Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls Reviews

We use Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls as internet firewalls, LAN or WAN firewalls, as well as data center firewalls.

When you apply App-ID and User-ID and Content-ID, you will protect your environment more than with any other firewall. That's because Palo Alto is a leader in App-ID. They invented it. It knows the application and who's communicating with it, and how it is used inside a network. If you use Palo Alto as your internet firewall, for example, when your employee accesses the internet, you will determine which applications he's communicating with, including which ports and the behavior of the user. That helps protect your environment.

The Palo Alto NG Firewalls unified platform has helped to eliminate security holes in our customers' environments. When you have multiple firewalls from Palo Alto to protect more than one segment, such as the LAN, WAN, internet, and data center segments, you can manage all of these from a single point with Palo Alto Panorama. It makes it easy to configure and monitor all of these segments.

The most valuable features are the power of the threat prevention and the WildFire service. Its strength comes from the huge number of sensors all over the world. The firewalls have a rich library of signatures.

Also, the new generation of Palo Alto firewalls includes machine learning embedded in the hardware itself and that is effective in the new era of attacks. Nowadays, we don't know the behavior of the attacks, so we need a product to learn along with us: How an attack will affect us and how the attack will enter a corporate environment. That's why the machine learning aspect is important.

They also provide a unified platform that natively integrates all security capabilities. You can configure or change anything in the firewall itself from the management console, and there is a separate console for managing all the firewalls you have, called Panorama. It's a very good central manager. I like Panorama. It is the most powerful and capable central manager of firewalls. It gives you very rich information about your environment, and what is moving inside it. It helps you to configure it easily.

It's also important that the NSS Labs test report from July 2019 about Palo Alto's NG Firewalls showed that 100 percent of the evasions were blocked. NSS Labs is the most accurate public report that all my customers want to see. All my customers ask about NSS Labs and where Palo Alto is positioned in their reports. To position Palo Alto, I will show my customer the NSS Lab report. It's the most important report.

In addition, in the last two series, Palo Alto separated the engines. That means you will not face any issue with the performance or the firewalls. There is an engine for performance, an engine for the IPS, and another engine for other features. There isn't only a single engine responsible for all these features.

The IoT could be better. IoT environments will be part of IT and measuring these zones will make your IT environment more resistant to attacks. You need a powerful firewall to secure the IoT segment, the same way that Palo Alto Firewalls do for the IT segment.

Also, if you enable SSL you will face a problem. The throughput of the firewall will be degraded. SSL is a big issue on all firewalls. All products suffer from issues with SSL, but Palo Alto firewalls suffer more from it.

I have been using Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls for at least four years, but for my company it has been almost 10 years.

I have worked with many Palo Alto models, including the PA-3000 Series, the new PA-3020 Series, and the new-generation PA-3400. I have worked with the PA-800 Series and the 5K as well.

Our company provides services for the whole cycle, from design and sizing to ordering and implementation. We provide all professional services. And we support systems after implementation.

It's a very stable firewall.

If you choose a model, from PA-3000 or PA-400, or the PA-5000 Series, you should size it correctly from the beginning, and you must consider expansion, otherwise you could face a big problem, as it's not scalable. But, if you have a big company, and you've chosen it as a data center firewall, you can choose a modular version, so that it is easily scalable.

There are two types of support. If you choose partner support, you will face a big problem because it will take more time to reach Palo Alto. But if you choose direct support from the vendor, they will support you very well.

Positive

It's very simple to deploy Palo Alto NG Firewalls into our clients' environments. One of my professional service team engineers was able to do an implementation on his own after shadowing just one implementation. He didn't take any courses or do any formal training. He was just a shadow on a single implementation. After that, he did an implementation. It's a very easy firewall.

The time it takes to deploy this firewall depends on the environment. If it's a complicated environment, a big corporate environment, the number of policies and rules and segments will be the determining factor. But it won't take that long. If you enable App-ID, you will need more time. App-ID is one of the most powerful tools inside NG Firewalls from Palo Alto, but it needs professional engineers to implement it. After that, you will have a very good security tool.

Our customers certainly see ROI from Palo Alto firewalls. For example, if a bank doesn't have Palo Alto firewalls, or any technology from Palo Alto, they will face many attacks, which would be resolved by Palo Alto. These attacks could compromise some of their customers and result in taking their money. What will the bank do then? The ROI comes from protecting customers.

Palo Alto is one of the most expensive firewalls in the world. Everyone knows that. But you need at least one layer from Palo Alto to protect your environment because it is the strongest company in the security field.

The licensing model for container security is complicated for me and for my customers.

I deal with Fortinet Fortigate firewalls, Forcepoint firewalls, and Cisco firewalls every day. We sell and implement them, like Palo Alto.

Palo Alto now has the IoT license on the firewall. They can protect you from DNS attacks. The WildFire license is a very rich license, and other vendors don't have that. And if your firewall is an internet edge firewall, Palo Alto GlobalProtect will give you a host compliance check without adding anything else. Also App-ID and Content-ID are very good and very mature, unlike with other vendors.

I have also used Palo Alto NGFW’s DNS Security for two of my customers. It's a good addition to the firewall, but it's not perfect. Palo Alto is not specialized in DNS attacks. There are a lot of companies that specialize in DNS attacks. They are more mature than Palo Alto in this area. Palo Alto is not like Akamai or Infoblox or EfficientIP, as those companies are specialized in DNS, DNS servers, and DNS attacks. Palo Alto is not only a DNS company.

Someone who says, "We are just looking for the cheapest and fastest firewall?" can get a free firewall, but they will not be protected. They will not be updated against the latest attacks all over the world.

There are tools on the Palo Alto portal that can be used to enhance the configuration of your Palo Alto product and they are free.

Overall, I love Palo Alto.

We're slowly migrating our on-premises solutions to the cloud. We implemented the next largest size VM for the PA-7050s because we're using 7050s on-premises, due to the bandwidth requirement of 100 GBS.

After changing our firewalls to 7050s last year and this year, both our internal firewalls and our border firewalls are 7050s.

Having embedded machine learning in the core of the firewall to provide inline real-time attack prevention is something that will greatly enhance our abilities and some of the things that we're doing. We deal with it daily now, versus a time when an incident only occurred every so often. In fact, we see incidents all the time, which include things like phishing attacks. Having some of the functionality inside the firewall  

I would rate Palo Alto's machine learning capability, which secures our network against rapidly evolving threats, pretty high. We own a product that I want to get rid of by Cisco, called Stealthwatch. It generates alerts and it's really built for East-West traffic. Of the alerts that we get, 99.9% of them are already blocked by the firewall. I'm not really worried about my North-South traffic because Palo Alto is there. For what they have in the box and the different subscription models, I'm not worried because Palo Alto does such an excellent job of catching stuff.

The biggest improvement to our organization since implementing Palo Alto is that there are a lot of things I no longer have to worry about. There are a lot of things that I used to do, that I don't have to do anymore. For example, I don't have to worry about putting up a honeypot. It's superfluous now because I've got default deny and there is no sense in opening up the border to allow people to come onto my network just to go to the honeypot.

The basic IDS/IPS is taken care of, so I don't need to purchase a product like FireEye. I'm not worried about my core, critical systems.

This next-gen firewall platform has definitely helped us to eliminate security holes. Comparing it to Cisco, which is port-based, a port can be spoofed. This is something that we see every day. When going from a port-based paradigm to an application-based paradigm, there is no comparison. It is more granular, which allows me to be more specific about, for example, port 80 traffic. Port 80 has any number of applications that it can be but if I specify applications, I can pick up all of the port 80 traffic. This means that I can make sure that they cannot spoof an SSH connection as a port 80 connection.

As a growing shop, we have been trying to integrate and get something that we can use as a single pane of glass, and we're getting there. Palo Alto has helped a lot. For example, the new feature for us is the data lake, which allows us to send logs anywhere. This is something that we couldn't do before, so this solution has enabled us to do a little bit more and get rid of some tools.

I don't feel that there is much of a trade-off between security and network performance. Our layer-two network is very robust and I build around them. The architecture is based on what our networking can do, capacity-wise. We haven't had to adjust anything, even when we were running the smaller Palo Alto units, to make things function.

Wildfire has been a very good feature. It allowed us to get rid of our honeypot machines, as well as our IDS/IPS solution. When we put it on the border, it was blocking everything that we were getting ahead of time, and we weren't getting any hits. This includes URL filtering, spam prevention, and anti-virus.

We are using a data lake for our log storage. Because our Splunk license is only so large, we couldn't do a lot of logging. Palo Alto does not create small logs, like a Cisco box. In fact, with Palo Alto, you can't capture all of your logs.

From a layer three network perspective, Palo Alto is a workhorse that gives us the best value.

This solution provides a unified platform that natively integrates all security capabilities, which is 100% important to us. This is a great feature.

The user interface is beautiful. They've done their homework on UI design. There are small little tweaks but that's really a preference more than functionality.

One of the downsides of logging with Palo Alto is that we do not capture the beginning of a session. It only captures at the end of the session. This means that if we're trying to mitigate something, such as an incident that happened, we can't say definitively that it happened at a particular time. The reason is that Palo Alto keeps track of every session that happens and if it were set up to do that, we would overload the firewall and overload the logging of anything because we do terabytes worth of data every day.

Having a single pane of glass, where we can see all of the stuff that we have to be able to react to, would be very helpful. We're a small shop but we have to cover the entire security spectrum. It makes it hard because we have to wear many hats. A single pane of glass where we can put alerts and other information would make our life a lot easier. As a small EDU, we just don't have the resources that the private companies have, so we have to try to find the best bang for the buck.

From a documentation standpoint, there is room for improvement. Even Palo Alto says that their documentation is terrible. It may be true for any company, where you're going to find documentation that is outdated or has not been kept up to date, but that's my main complaint.

I have been using Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls for between 10 and 15 years.

The stability is fire and forget. You don't have to worry about it. I've had to babysit Cisco devices in the past but I've never had to do the same with Palo Alto.

I've always had really good assets over the years and in all, they have changed perhaps two or three of them. Overall, they've been wonderful.

The scalability is wonderful. In the last iteration that I did, I folded 12 different firewalls into one box, across campus, without any problems with network degradation.

Without our two boxes, we have 16 firewalls set up. There are two of us responsible for maintaining the system, and our job titles are cybersecurity network engineers. 

The way the interfaces are set up makes it really easy to use. Also, the different routing protocols that you can use within the box make life easy when it comes to setting them up. 

The product covers the entire university. We use it at the edge for one of the departments, and it acts as their edge firewall. They pay for their solution and we maintain it for them.

We have deployments in other campuses, as well.

As we segment the network, depending on the zoning, we will be adding new interfaces to do certain things, such as setting up DMZs.

The support has been wonderful. I have not had any bad support that I can think of over the years. They've always been there.

Prior to Palo Alto, we used a combination of solutions. This included honeypot machines, and products for IPS/IDS.

We used to be a Cisco shop and I'm glad that we are no longer one. I've been trying to get rid of Cisco for years. The problem with them is that it's unwieldy. It's an old-school way of doing things. For example, everything is port-based. They tried to get into the next-gen firewall space, but the way they grow is that they buy other companies and try to combine technologies to make them work. That doesn't work.

One thing that I've never liked about Cisco, and still don't like, is that if I did an OS upgrade, I was guaranteed that I would be there for at least three to five hours. This was for a simple OS upgrade. Palo Alto has made my life a lot easier from that perspective, which is something that I really appreciate.

Outside of the problem with the OS upgrade, security was becoming more prevalent at the time because of hackers. Cisco was just port-based, and we wanted to move to something that was mobile and more granular. We wanted something that would give us better security and Cisco just didn't have it. 

We don't use the DNS security capability with Palo Alto because we use Cisco Umbrella for that, and it works great.

The initial setup is very easy. I can do it in my sleep. The process will take between 15 and 20 minutes for a new deployment. If it's an existing system that you're moving stuff over from, it depends on whether it's Palo to Palo or from something else to Palo. It can take between two and three hours, depending on how many rules there are, and the other things that you have to set up. Once you're up and running, it takes no time to debug it.

Comparing the initial setup to a Cisco device, Palo Alto is much easier. With Cisco, you can't do a simple reset to factory default settings without breaking it. The time I did this, it took me two weeks to finally get it up and running, and I had to call the Cisco SEs to come in and fix it. That's how bad it was. Setting up Cisco is a nightmare.

In comparison, setting up a Palo Alto is child's play. It's like ABCs versus a university course when it comes to getting something set up in Cisco. We have run into problems with Palo Alto in the past but for the most part, it's an easy process.

When we first implemented Palo Alto, we hired a consultant, ProSys, to assist us. They know our network. They've been with us for years and they've got some Palo Alto experts. The reason we asked for their help is that we didn't know anything about Palo Alto until after we took the courses.

One of the problems at the university, in general, is that we don't do a lot of these processes every day. This makes it hard for most universities to be able to do a lot of these more complex setups on their own without getting outside help. The people who are in big businesses that deploy these things on a daily basis get to see this stuff all the time. Universities don't, so we normally have to rely on outside help.

Overall, our experience with ProSys was good. We like working with them.

Palo Alto is not a cheap solution but it is competitive when it comes to subscriptions.

The hardware is something that you can buy all day long, regardless of the vendor. It's when you start adding in all of the subscriptions that it is either going to make or break the budget. All things considered, Palo Alto is comparable.

There are several extra features available and what you use depends on what you want to do with the firewall, and how it's going to be deployed. AV is an option, the Threat Prevention app is extra, along with URL filtering, and WildFire. You won't have all of the options on all of the servers. For example, the internal servers won't be doing any web surfing, so the requirements are a little bit different.

I'm more worried about my building to building, East-West traffic because I can't afford to put a Palo Alto in every building. Instead, I put a Palo Alto in front of me to deal with the North-South traffic.

We knew about Palo Alto and that's what we wanted, so we did not evaluate other vendors or products.

I've worked with my SE on this with at least four or five other schools that did not use Palo's, but since turned to use them. I speak with my SE often, and I also speak with my colleagues at other schools about my experiences. I generally explain what my experience with Palo Alto is compared to what I've had with other firewalls.

I don't want to become a Palo Alto-centric shop. We can use certain cloud features that they have, such as SaaS products. However, I choose not to, so that we can have a little bit more flexibility in what we do.

When we were a pure Cisco shop, we saw the problems with doing that. Palo Alto does a really good job at everything they do but, I just want to make sure that from my university's perspective, we don't get stuck. If all of a sudden, somebody else comes out with another product, we don't want to be stuck with a specific vendor, unless they are definitely the best solution.

We use other products in addition to Palo Alto to help along the way. For example, we use Corelight from Bro Zeek, Terracotta, and other things that I can stream together and send to our SOC to look at. We also have XDR, although it's not a fully functional one because we don't have the endpoint component. That is what is killing a lot of EDUs because we just don't have the budget or the money to be able to go out and buy all of the products that help us to function the way we need to.

In the NSS Labs Test Report from July 2019 about Palo Alto NGFW, 100% of the evasions were blocked. For a C-level person, that's great news. They read those types of things. As a technical person, it's important to me because it makes my life easy.

Palo Alto sells a next-generation firewall called the PA-400 series, and depending on what a company's bandwidth needs are, it would be a good choice. For example, if they're not doing anywhere close to a gig worth of traffic, such as in a small office, home office, or small business, then it would be a good solution. It also depends on what the business does. If there isn't much traffic then a PA-400 would be fine.

If a colleague of mine at another company were to say that they are just looking for the cheapest and fastest firewall, based on my experience with Palo Alto, I would tell them that they get what they pay for. Palo Alto is not cheap but at the same time, their product is not really comparable with others. It's like comparing apples to oranges.

If you consider Fortinet, for example, they call themselves a next-generation firewall but they really aren't. They are what you call a GPO, which is related to policies. It is important that you look at what other people do and how they do it, but for the most part, there's not anybody out there doing what Palo Alto is. 

Another one is Cisco. They do the same thing that Palo Alto does, although it takes three Cisco boxes to do what a single Palo Alto box does.

I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.

We use the solution to protect our internal network from external threats.

Up until recently we were not using multilayer firewalls and were using several solutions that are combined in Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls.

We are required to provide our network test results to our central bank, and Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls offer a robust report for this purpose that would otherwise be a cumbersome human task.

The performance of Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is the most valuable feature.

The analytics could be improved. I would like to have a unified analysis tool within Palo Alto, as we currently use Perimeter 81 and Fortinet FortiGate, which makes the analysis process take a long time.

I have been using the solution for almost four years.

The solution is stable.

The solution is scalable. We have three people that monitor the solution and maintain it.

The initial setup is straightforward. We had to secure our parameter network. We required two engineers from a reseller and two from our organization.

The implementation was completed with the help of a partner.

The solution is worth the price, as it can be utilized without the need for high-processing CPUs and resources, thus saving us overall.

I evaluated Check Point and decided to use Palo Alto because of its performance. Palo Alto can be used with fewer CPUs. 

I give the solution a nine out of ten.

Before using Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls you must first know what our requirements are.

We use it as an Internet-facing parameter firewall. In my environment, it has security and routing. It is on a critical path in terms of routing, where it does a deep inspection, etc.

There have been a lot of improvements from security to service.

It is critical that Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls embeds machine learning in the core of the firewall to provide inline, real-time attack prevention. In my environments, we have an integration with a third-party vendor. As soon as there is new information about new threats and the destination that they are trying to reach on any of our network devices, that traffic will be stopped.

Setting up a VPN is quite easy. 

It gives you a lot of information when you are monitoring traffic. 

In terms of user experience, Palo Alto has very good user administration.

Machine learning is important. Although we have not exhausted the full capabilities of the firewall using machine learning, the few things that we are able to do are already very good because we have an integration with a third-party. We are leveraging that third-party to get threat intelligence for some destinations that are dangerous, as an example. Any traffic that tries to go to those destinations is blocked automatically. There is a script that was written, then embedded, that we worked on with the third-party. So, machine learning is actually critical for our business.

There is a bit of limitation with its next-generation capabilities. They could be better. In terms of logs, I feel like I am a bit limited as an administrator. While I see a lot of logs, and that is good, it could be better.

I wanted Palo Alto Networks engineering to look at the traffic log, because I see traffic being dropped that happens to be legitimate. It would be interesting for me to just right click on the traffic, select that traffic, and then create a rule to allow it. For example, you sometimes see there is legitimate traffic being dropped, which is critical for a service. That's when actually you have to write it down, copy, a rule, etc. Why not just right click on it and select that link since that log will have the source destination report number? I would like to just right click, then have it pop up with a page where I can type the name of the rule to allow the traffic.

I started using Palo Alto in 2015.

It is very stable. We had two outages this year that were not good. They were related to OSPF bugs. Those bugs affected our service availability. 

It is quite scalable. I have been able to create a lot of zones to subinterfaces for a number of environments. I don't really have any issues regarding scalability. It meets my expectations.

Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls technical support is very poor. Three or four months ago, I had a bug where the database of the firewall was locked. You cannot do anything with it. We looked for documentation, giving us a procedure to follow, but the procedure didn't work. We logged a complaint with Palo Alto Networks, and they gave us an engineer. The engineer relied on documentation that doesn't work, and we had already tested. In the end, the engineer gave us an excuse, "No, we need this account to be able to unlock it." This happened twice. The way out of it was just to restart the firewall. You can restart the firewall and everything goes back to normal. Therefore, I think the support that we got was very poor.

Neutral

I have used Check Point and Cisco ASA.

Initially, when I started with Palo Alto, we had Cisco ASA, but Palo Alto Networks beat ASA hands down.

We have a multi-vendor environment with different providers. Our standard is that we can't have the same firewall for each parameter, so there is some kind of diversity. 

We had ASA looking at one side of the network and Palo Alto Networks looking at the other side of the network. We also had Juniper looking at another side of the network. At the end of the day, ASA was very good, I don't dispute that. However, in terms of functionality and user experience, Palo Alto Networks was better. 

Palo Alto Networks beat ASA because it was a next-generation firewall (NGFW), while ASA was not.

When we bought Palo Alto, we had Juniper devices in our environment. We were told that it was a bit like Juniper, so we were happy. However, some people were a bit skeptical and scared of Juniper firewalls. Because of that, it took us a very long time to put them on the network. However, as soon as we did the implementation, we realized that we were just thinking too much. It was not that difficult. 

We deployed Palo Alto Networks as part of a project for data center implementation. The implementation of the firewall didn't take long.

We buy through a third-party. Our account is managed by IBM.

We have seen ROI. There is more visibility in the environment in terms of security. There was a time when we suspected a security breach, and this firewall was able to give us all the logs that we expected. 

Palo Alto is like Mercedes-Benz. It is quite expensive, but the price is definitely justified.

One thing is system administration. In our opinion, Palo Alto administration is easier compared to other vendors. I know other vendors who have Check Point. You have to manage Check Point, and it is a bit cumbersome. It is a very nice, powerful firewall, but you need more knowledge to be able to manage Check Point compared to Palo Alto. Palo Alto is very straightforward and nice to use.

In our environment, troubleshooting has been easy. Anybody can leverage the Palo Alto traffic monitoring. In Cisco ASA and Check Point, you also have these capabilities, but capturing the traffic to see is one thing, while doing the interpretation is another thing. Palo Alto is more user-friendly and gives us a clearer interpretation of what is happening.

One thing that I don't like with Palo Alto is the command line. There isn't a lot of documentation for things like the command line. Most documents have a graphic user interface. Cisco has a lot of documents regarding command lines and how to maneuver their command line, as there are some things that we like to do with the command line instead of doing them with the graphic interface. Some things are easy to do on a graphic interface, but not in the command line. I should have the option to choose what I want to do and where, whether it is in the command line or a graphic interface. I think Palo Alto should try to make an effort in that aspect, as their documentation is quite poor.

We would rather use Cisco Umbrella for DNS security.

I compared the price of Palo Alto Networks with Juniper Networks firewall. The Juniper firewall is quite cheap. Also, Palo Alto Networks is a bit expensive compared to Cisco Firepower. Palo Alto Networks is in the same class of Check Point NGFW. Those two firewalls are a bit expensive.

It gives us visibility. In my opinion, the first firewall that I would put on our network is Palo Alto Network and the second would be Check Point.

Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is a very good firewall. It is one of the best firewalls that I have used.

I would rate Palo Alto Networks as nine out of 10.

We primarily use Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls for a DMZ firewall. Its primary function is to separate our network into four layers: a DMZ zone for all publishing services, an internal zone for internal user access to publishing services, a zone for terminating connections between VPN consultants and internal services, and a zone for Internet access.

We implemented Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls to secure our network and control access using filtering and application control. We also use Palo Alto WildFire for vulnerability scanning.

We have Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls deployed on the cloud and on-prem.

Palo Alto helps us secure our network against suspicious activity from both internal and external sources. Its integration with our SIEM aids our SOC team in blocking malicious activity.

Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls do a good job securing our environment. To access any solution, the first step is to calculate the required throughput. Because we are working with a small network or environment, we need a specific amount of throughput from a Firewall model. I chose this particular model based on my throughput requirements. The second consideration is the level of security achievable by the solution. We are using additional methods, such as performing a gap analysis and assessing the solution, to determine this. This involves simulating attacks passing through the Firewalls to observe how the solution detects or blocks them.

The most valuable feature of Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is its application visibility, which allows us to see all users and their accessed resources. Additionally, its user-friendliness and customization options contribute to its overall value.

The reporting feature needs significant improvement. Generating reports in Palo Alto is challenging because it relies on specific attributes and source IDs. We want to create reports to view the number of users and consumption, but customization is difficult. The interface for generating reports is user-unfriendly, making it difficult to find information. Overall, the reporting capabilities are weak compared to other firewall solutions.

The SD-WAN feature needs improvement. It currently relies on the physical interface instead of the sub-interface, requiring Panorama rather than a local firewall. Furthermore, the configuration customization for SD-WAN application source and subnetting is significantly limited compared to other firewalls.

The technical support is slow and needs improvement.

I have been using Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls for five years.

I would rate the stability of Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls ten out of ten.

I would rate the scalability of Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls ten out of ten.

Palo Alto does not provide direct support to customers. Each region has support partners, so to get direct support from Palo Alto, you need to be a very large customer. This is why resolving issues with Palo Alto takes a long time. We go through our partner, and they take some time to investigate and try to solve the problem. If they can't, they escalate the case to Palo Alto, which takes additional time to investigate and try solutions. This is why our cases may take days or weeks to resolve.

Negative

I work with numerous firewall solutions, including FortiGate, Cisco Firepower, Cisco Sourcefire, and Forcepoint Firewalls. I've found that each firewall excels in specific areas. For instance, I recommend Cisco Firepower for central firewall management. However, for DMZ and application control, I suggest Palo Alto. Finally, I recommend FortiGate for perimeter firewall deployment based on its extensive features and overall stability.

The initial deployment is straightforward and can be completed in a few hours for small environments. However, larger environments with multiple policies will require additional deployment time.

We have seen a return on investment of 30 percent from Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls. 

Palo Alto is a more expensive firewall solution than others. However, it is the top choice for a DMZ and a valuable investment overall. We still need to invest in an additional firewall with more advanced features to enhance perimeter security.

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

Those looking for the cheapest and fastest firewall won't find that combination. They must invest money to get a fast firewall suitable for their environment. Gather their requirements before choosing a firewall that fits their budget and features. They can opt for the quickest or cheapest option or select a device compatible with their needs.

We have Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls deployed in multiple locations, serving both on-premises and cloud departments. There are three people in our organization that work with the NG Firewalls. Our clients are enterprises.

Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls require maintenance for software upgrades, and after several years, the hardware will also need upgrades.

I recommend Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls for their stability and high level of security. If the security of your infrastructure is critical, Palo Alto is a strong choice, though it comes with a higher price tag. If budget is a concern or security isn't a top priority, then Palo Alto may not be the best fit.

We have implemented peripheral firewalls and micro-segmentation within our LAN network. To further segment our data center, we have deployed firewalls in the middle of the network. Additionally, we utilize Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls in our GCP environment for various use cases, including URL filtering, URP, file blocking, and threat prevention.

Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls natively integrate all security capabilities, making it crucial for our XDR integration. To address the challenges of our small cybersecurity team, we have implemented significant optimizations. This streamlined approach allows us to efficiently monitor and analyze all logs, ultimately providing a comprehensive view of our security posture.

Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls embed machine learning at their core to provide crucial, real-time inline attack prevention. In today's world of relentless cyber threats, detecting and blocking malware, viruses, and hacker intrusions is paramount. These attacks pose a constant threat to our data security, making firewalls essential tools for safeguarding our digital assets.

It provided immediate benefits to our organization through their seamless integration, automation capabilities, enhanced visibility, and robust traceability features.

Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls are consistent in securing data centers across all our workplaces.

The Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls excel in their integration capabilities. By combining them with XDR, Prisma Access, or other Palo Alto Networks SaaS products, organizations can achieve enhanced visibility, trust, and threat prevention. The integration with Cortex XDR enables automated threat prevention through the use of playbooks. This comprehensive solution is ideal for advanced threat detection, log correlation, and other security-related tasks.

The integration with AI needs improvement.

I have been using Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls for seven years.

We provide the initial level of support for our customers' firewalls. If a customer requires direct assistance from Palo Alto support, we can open a case and facilitate their connection.

Positive

The initial deployment is straightforward. I would rate the ease of deployment a nine out of ten.

When comparing Cisco, Check Point, and Palo Alto firewalls, I found Palo Alto to be the most effective. Its configuration interface is more intuitive, making it easier to set up policies and manage the firewall. In contrast, I encountered significant challenges with Cisco and Check Point firewalls. To date, I have not experienced any issues with Palo Alto.

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

Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls offer a robust security solution. However, when integrated with a comprehensive platform like Cortex XDR and XSOAR, their value proposition significantly increases for businesses. By leveraging indicators of compromise, NG Firewalls can generate Extended Detection and Response alerts, streamlining the identification and mitigation of threats. This automation eliminates the need for manual intervention by technicians and cybersecurity analysts, resulting in improved efficiency and overall security posture.

We have multiple offices across the United States. Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is the best solution for securing our network, and the best part is that we can provide a single working solution.

Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls' embedded machine learning is very important. Every packet is inspected by the firewall, and if it is heuristic or contains a virus or some other unknown packet, it is sent to the Wildfire feature for review. If the packet is safe, it is allowed to pass through, otherwise, a signature is left to protect the organization. The updated signature is then sent to the entire network for the same packet.

Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls machine learning helps secure our networks against threats that are able to evolve rapidly.

Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls DNS security helps prevent DNS-related attacks in combination with our policies and machine learning.

Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls provide a unified platform that integrates with all security capabilities.

The zero-delay security feature with cloud technology is able to immediately releases the signature and update the database.

Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls single-pass architecture has fast processing and security because of the separate models. The networking speeds rely more on the routers, not the firewall.

The solution provides the ability to process the packets regularly saving us processing time and that is very valuable.

The user ID, Wildfire, UI, and management configuration are all great features.

The stability, scalability for enterprise-level organizations, and technical documentation have room for improvement.

I have been using the solution for six years.

When it comes to network security, there is no such thing as stability; every day brings different forms of attacks, which we must constantly work to prevent.

The solution is scalable but has room for improvement at an enterprise level.

We have around 1,000 people using the solution.

The technical support is good. We receive a quick resolution for our issues.

Positive

The initial setup is straightforward. The deployment time depends on the type of implementation the organization requires but it is not complex. We can do everything from the firewall GUI without having to install any software.

The implementation is completed in-house.

The solution is expensive. Other vendors such as Fortinet provide the same features for less.

I give the solution a nine out of ten.

Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is a good solution and I recommend it to others for their network security needs.

Compared to the other firewalls, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls are the quickest.

We use this solution as our external firewall and VPN.

The fact that I can perform several security functions in one device at wire speed is a valuable feature. I don't have to slow down my business transactions, and I don't have to inconvenience my users with 16 different solutions. I can have it all in one box, and it protects my organization at wire speed.

Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls catch a lot of things that other firewalls may not catch and support more current security practices. We get updates several times a day from WildFire, and the firewalls do a great job of keeping us protected.

Within their domain, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls provide a unified platform that natively integrates all security capabilities. This is critical because I don't want to deal with multiple devices. I want to do it all with as few devices as possible and have it all work successfully.

It's very important that these firewalls embed machine learning into their core because the only way to keep up with the changing threat environment is to keep learning about it.

Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls are the gold standard right now for securing data centers consistently across all workplaces, and I'm using them across all of my locations. They provide a consistent experience for the management team as well as the end user.

Surfacing actionable intelligence right away could be better. You have to dig far to get some of the information. If the solution could surface the two or three things out of the 10,000 a day that we really need to deal with, it would be helpful.

I've been working with Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls for about 20 years.

It is a rock-solid solution in terms of stability. You very rarely have to worry about it. If there's a problem, it's usually because a rule got configured incorrectly.

Across the product line, the NG firewalls scale very well. Within the individual units, however, there are some limitations. It's not always clear to resellers as to what those limitations are. Therefore, as your organization grows you may start to bump into those limitations unexpectedly.

Palo Alto's technical support is pretty good and is among the best. We have called them several times, and they've been on it. Sometimes, it can take a bit longer for them to understand an issue, but overall, I would rate technical support at eight.

Positive

We have used several firewalls including Cisco, Fortinet, and Check Point. We chose Palo Alto because it's the only one that brings it all together in one platform and lets me manage it. It also removes the complexity of what I have to manage and deal with.

The initial setup is fairly straightforward. You put the firewall in with whatever might be there right now in learning mode, and then you can figure out where the holes are.

Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls have prevented a number of things from happening. We would not have been able to prevent those things from happening had we had other firewalls.

Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls are the Cadillac standard, and you do pay Cadillac pricing. However, the protection is worth the steep price. 

If you're looking for the fastest firewall, Palo Alto needs to be on your list. They seem to be the only ones that perform at wire speed right now. If you want the cheapest firewall, you will be able to find cheaper options, but you won't find better options than Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls.

Overall, I would rate Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls a nine on a scale from one to ten.

The biggest value of RSAC is being able to see everything I don't know anything about. It helps me keep up with where the industry is going.

Also, attending RSAC impacts our organization’s cybersecurity purchases made throughout the year. I chat with my existing vendors when I attend and have conversations with those my team recommends. We then make purchasing decisions based on what I see at RSAC.