment score
8.2
Palo Alto Networks WildFire excels in adaptability, scalability, and seamless integration, meeting diverse organizational demands and high-performance standards.
They scale up really well from smaller models like the FortiGate 40 and 50 to bigger sites with the FortiGate 100 for more throughput - up to enterprise datacenters.
The variation comes in terms of the interfaces and throughputs, but from a security perspective, you get the same benefit, irrespective of whether you have an entry-level unit or an enterprise.
We determine sizing based on multiple factors: number of users, available links, traffic types, server count, services in use, and whether services will be published.
Cloud deployments benefit from auto-scaling, allowing for automatic adjustments to firewall capacity based on demand.
It is important to assess the infrastructure size before choosing a model.
Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls are scalable and reliable.
Wildfire is highly scalable.
Palo Alto Networks WildFire is scalable, and I give it a nine for scalability.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
Fortinet FortiGate is praised for reliability, with stability enhancements through updates, despite some firmware bugs and performance challenges.
Sentiment score
8.4
Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls are praised for stability, high throughput, and reliability, outperforming competitors like Cisco and Fortinet.
Sentiment score
8.4
Palo Alto Networks WildFire is highly reliable, stable, and efficient, excelling in large-scale deployments and seamless cloud integration.
We're experiencing 99.999% availability consistently.
I would rate the stability of Fortinet FortiGate a ten out of ten.
Currently, we are experiencing a general outage of one of the main internet service providers of the Dominican Republic, and we have not been impacted in our operations because with SD-WAN, we have another internet service provider and we are working with the second WAN connection without any disruption.
With appropriately configured policies, these firewalls can provide robust network security.
After the upgrade, we are experiencing performance issues.
I have not experienced any outages or issues.
 

Room For Improvement

Fortinet FortiGate needs improved stability, intuitive support, cost-effective licensing, and better compatibility with fewer bugs and enhanced reporting.
Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls need better pricing, support, integration, management, documentation, and performance to address user challenges.
Palo Alto Networks WildFire needs improvements in cost, user interface, ease of deployment, integration, detection capabilities, and support efficiency.
Investing in a solution that can accommodate such growth would be more cost-effective than repeatedly purchasing new hardware.
The constant daily revisions necessitate meticulous identification of the relevant documents to prevent the use of outdated information that could jeopardize our environment.
While Fortinet claims to offer a comprehensive network solution, it falls short in addressing computer application issues, particularly server security.
When performance degrades due to full packet inspection, the solution should be to increase the computing power within the same firewall, not to recommend upgrading to a larger, more expensive model.
Further integration into a unified system could improve usability.
Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls lack built-in multi-factor authentication, requiring the purchase of a third-party tool to implement this essential security feature.
The dashboard should provide better visibility, especially in showing how many files are sent to Wildfire and their findings.
The support could be improved, as it takes a while to get assistance from the vendors.
 

Setup Cost

Fortinet FortiGate offers cost-effective enterprise-level features with competitive long-term pricing, affordable licensing, and valuable support packages.
Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls are costly but provide robust security, with pricing based on contract length and features.
Palo Alto Networks WildFire is valued for advanced security despite high costs, preferred by enterprises but challenging for smaller firms.
FortiGate is priced lower than Palo Alto.
Last year, I renewed the support for three years, which can sometimes be expensive but depends on the security benefits and how it helps us.
It is about 20% cheaper.
Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls are expensive.
Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls come at a premium, exceeding the cost of most competitors by 45 percent.
Colleagues looking for the cheapest and fastest firewall can still use Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls because they are affordable.
I would rate it an eight out of ten in terms of affordability.
 

Valuable Features

Fortinet FortiGate is praised for its VPN, firewall, ease of use, cost-effectiveness, and versatile network management features.
Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls provide advanced threat prevention, application control, and integrate various security capabilities into a user-friendly platform.
WildFire offers sandboxing, App-ID, and automation, excelling in threat detection with real-time updates and seamless integration.
In terms of security, we have not experienced any security flaws or loopholes, and it has proven to be quite stable.
FortiGate has helped reduce the risk of cyberattacks that might disrupt our client's production.
These features help reduce our downtime, manage the ISPs, and deploy SLAs for all the website traffic.
The most valuable features of Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls are DNS sync calls, enabled security features, and Wildfire.
Threat Vault allows us access to a comprehensive threat database, enabling us to get detailed information on threats and how to mitigate them.
The most valuable feature of Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is Cortex Data Lake.
Integrating Palo Alto Networks WildFire with various security protocols similar to a firewall has significantly improved the overall threat detection capabilities in our organization.
The most valuable feature of Wildfire is its sandboxing capability for examining suspicious files or locations.
 

Categories and Ranking

Fortinet FortiGate
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
380
Ranking in other categories
Firewalls (2nd), Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (1st), WAN Edge (1st)
Palo Alto Networks NG Firew...
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
194
Ranking in other categories
Firewalls (7th)
Palo Alto Networks WildFire
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
69
Ranking in other categories
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

Firewalls
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
 

Q&A Highlights

it_user728382 - PeerSpot reviewer
Oct 03, 2017
 

Featured Reviews

Vasu Gala - PeerSpot reviewer
A stable solution with an intuitive interface and quick customer service
I have been working with Fortinet FortiGate, WatchGuard, Sophos, and SonicWall. I'm not as comfortable with SonicWall because of their UI and limitations. I prefer Fortinet above all other options. When it comes to configuration, I am confident in my ability to handle various tasks, including creating policies such as firewall rules, web policies, and application policies. Additionally, I can configure VPNs and implement load balancing, among other tasks. Overall, I feel much more comfortable working with Fortinet. Fortinet has made significant improvements by integrating AI with firewalls for threat analysis and prevention. In the past 2-3 years, they have launched FortiSASE and SIEM, and they also provide SOC services. Both Palo Alto and Fortinet FortiGate are excellent. While Fortinet FortiGate comes at higher prices, the functionality and support justify the cost. They promptly resolve firmware issues and inform all support providers about configuration changes.
AmjadKhan1 - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides inline protection with a unified view and anti-spyware capabilities
I would rate Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls ten out of ten because it is the best. Our disaster recovery site utilizes Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls. We are also in the process of upgrading the firewalls at our 365 sites in Pakistan to Palo Alto Networks firewalls. While budget firewalls may advertise comparable features, they often fall short of effectively detecting viruses, threats, and ransomware. In contrast, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, combined with Cortex XDR, provide comprehensive threat intelligence and detection capabilities, ensuring superior security coverage. I recommend conducting a proof of concept before selecting a firewall. This will allow you to evaluate different options and determine which best suits your needs. While Palo Alto offers robust firewall solutions, it's essential to compare them with other vendors to ensure you make an informed decision.
AjayKumar17 - PeerSpot reviewer
Enhanced cybersecurity with advanced sandboxing and effective in controlling DNS issues
Improvements are needed in the UI part. The dashboard should provide better visibility, especially in showing how many files are sent to Wildfire and their findings. This information should be integrated with the Dashboard so that system admins can see what is happening. Furthermore, technical support needs a lot of improvement, particularly in terms of responsiveness and adhering to service level agreements.
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Comparison Review

it_user206346 - PeerSpot reviewer
Mar 11, 2015
Cisco ASA vs. Palo Alto Networks
Cisco ASA vs. Palo Alto: Management Goodies You often have comparisons of both firewalls concerning security components. Of course, a firewall must block attacks, scan for viruses, build VPNs, etc. However, in this post I am discussing the advantages and disadvantages from both vendors concerning…
 

Answers from the Community

it_user728382 - PeerSpot reviewer
Oct 3, 2017
Oct 3, 2017
I’m not an expert on Palo-Alto but what I do know is that they do offer of the top 3 IT security solutions in the world today. Most companies offer a very good firewall solution and one I can recommend is Check Point. Check Points Next generation firewall goes beyond the standard security protocols a lot of us as used to (Anti-Virus. Anti-Bot, URL filtering, Application control etc) and take it...
2 out of 5 answers
it_user263451 - PeerSpot reviewer
Oct 2, 2017
Dears I really have same project and same recommended, my question is: what is impact of NSS Lab in my decision? last report of nss lab, palo alto get 40% of security effectiveness .!!! where is the firewall location ? core,edge.... what is throughput of the firewall after enable URL filtering ? not mention in sheets. what is throughput of the firewall after enable ssl decryption ? best regards
it_user337929 - PeerSpot reviewer
Oct 2, 2017
You can also check http://www.gartner.com, And make sure are you looking for UTM or NGFW
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Educational Organization
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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Also Known As

FortiGate 60b, FortiGate 60c, FortiGate 80c, FortiGate 50b, FortiGate 200b, FortiGate 110c, FortiGate, Fortinet Firewall
Palo Alto NGFW, Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewall
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, IBM, Cisco, Dell, HP, Oracle, Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, Vodafone, Orange, BT Group, Telstra, Deutsche Telekom, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, CenturyLink, NTT Communications, Tata Communications, SoftBank, China Mobile, Singtel, Telus, Rogers Communications, Bell Canada, Telkom Indonesia, Telkom South Africa, Telmex, Telia Company, Telkom Kenya
SkiStar AB, Ada County, Global IT Services PSF, Southern Cross Hospitals, Verge Health, University of Portsmouth, Austrian Airlines, The Heinz Endowments
Novamedia, Nexon Asia Pacific, Lenovo, Samsonite, IOOF, Sinogrid, SanDisk Corporation
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