Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls Reviews

The solution has many great features. I don't know if there's one single one that stands above and beyond everything, however.

The application visibility is excellent. There is no other solution that does it quite as well. Palo Alto definitely has an edge in that sense.

The ability of the security features to adapt is also very good. They offer great DNS protection.

They include everything from a network point of view and a security perspective. For the most part, the endpoints are great.

The interface and dashboards are good.

The GSW needs some improvements right now.

The endpoints could use improvement. The solution is mostly a cloud solution now, and there are a lot of competing solutions that are playing in the space and may be doing things a bit better.

The pricing could be improved upon.

We've been dealing with the solution for the last four or five years at least.

The stability of the solution is good. It's quite reliable. I haven't experienced bugs or glitches that affect its performance. It doesn't crash.

If you size everything appropriately, you shouldn't have any issues with scaling. It's quite good. Users can scale it up if they need to.

I'd say that technical support is excellent. They are very helpful. We've quite satisfied with the level of support we got from the company.

I've never dealt with Huawei, however, our company has worked with Cisco, Dell, and HP among other solutions.

The pricing of the solution is quite high. It's too expensive, considering there's so much competition in the space.

There aren't extra costs on top of the standard licensing policy. Still, Palo Alto seems to be adding some premium costs that competitors just don't have.

While we mainly deal with on-premises deployment models, occasionally we also do hybrid deployments.

We're not a customer. We're a systems integrator. We're a reseller. We sell solutions to our clients.

Palo Alto is very good at policymaking. It's like they have a single policy that you can use. Other solutions don't have single policy use, which means you have to configure everything. There may be many consoles or many tasks that you'll have to worry about other solutions. Multiple task configuration should not be there, and yet, for many companies, it is. This isn't the case with Palo Alto. Palo Alto is easy compared to Fortinet. 

It's overall a very solid solution. I would rate it nine out of ten.

We use this solution to block malicious or suspicious activity by creating policies that define which action should be blocked or allowed.

The firewall is a security device. We use this solution to create policies like ISPs for a specific purpose. We only allow the policies for a particular application, so this is a way for the firewall to secure an unwanted connection.

The most valuable feature is the ability to deeply analyze the connection or connection type.

Overall it is good. It is reliable and easy to understand. However, the monitoring feature could be improved.

They have many solutions already. I don't think I have seen any missing features. Every device has different functions, but as a firewall, this solution has a lot.

Stability is good.

There are no scalability issues to date.

We have about 2,500 users behind the firewall using this solution. I think we don't have any requirement to increase usage. Currently, we have around 2,500 users, but if this increases, we may need a new requirement.

We hired one or two people to maintain the solution.

Technical support is good. Once you call up with your issue, it takes around one or two hours for them to contact and give you a solution accordingly.

We were using Cisco ASA. We switched because of legal reasons and difficulty to understand. That's why they had decided to change to Firewall.

It is very easy to use. It's straightforward, easy to understand, and easy to configure.

Deployment time depends on your requirements. If you talk about the system requirements, it hardly takes up to 15 or 20 minutes for the configuration.

That said, it totally depends on your requirements: What kind of policy you require that supports what kind of block, etc.

The deployment time would change based on these requirements, but the system configuration: accessing the internet and creating policies hardly takes 20 minutes.

Deployment is configured by administrators, so if we have any kind of issue in policies or any confusion, we get tech support.

Pricing is yearly, but it depends. You could pay on a yearly basis or every three years.

If you want to add a device or two, there would be an additional cost. Also, if you want to do an assessment or another similar add-on you have to pay accordingly for the additional service.

We also evaluated Check Point and Fortinet solutions.

This solution is easy to understand, reliable, and user-friendly.

I would rate this solution as eight out of ten.

We plan to continue using this solution. Within our organization, there are roughly 1,000 employees using this solution.

We chose Palo Alto for its security features. It's quite nice. It's very user-friendly, powerful, and there are barely any bugs. 

We have been using this solution for roughly two years.

This solution is very stable.

The scalability of the firewalls could be improved. You can't scale the physical firewalls because Palo Alto doesn't support clustering. 

The support could be improved. They could be faster.

They have a multi-layer model of support. If we're experiencing any issues, we have to go to our local partner. If our local partner can't help, then we have to go through a distribution layer that's certified from Palo Alto. If our issues can't be fixed, they will escalate them to the vendor. This can be quite annoying, to be honest.

With Cisco, for example, you can open a ticket directly with the vendors themselves, and they can escalate it internally, which is much faster.

We used to use Juniper Firewalls.

The initial setup is quite straightforward. 

We deployed this solution with some help from our local partners. Overall, deployment took a couple of days. A team of three deployed this solution.

This solution is quite expensive.

I would absolutely recommend this solution to others. Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give this solution a rating of nine.

In manufacture, we use this solution as a firewall and an internal gateway. Additionally, we use it for traffic control which keeps strategic traffic separate from production traffic.

The technology's very good. We have had a lot of good experience with this solution. We have done a lot of implementation for our clients and we have not had a lot of problems with this solution.

For an upcoming release, they could improve on the way to build security rules per user. Palo Alto has this functionality but in implementation, we had some problem. This functionality should be better in our opinion.

I have been using the solution for more than seven years.

In my experience, the stability is very good. 

We have more than 700 people using the solution in my company.

We have had a good experience with technical support.

We have used FortiGate in the past and we prefer this one.

The setup was complex.

Depending on the project, specific environment, and performance the deployment could take some time.

With the licensing we pay for it annually, the price could be cheaper.

If someone looking for stability and the leader in next-generation firewall technology, I would choose this solution.

I would recommend this solution to others.

I rate Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls a ten out of ten.

We mainly use it for perimeter protection between the internet and the local network. We are using it for application control. We exploit the applications with some policies about how the network traffic is going to be from the local LAN to the external network and vice versa. We are protecting our network from outsiders and stopping them from getting into the network.

I love the Policy Optimizer feature. I am also completely happy with its stability.

Its reporting can definitely be improved. I would like to have better graphical dashboards and more widgets for more clarity in the reporting area. In a third-generation firewall, you can generate some dashboards. It provides the information that we need, but from the C-level or a higher-level perspective, it is kind of rough and incomplete.

Its data loss prevention (DLP) feature is not good enough. Currently, this feature is very basic and not suitable for enterprises. It would be nice if they can include a better DLP feature like Fortinet.

We would like to have a local depot of Palo Alto in Latin America. Competitors such as Cisco and Check Point have a local depot here. If there is an issue with their hardware, you can go to the depot, and in about four hours, you can get a replacement device, but that's not the case with Palo Alto Networks because we need to import from Miami. It takes about two to three weeks.

I have been using this solution for about three years.

I am completely happy with its stability. I have no issues with its stability.

I don't need more scalability. I can use the new features without changing the hardware. The features are completely inside the hardware, so I have no issue with the scalability. Most of our customers are big businesses.

I didn't have a very complex call with their technical support.

It depends. It can be complex when we are replacing a solution with Palo Alto Networks and the customer doesn't know how the policy is going to be implemented in the solution. If that is not the case and it is a clean installation, it is very straightforward. It is not at all complex.

The deployment generally takes a whole week. This includes the planning stage and doing the initial setup. It takes about two days to set up a device, power it on, and turn on the policies.

It is an expensive solution.

Our clients compare it with Check Point. Palo Alto Network has the application granularity. It enables you to handle the applications, policies, and Policy Optimizer. There is no need for splitting the management plane and the processing plane. In Check Point, you need two devices. You need one device for the management and one for the gateway. Palo Alto has both in one, which is a good feature.

Check Point is a kind of cheaper solution, and we can deploy that application on open servers. The open servers option in Check Point has a huge cost-saving. In terms of performance, I will always choose Palo Alto Network because its IPS feature is superior to Check Point. It is much better than Check Point.

First of all, I would say that the engineer who is going to deploy the solution has to know how the network policy is going to be introduced into the firewall. It is very important for deployment because it is a new concept that Palo Alto introduced in the market. The second thing is to know the policies, not on the layer-4 basis, but in terms of policies, such as SMB, DSTP, and other such things.

I would rate Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls a nine out of ten.

Our solution is now based on clustering and load balancing. We can add more nodes to our environment to accommodate the new load within our company.

We have about 2,000 to 2,300 users on Palo Alto NG firewall support.

Palo Alto has a line of products for different customers. If you do the sizing it from the beginning, considering that you are a growing company, it is fine.

You need to plan for the future, which means that you have to pay in advance through investment. With Palo Alto NG Firewalls, the cost will be higher.

We would like to have the processing power to be enhanced with every new CPU so that we are getting more cores. Palo Alto is incorporating this. 

We are requesting now a new firewall that will come in with higher power, i.e. the 5220.

I found Palo Alto NG firewalls more intuitive compared to other products. I value the capability to identify a cloud solution.

Palo Alto has a good product and end-user experience. It's great. They can maybe add more processing power to their hardware. That's it. 

Sometimes it's stuck and you need to restart it. They have been adding a lot of things, so we need to upgrade for the new features.

Palo Alto NG is a stable product as long as it's working. It does what it expected to do. But sometimes for some reason the hardware resources spike, so it stops responding. 

The only fix is to restart the firewall,i.e. a  hardware restart. This is one of the issues. It's not related to the software because of the troubleshooting that we did. 

It's about resource consumption. Some hardware and software issues Palo Alto needs to work on. They released their Palo Alto Operating System which enhanced their product suite.

The scalability compared to other products is not good. You need to change the box whenever you want your number of connection sessions to increase. 

You can't just upgrade the parts with a software key or with adding additional hardware. You need to replace the entire box. It's not scalable. 

The solution's technical support is responsive. They are good.

We previously used a different solution that was Fortinet. I'm still using it. There's another area in the network where we use Fortinet.

We shifted from Fortinet to Palo Alto. It's just mapping the network from the available firewall to another firewall. It wasn't complex. 

Between deployment and stabilization, the product was completed in two weeks, i.e. 10 working days.

One of my team did the installation under my supervision.

You have to do proper network design from the beginning. You have to look into future expansion. Otherwise, after a year, you have to replace the entire box.

On a scale from 1 to 10, I would rate this product a seven because the point of scalability within their product is a big issue. 

If you have to put a huge investment in front to accommodate future expansion, it is fine. 

It requires forecasting. If your forecast is not correct and you are not growing to that point, then all your investments will be a waste. 

If you're adding a block so that it can accommodate your user traffic demand, then that would be perfect. 

I buy one block at a time now. I can't buy two blocks at the same time. That's a waste of money with Palo Alto NG firewalls.

It is our main firewall. It has performed well. It meets our expectations.

It has the typical features of a next-generation firewall. It can do application control, antivirus, content filtering, etc. And in terms of performance, the value for money of the model that we bought is sufficient for our size.

I would like to see more in terms of reporting tools and the threat analysis capabilities.

It's very stable.

For our current size and our projected growth, it is sufficient. We are expecting to grow to about 1000 users. This is the type of bandwidth we need, based on our typical usage. The specific model we bought can scale up to that number. We built in that room for growth.

In addition, we can expand the scope not just as a firewall but also by doing some sandboxing and through integration with endpoint security solutions.

I don't believe we have used any support directly from Palo Alto itself because we bought it through a local reseller. We engaged them to help us configure it and to put up some of the firewall rules that we need. So we work with a local vendor.

We had another box before and it wasn't a next-generation firewall. We needed to change to a next-generation firewall so we compared a few of the top players in the market and Palo Alto was the right one, in terms of the features that we need.

We were using an outdated firewall and, because of the growing threats, things were getting through. We were not able to filter some of the traffic the way we wanted. It was high time that we went with a next-generation firewall.

In terms of a vendor, in my case, I was referred to the local vendor, the one that we would be deploying and working with on the implementation. We definitely look for the competency, their knowledge of the subject matter, in this case, firewall technology, networks, etc., and their knowledge of the product. And, of course, the other factor is their commitment and their value-added solutions because sometimes we need them to go beyond to address a certain problem that we may have.

I don't think setup is that complicated. There was just a bit of a learning curve because none of us had any experience with Palo Alto. But we know firewalls and it worked. It wasn't that difficult.

We called in proposals for different products, bigger players, like Check Point, Fortinet, Cisco. We set the criteria we need and had them make proposals. We found, based on the submissions, that Palo Alto seemed to be the one that had the most complete solution. We did a proof of concept to prove that whatever they said they can do, they can do. Once we passed that stage we proceeded with the purchase of the Palo Alto unit.

It came down to the technical evaluation we did. They did well in terms of performance. In addition, we liked the support terms that were proposed by the reseller. We also looked at certifications and reviews, at the NSS Labs reports, and other industry ratings. Palo Alto seemed to be up there. Also, looking toward the future, we can actually subscribe to sandboxing services in the cloud. There are also options for us to integrate with endpoint security solutions.

List your requirements, give them the proper weighting, and look at what future options are available if you stick with the solution. Then do your evaluation. And don't forget the vendor, the local support, their competency and their commitment. You can have the best product in the world but if you don't get the right person to support you, it's a waste. You would probably better off with a second- or a third-tier product if you have an excellent, competent, and committed vendor to support you.

I would rate Palo Alto at eight out of 10 because of the performance, the security features, and policy management, the reporting capabilities, and the optional upgrades or extensions that we can do, like sandboxing. It also offers an option for our integration with our endpoint security.

We are going to revamp our endpoint security architecture. One of the options we're looking at is how we can integrate that with solutions from Palo Alto, because then we can have a more consolidated view, instead of using a third-party solution as the endpoint security. Finally, the local support is important.

An NG firewall provides an additional level of network security and vigilance. It also helps us manage activities using privileges and a zero-trust approach. 

I like the firewall's vulnerability management features, which give you reminders to update your system and update your OS. Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls provide a unified platform that integrates all security capabilities. It provides pretty good consistency across locations. 

The built-in machine learning features provide some automation, but I think there should be an option for manual review because nothing replaces the human eye. 

We have used NG Firewalls for a little more than a year and a half. 

Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls are pretty stable. 

Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls scale up enough for my workplace. Beyond that, I could not say.