Azure Firewall Reviews

We mostly use it as part of a hybrid cloud solution. For example, for a client with on-premises and cloud solutions, our recommendation is that Azure Firewall be used.

All its features are good. That's why we recommend it.

In terms of features, it is great, but it has fewer features than you can get from other firewalls, like anti-spam and anti-phishing. Those kinds of things are not included. It only includes IDS and IDB.

I have used it for projects over the last 12 months.

It is stable.

It is scalable. 

The price is okay. Microsoft even gives a discount nowadays.

It needs more features so that it is comparable to Fortigate and other companies.

I would advise people who are interested in Azure Firewall to find the people who can implement it, because not everyone is able to do everything in the proper way. Some people will go ahead and do the configuration but it's not the right configuration. The client will start to have issues and will start to complain about the product. But the problem is not the product, it's the implementation itself. The person who did it wasn't knowledgeable enough.

We're SaaS providers. We use these firewalls to route our traffic from our partner to us.

Among the most valuable features are the

• DDoS protection which protects your virtual machines
• threat intelligence 
• traffic filtering.

If I had to pick one area that needs improvement it would be the antivirus functionality, because it doesn't scan traffic for malware. It needs TLS inspection.

The cloud team in our company has been using Azure Firewall for about two years, but I'm in the security team and I've been using it for a year. We're using the regular version, not the Premium version.

The stability of Azure Firewall is fine. I've never seen it go down.

There may be issues with the scalability, but I haven't tested it yet. When you test it in preview mode it's only around 3 to 3.5 Gbps.

The support from Microsoft is good.

Positive

We started using it because we were new to the cloud and, at that time, we didn't have options. We started using whatever came with Azure. Now that we have started to grow, we have started exploring other options.

We have different business units and each one has one person for deployment and maintenance of the solution.

We have looked at Azure Firewall Premium and at Palo Alto's firewalls.

When we did the comparison we found the regular version of Azure Firewall has limited visibility for IDPS, no TLS inspection, no app ID, no user ID, no content ID, no device ID. There is no antivirus or anti-spyware. Azure Firewall doesn't scan traffic for malware unless it triggers an IDPS signature. There is no sandbox or machine learning functionality, meaning we are not protected from Zero-day threats. There is no DNS security and limited web categories.

We're looking at switching to Palo Alto virtual firewalls, but we want to make sure that what we switch to is compatible with our environment.

Azure Firewall is fine, but it's not suitable for our organization and that's why we have decided to move away from it.

High availability is built in, so no additional load balancers are required and there's nothing you need to configure 

Azure Firewall can be configured during deployment to span multiple Availability Zones for increased availability

You can limit outbound HTTP/S traffic or Azure SQL traffic (preview) to a specified list of fully qualified domain names (FQDN) including wild cards. This feature doesn't require TLS termination.

You can centrally create allow or deny network filtering rules by source and destination IP address, port, and protocol. Azure Firewall is fully stateful, so it can distinguish legitimate packets for different types of connections

Threat intelligence  -based filtering can be enabled for your firewall to alert and deny traffic from/to known malicious IP addresses and domains

Inbound Internet network traffic to your firewall public IP address is translated (Destination Network Address Translation) and filtered to the private IP addresses on your virtual networks.

They can improve the pricing of Azure Firewall. 

I have been using this solution for maybe one year. We are a gold partner with Microsoft.

It is stable.

It is scalable. We have around 200 users, and we have around 10 members for maintenance.

It is easy to set up. It took around 1 hour.

Azure Firewall is more expensive. If Microsoft can make Azure Firewall cheaper, I can see that all clients will think of using it.

One client used FortiGate because it is much cheaper. Some clients ask me for Cisco, but in the cloud estimate, I found its cost is the same as Azure Firewall. 

Azure Firewall is the best to use with all Microsoft solutions. I also use Fortinet, Sophos, and Cisco. It's about the client's priority, that is, what they request.

I would recommend Azure Firewall, but it is all about the client's priority and budget. If a client wants to use Azure Firewall, we do that. If the clients wants FortiGate or Sophos, or the cost is higher for the clients to use Azure Firewall, they can move to FortiGate or Sophos. For low budget or low cost, I recommend FortiGate. 

I would rate Azure Firewall an eight out of ten. 

Azure Firewall's feature that I have found most valuable is its scalability.

In terms of what could be improved, it lacks a couple of features which are available in the other marketplace products, but it is stable and it performs most of the basic functions that are expected from a normal firewall.

When we deployed we did not have a centralized management of multiple firewalls. Right now, with Azure Firewall, we cannot have a normal inbound traffic flow. For inbound, Microsoft suggests using application gateways, so the options are very limited. I cannot use this firewall as an intermediate firewall because of the limitations, and I cannot point routing to another firewall. So if I want to use back-to-back firewall architecture in my environment, I cannot use Azure Firewall for that type of configuration either. 

Other features I would like to see are intrusion prevention, URL filtering, category-based URL filtering and other advanced features.

Overall, the configuration can definitely be improved.

In terms of the overall product architecture, if the management and the architecture of the product could support back-to-back firewall architectures so that I could use Azure Firewall in combination with another firewall, that would be one point which would help this product be used more and in a better way.

Again, if the Azure Firewall could be accommodated as a back-to-back firewall, meaning if it could work as a firewall which handles the inbound traffic from the internet, which is an NVA, or a network virtual appliance, and we could reroute the traffic to Azure Firewall, that would be good. But as of now, there is no routing options in Azure Firewall.

I have been using Azure Firewall for eight months.

We are not using the latest version since we deployed it quite some time back.

Azure Firewall is quite stable.

We have thousands of people using it.

Technical support is okay.

Azure Firewall has an easy installation.

I would only recommend Azure Firewall depending on the requirements. If it is an enterprise that has basic requirements and needs to do packet filtering and a certain level of intrusion prevention, so for the level of IP whitelisting, it's a good product.

It is easy to manage and it is scalable.

On a scale of one to ten, I would give Azure Firewall a six because of the configuration issue.

In terms of NAT configuration, the configuration management is one issue. Another issue is intrusion prevention with the NAT configuration and the URL category-based filtering features. The ease of manageability and the ease of configuration of these features could be easier.

I like its order management feature. It doesn't have the kind of threat intelligence that Palo Alto has, but the order management makes it much simpler to know the difference.

The threat intelligence part could be better. I don't see why our customers have to get an additional solution with Azure Firewall. It would be great if they made it on par with Palo Alto.

I have been using Azure Firewall for around six months.

It seems stable, and I haven't had any issues.

We don't have to bother about scalability at all as Microsoft fixes it. It's much simpler and the reason why I like it.

The initial setup is simple. 

I would definitely recommend it.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Azure Firewall an eight.

I design the architecture and it's an extension of the on-premise that we house on the cloud. We secure the entry point to the virtual data center with the firewall.

There are a number of things that need to be simplified, but it's mostly costs. It needs to be simplified because it's pretty expensive.

I have been using Azure Firewall for two years. 

To date, I haven't had any issue and I didn't have a requirement to scale, at this stage.

The initial setup is straightforward. We define the setup on templates, we haven't had any specific issues.

I would rate it a six out of ten. It's good enough but it's not as good as other virtual appliances. It's good enough. 

I'm a consultant and our primary use case is for traditional corporate networks. We have about 100 people using the solution. 

Performance and stability are the key features of this product, but the reasonable cost is also an important positive factor. 

I think that their customer support could be improved with a faster response time. 

I think the product could be made more customizable, I'd like to see that in the next release.

We've been using this solution for many years. 

It's a stable solution. 

The technical support could be improved, we use the online support. 

The initial setup was quite difficult. 

I would highly recommend this product. 

I would rate this product an eight out of 10. 

I use Azure Firewall as an edge and data center firewall. It is primarily used for data center and edge firewall purposes.

The features of Azure Firewall that I find most valuable include DNS inspection, forward proxy, and security, particularly on the edge.

I would like the premium and standard features to be available on the basic package. Additionally, it lacks some functionalities when compared to competitors like Check Point and Fortinet, such as WAF or load balancing.

I have been working with Azure Firewall for five years.

I would rate the stability of Azure Firewall around a six out of ten, which indicates that there is some room for improvement.

I would rate the scalability of Azure Firewall also around a six out of ten.

I would rate Microsoft's technical support for Azure around a five.

Neutral

Initially, the setup for Azure Firewall was simple, but it was costly.

I would rate the pricing of Azure Firewall around a seven, with one being high and ten being low.

Solutions like Fortinet and Check Point were mentioned as competitors.

I would rate the overall solution around six out of ten. Functionality-wise, I prefer Fortinet, as Azure Firewall lacks some functionalities from other vendors.