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Palo Alto Networks WildFire vs Symantec Advanced Threat Protection comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 1, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

Palo Alto Networks WildFire
Ranking in Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
3rd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
69
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Symantec Advanced Threat Pr...
Ranking in Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
16th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) category, the mindshare of Palo Alto Networks WildFire is 12.5%, up from 12.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Symantec Advanced Threat Protection is 2.0%, down from 2.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Dennis O'Reilly - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides end-to-end antivirus protection and has good stability
Symantec Endpoint Protection provides end-to-end protection. Along with antivirus protection, it has a lot of key areas, including intrusive prevention, firewall features, and application and device control. It can integrate with other Broadcom solutions, such as Symantec Messaging Gateway and Symantec DLP. If you want to send an email, it gets scanned through endpoint protection and DLP. We get all Symantec functionality in a single pane.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Remote access is excellent."
"The most effective feature of WildFire for threat analysis is its collaboration with other security profiles on our Palo Alto firewall."
"I give the initial setup an eight out of ten."
"The scalability is acceptable."
"The most valuable feature of Palo Alto Networks WildFire is its ability to adapt to environments and its robustness."
"It is a stable solution...It is a scalable solution."
"High availability with active-active and active-passive modes."
"The threat intelligence from WildFire supports our proactive defense strategies."
"All of the solution's features are quite valuable for us. We especially like the threat protection it provides."
"The great advantage in using this product is it creates multiple services."
"Currently we have 800-plus nodes connected with this solution, without any issues. The solution is scalable."
"Endpoint to network protects the line."
"They manage to solve detection quite nicely. There is some rather elaborate detection compared to other providers."
"Real-time threat analysis is quick and takes action on threats immediately."
"What I like most about Symantec Advanced Threat Protection is its notification capability."
"Technical support is very responsive. You just have to open a ticket. They respond in a timely manner. Their response is good. I'm satisfied."
 

Cons

"The support is quite difficult to access promptly. I rate it as seven out of ten."
"I think it would be nice for Palo Alto to work without the connection to the cloud. It is 100% powerful when connected to the cloud. But, if you disconnect from the cloud, you only get 40-50% power."
"Palo Alto doesn't do much to support the on-premise version. It wants too much self-support for the on-premise version of WildFire."
"The system uptime data is unavailable"
"It's not really their problem, it's a problem across the board. There will always be problems with interrupted traffic. We have to set it up where we're playing a middle man game where we're stripping it out, looking at it, and then putting it back together and sending it on its way. That requires CPU cycles. And there's some overhead with that."
"The support is good but they could be faster."
"The product fails to offer protection when dealing with high-severity vulnerabilities, making it an area of concern where improvements are required."
"Any enhancements should likely be focused on the firewall appliance to further strengthen overall security capabilities, such as refining app and user identity features."
"The administration interface needs a lot of improvement. It should be UI based, and simple. They need to improve it. It's pretty much not that friendly compared to what we were using as Bitdefender before. It's okay but is improving, actually."
"There are some ‎features that would add value to this product. One of them would be a graphical presentation of threats that the system has encountered."
"An improvement could be made on the reporting because then it would be easier to collect information and submit it for compliance."
"It's a strange situation where the infrastructure of the consumer or customer is behind some kind of firewall and they have always used some kind of customized proxy. In this situation, the ATP has a very tough time to pass the information to the cloud and back. To fix, it requires a more elaborate and complex configuration for that particular case."
"Entire threat protection is not available for the advanced features."
"The cloud platform needs to have improvement in terms of the user interface and the different capabilities it has available. It needs to match the other leading next-gen EDR products that are available in the market. That's the reason why we are stepping away from Symantec. Their cloud environment is just generally lacking in comparison to others."
"It also needs network-based threat protection for shared folders and files."
"It should be able to collect information if the agent is disabled."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We pay between $3,000 and $4,000 CAD ($2,200 - $3,000 USD) per year to maintain this solution."
"​More expensive than other firewalls.​"
"This is an expensive product and the market for Palo Alto in Poland could be much bigger if the pricing was comparable to Fortinet."
"It IS a bit expensive, but I think you get what you pay for. Value is there."
"The price is a bit higher than the other products such as TrendMicro, or FireEye."
"It's comparable to what the competition is. It is probably a little lesser than what the competition is because, as a state government, we go for whatever the lowest cost is."
"The solution is a bit expensive."
"The price of the Palo Alto Networks WildFire license is expensive. When it came time to renew the solution the price doubled."
"Pricing is good. It is nice to have a great product at a fair price."
"Symantec Endpoint Protection has an average price."
"Symantec Advanced Threat Protection's pricing is comparable."
"The pricing of this solution is inexpensive and affordable."
"The price is quite expensive."
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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) solutions are best for your needs.
849,190 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

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…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
9%
Educational Organization
74%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Manufacturing Company
3%
University
2%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

How does Cisco Firepower NGFW Firewall compare with Palo Alto Networks Wildfire?
The Cisco Firepower NGFW Firewall is a very powerful and very complex piece of anti-viral software. When one considers that fact, it is all the more impressive that the setup is a fairly straightf...
Which is better - Wildfire or FortiGate?
FortiGate has a lot going for it and I consider it to be the best, most user-friendly firewall out there. What I like the most about it is that it has an attractive web dashboard with very easy nav...
How does Cisco ASA Firewall compare with Palo Alto's WildFire?
When looking to change our ASA Firewall, we looked into Palo Alto’s WildFire. It works especially in preventing advanced malware and zero-day exploits with real-time intelligence. The sandbox featu...
What do you like most about Symantec Advanced Threat Protection?
Symantec Endpoint Protection provides end-to-end protection. Along with antivirus protection, it has a lot of key areas, including intrusive prevention, firewall features, and application and devic...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Symantec Advanced Threat Protection?
The price is quite expensive because a different entity has taken over the company.
What needs improvement with Symantec Advanced Threat Protection?
One area for improvement could be the pricing model. Future releases could further enhance integration capabilities with other platforms and simplify the licensing model to compete more with Micros...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Novamedia, Nexon Asia Pacific, Lenovo, Samsonite, IOOF, Sinogrid, SanDisk Corporation
ECI
Find out what your peers are saying about Palo Alto Networks WildFire vs. Symantec Advanced Threat Protection and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
849,190 professionals have used our research since 2012.