Palo Alto Networks WildFire Reviews

I primarily use the solution for my client's companies. 

I did not find anything that makes it more unique than other equivalent products.

The initial setup is very simple.

The solution is stable.

The scalability is acceptable. 

Technical support is great.

The solution needs more third-party integration. 

The automation and responsiveness need improvement.

They need to be able to escalate technical support issues in a more effective way.

The solution is a bit too expensive. 

I've used the solution for many years. IT's been a while. 

The solution is stable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable. 

The solution does have the capability to scale. It can scale to a certain extent. 

Technical support was perfect. That said, it's hard to escalate. We're mostly happy with technical support. It's just that the escalation process takes too much time.

We are working with a similar product to WildFire at the moment. The features are the same, however, the stability and reliability are better.

The initial setup is very straightforward. It's not overly complex or difficult. A company shouldn't have any issue with the process.

The pricing could be a bit better. 

I'm a freelancing security consultant.

I'd advise new users to just double-check the admin guide, the organization guide, before beginning.

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten. 

Our primary use case for this solution is for threat intelligence, to detect threats.

This solution has given us a higher level of assurance that we don't have an active threat.

The most valuable feature is the Automatic Verdict feature that recognizes whether something is a threat or not.

I would like to see them continue their developmental roadmap for the product.

We have never experienced any downtime or inaccuracies.

This product is super scalable.

Their technical support is excellent.

We previously used a different solution but it was ineffective and didn't integrate well.

The initial setup for this solution was very easy. You just turn it on and put it in monitoring mode. One person can deploy and maintain this product.

We implemented in-house.

The ROI is pretty much right away.

The licensing fees are on an annual basis and there are no costs in addition to the standard fees.

Before choosing this solution we evaluated OpenDNS.

WildFire is a perfect complement to a Palo Alto Firewall, it's invaluable.

I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.

This product/feature is an enhancement to traditional company/corporate AV and VP solutions, not a replacement. As such, it strengthens existing protections and provides significant visibility into files and applications that are moving through the company's systems.

Detailed reporting on analysis of content. The inspections are easily applied to security policy profiles and profile groups, and may be assigned on a per-rule basis.

No stability issues.

No scalability issues.

I have never accessed PAN (Palo Alto Networks) technical support regarding this feature.

This is a fairly unique feature offered by Palo Alto Networks (may be comparable to FireEye). As such, it was an addition to our existing protection suites.

Very straightforward. Basically, a few check boxes and desired behaviors.

It is expensive, a feature more accessible to enterprise class customers, but provides an enhanced possibility that Zero- or near-Zero-day threats may be identified and mitigated. The cost of the product weighed against the potential impact of even one successful crypto malware-type exploit may justify the expense.

No, again this "WildFire" is a fairly unique feature. The closest comparison may be FireEye, but I have not used that product.

Consider your level of exposure to exploits of any nature. Also, consider the impact (cost and loss of business) of even one successful exploit to help make a business decision regarding this product.

I would also advise that the decision should be considered with regard to the company's ability/willingness to provide the assets to keep abreast of these types of products and features. There are no set and forget type functions.

Sandboxing is the primary use case. WildFire is used for that. There are two options: one is on the cloud, and one is on-premise. The cloud version is perfect. It is working very well. But on the on-premise version, we have faced a lot of problems previously.  

The threat intelligence from WildFire supports our proactive defense strategies. Palo Alto has a unit 42 team, which is one of the best in the market for threat intelligence. Their threat intelligence is comprehensive.

Also, Palo Alto is a pioneer in AI and ML integration, so I think there are some AI processes running in clusters.

It can detect new threats, particularly. It's a sandboxing prototype. 

We send mostly emails or connections with context or files. The most important thing is how many kinds of files the sandbox can handle. Also, Palo Alto is good at this. There are more than 20 different file types, this product can understand.

 The important thing for sandboxing is how many different types of files the sandbox product is analyzing. And so, also, Palo Alto is good at it, compared to other sandboxes.

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. 

But for regulation purposes, some of our customers don't want to use the cloud environment, so they have to use the on-premise version. 

Integration is okay, not too hard, with Palo Alto. But we are facing a lot of issues, and most of the issues go unresolved. So, the on-premise version is not very stable.

With my experience, the cloud version is stable. So I need the on-premises version to be more stable.

I have been working with Palo Alto for four years, but I have been familiar with WildFire for one and a half years.

I would rate the stability a seven out of ten. 

The cloud version is very stable. It is working very fine. Integration is very easy. There are not too many issues. I like it. Compared to the on-premise version, it is very easy and very effective for customers.

Some of my colleagues work on SD-WAN.

The initial setup is a little bit complex on-premise, but not too complex because it can only connect to a Palo Alto firewall. On the cloud, it is very easy; you only need to enable it with a click, and it is done. After that, you can set up the configuration on the firewall. 

But on-premise, it is not a configuration issue; it's a little bit of a stability issue.

Integration with existing infrastructure: 

WildFire can only integrate with the Palo Alto firewall. Right now, maybe XDR can integrate on the cloud version, but you cannot integrate it with other vendors or put it standalone without any Palo Alto product.

We are an integrator. We also work with some other vendors.

WildFire has improved our customer's security posture and reduced costs overall.

It's not hard to configure as it connects to the firewall. After integration, you don't need much configuration and don't waste too much time, so the return on investment is very rapid.

In general, all Palo Alto products are a little bit higher in price compared to competitors.

I recommend it, but mostly the cloud version.

I recommend it to any company who needs sandboxing or this kind of file analysis. But they must be careful if they have to use on-premise, because of the stability issues.

Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten. 

I'm a reseller.

WildFire analyzes the malware in the network such as SSDB and can help analyze the files transmitted over the network, and can detect if the file contains malware.

There are features such as sandboxing in cloud. It submits malware to Palo Alto on the cloud, verifies the reputation file, and analyzes the malware in the files.

The graphic user interface of Palo Alto is good and it's easy to configure.

Palo Alto limits the files submitted per day. There are limitations with the boxes for the Palo Alto module. In the future, I think Palo Alto will reduce the sandboxing in the on-prem version because the box cannot operate.

In the future, Palo Alto could reduce the time it takes to process the file. Sometimes it takes 10 minutes.

I've been using this solution for three years.

It's stable.

It's scalable.

Technical support is very good. In Vietnam, we work directly with Palo Alto engineers.

I also have experience with Check Point, Fortinet, and Cisco.

Configuration is easy.

For the last three years, the price of Palo Alto in Vietnam has been very high.

I would rate this solution 9 out of 10.

Palo Alto Networks WildFire is being used as an effective zero-day threat prevention solution. When a file comes in from a user innocently clicking on a website, then downloading the file, for example, if your Palo Alto is set up in a way that detects what is happening in that traffic going through, whether the file is an audio file, a DLL, an executable file, etc., if it thinks that file is unsafe, it will ask for a second opinion from Palo Alto Networks WildFire.

If you'll imagine how a network would work: You've got your computer, then your antivirus on the computer, then you have your internet gateway. That suspicious file will stop at the gateway, rather than stopping at the computer. Think about hurdles, where you've got these people running over hurdles, and to win the race, you have to jump over every single hurdle. If you get one of those hurdles wrong, that's it. You're done. That's why we're doing this check almost at the perimeter, or at the edge of the network, instead of on the device, because once you're on the device, it means you're on the network.

What I found most valuable in Palo Alto Networks WildFire is that it's intuitive. I also love the App-ID feature, especially because it works out of the box. I can also instantly see all the traffic going out, e.g. I can just plug a firewall in, then connect one network socket to a switch, etc. There's no configuration I need to do to see it. It just tells me that you're sending BitTorrent traffic, or SLL traffic, or you're going into 365, etc. It just does that out of the box, and it's the best thing that this solution can do. Straight away you can see all the traffic going through your network.

Palo Alto Networks WildFire, because it's from Palo Alto Networks, has better visibility on everything, so they can see what's happening in the world. They recently released the Palo Alto Networks WildFire machine learning feature on the firewall, so it's them saying: "This thing's happening on your firewall, so you should do this," and it just does it for you. Rather than relying on a human to interpret these problems, it will just do it for you, and that's pretty cool. I've not played with the machine learning feature myself, but that's something I'm very keen to have a look at.

We do a lot with charities, and I'd love Palo Alto Networks WildFire to have more discounts, e.g. charity discounts, so we can protect healthcare and schools, then other than aiming at the universities and the big hospitals where it's a lot of money, we can go for the smaller schools, too. They make quite a killing there. 

Again, it's just charity pricing, but because we are a partner with them, we can do that ourselves, e.g. we can buy it and then reduce our margins on it to get them over. We feel that it's better to sell the device that's very good at a lower cost, then, we lock in with their services at the end, so work management, etc. Rather than saying, "It's going to cost you this much money, and it's too expensive to even begin with."

I've been a reseller of Palo Alto Networks WildFire for four years now.

Palo Alto Networks WildFire is a stable solution.

Palo Alto Networks WildFire is scalable, particularly if you pick the right firewall, and that's it: you can do what you need to with it.

With five being the highest and one being the lowest, I'm scoring the technical support for Palo Alto Networks WildFire a four. They're very, very good, but there is still room for improvement when some issues become more complex. If you understand the system, then you'll also understand why it is like it is.

Setting up Palo Alto Networks WildFire is easy out of the box, because you just plug in the cables you need, but the way it works is you need to have an understanding of networking, otherwise, setting it up will be difficult. If you are the right type of person, then you'll have no problems with the setup.

Palo Alto Networks WildFire is quite expensive, and this is what puts people off.

The way Palo Alto Networks WildFire works is that it's essentially a service that you get from Palo Alto as part of your subscription. You can subscribe to it at an additional cost, and the idea is it can communicate with all the Palo Alto devices in the world about a file, e.g. whether a file is suspicious or harmless.

For example, a machine in Australia downloads a file, and it doesn't know if it's a file that can be trusted or not. The Palo Alto Networks WildFire process is that it takes that file, and then moves it to the WildFire service in the cloud, so there's a transaction from the firewall doing that.

Let's say it's a Word file or something that looks suspicious, Palo Alto Networks WildFire then detonates the file, e.g. it takes that file and runs checks against it, before and after, and then it sees the difference and says, "Well, this actual file contains a payload." The way that it works then, is that there are attackers or people who are trying to subvert systems, and they will say, "Oh, if this file is running on a virtual machine, like in a sandbox environment, don't do the thing that you're going to do, only when it's a physical thing, like actual hardware.

The Palo Alto Networks WildFire process is a process that goes through all these other checks, e.g. it runs on physical, on virtual, on different types of Linux, MacOS, etc. This file is checked against all these different environments to see if it's okay or not, so this is done off the box, off the firewall.

This is the service that you pay for as part of that subscription, so when it's done, essentially that file is marked as safe, that's cool. If it's marked as bad, then that file, the hash is taken from it, so it's easily identified, then through the Palo Alto Networks WildFire subscription, all the firewalls in the world then get that information within just one minute, if you set it to that. It will say something similar to: "Look out for this file if you ever see it", and then all the machines now knows that the file is dodgy or suspicious. That's what Palo Alto Networks WildFire does.

Palo Alto Networks is very well rounded. They're building an ecosystem: the Palo Alto ecosystem. You've got global protect VPNs and they are the armor that works on the whole ecosystem. They also have integrations, e.g. there are other applications from HP that plug into the device, because it's got the APIs there.

For the deployment and maintenance of Palo Alto Networks WildFire, one person can do it, but it's a special tool, so a network staff that just looks after a server would probably struggle with it, just because of some of the concepts that you need to use. There are specific trainings you'd need to do to get the best out of it, but one specialist could do it, e.g. it's not unheard of.

My advice to others looking into implementing this solution is for them not to be put off by the cost. It's similar to looking at cars, e.g. there's a reason people like Jaguar cars over the Fords. I've always got this mantra that if you have a network, if you have a data network, and if it's going to cost you, e.g. if you look at the fines associated with various industries, and if you're a school that gets a data breach, it'll cost you this much money. The question is: "Can you afford that much money as a company?" If your answer is "No", then you have to look at mitigating it. I would suggest looking at Palo Alto Networks WildFire and saying, "Well, we do these types of things to protect your network."

If you still don't want to pay that money, then chances are, you don't particularly care about security. If you want to pay for that kind of thing to stave off the bigger fine that results from getting a data breach, or getting hacked, etc., then that's how we think about it. Don't be off put by the cost when you're looking at it. Palo Alto Networks WildFire is a very comprehensive device. They are the best firewalls in the world.

There are also other solutions like UTMs and XGs, e.g. if you like Fortigate, but everyone I've shown the Palo Alto to instantly said: "This big screen here: I can see all the traffic going through", and you just filter it at the top, and it just makes more sense to people. It's very intuitive.

My rating for Palo Alto Networks WildFire is eight out of ten. It's not a perfect score because of its cost.

I work on the network equipment in our company including switches, routers, firewalls, VPN, and all of the perimeter devices. Palo Alto WildFire is one of the products that we use to secure our network.

Generally, it detects threats to our network and blocks them. This includes checking applications for malware.

What I like about Palo Alto is that it is a complete product, with everything in it.

In the future, I would like to see more automation in the reporting.

We have been using WildFire for between four and five years.

This product is pretty stable.

Our network and security group are the ones who use it. We haven't had to scale beyond that.

We don't have a lot of contact with technical support but when we do, they are pretty quick.

I haven't used another solution that is better than this one.

The initial setup is straightforward. It was not complex for me at all.

The pricing is highly expensive.

From my perspective, Palo Alto is the best solution in the market. This is the reason that we implemented it.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We are a solution provider and WildFire is one of the security products that we implement for our customers. We are also using it for testing purposes.

It is primarily used to check for cloud-based malware.

Nowadays, this product is very important for customers because there are a large number of zero-day attacks. It gives them a sense of security and confidence because you never know what type of malware will be invented tomorrow.

The most valuable feature is the cloud-based protection against zero-day malware attacks.

The only complaint that we receive from our customers is in regards to the price. Our clients are happy with the technical aspects, but the cost is expensive.

Some customers complain that it takes a long time to make changes to the configuration, but this depends on the customer and the environment. It may not be a problem that is directly related to the product. There are a lot of changes that need to be made for the security of a big company.

The technical support team in Poland should be larger.

Palo Alto needs to invest more in marketing because there is not enough awareness for the brand in Poland. 

We have been using WildFire for one year.

We have not experienced any problems related to stability in our environment, and have not had any such complaints from our clients. 

We have not had any issues that required going outside of our own technical team.

The Palo Alto team in Poland is very small, so getting an engineer's time can be a challenge.  If you have a small team then it's hard to support everybody. The local distributor has taken over some of the responsibilities for solving technical issues that customers have.

My thinking is that we don't have to contact technical support with serious issues because we don't have big problems with the product. I'm sure that there are bigger customers in need of support, and it may be lacking in Poland, but of course, there is an international team that can handle issues as well.

We deal with other vendors including Cisco and Fortinet, and we see a trend where more and more companies are implementing a WildFire-type solution into their products.

Fortinet is the market leader in Poland, in part because of their pricing. Another important thing is that if you want to implement a PoC and need a device of any kind, it is readily available from Fortinet. However, with Palo Alto, it cannot be done so quickly.

We have been in contact with Cisco technical support, and it is much easier to contact an engineer than it is with Palo Alto. The Cisco support is really good in Poland.

When it comes to installation and configuration, it is very good. The length of time required for deployment depend on the number of features and how much configuration has to be done. Typically, it takes between one and three weeks.

We also deploy WildFire using VM models so that we can test various solutions for our clients.

Our in-house team is responsible for the deployment, maintenance, and support.

This is an expensive product and the market for Palo Alto in Poland could be much bigger if the pricing was comparable to Fortinet. We have lost a lot of deals to Fortinet over the price issue.

As an example, if somebody is satisfied with Fortinet and they only need to renew their subscription then it is difficult to convince them to try a completely new device at a higher price.

WildFire is always a product that we recommend for our Palo Alto clients because it tracks potential malware in the cloud and it is very important to prevent these types of attacks.

In today's climate with the pandemic, a lot of staff are working offsite and remotely, leading to a surge in internet usage. This makes the work environments prone to various threats, which is one of the reasons that products like WildFire are so important.

Overall, from our point of view, it is a good product that works well.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.