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Palo Alto Networks VM-Series vs Symantec Advanced Threat Protection comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 1, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

Palo Alto Networks VM-Series
Ranking in Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
12th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
66
Ranking in other categories
Firewalls (13th)
Symantec Advanced Threat Pr...
Ranking in Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
22nd
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) category, the mindshare of Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is 2.4%, up from 1.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Symantec Advanced Threat Protection is 2.1%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Palo Alto Networks VM-Series2.4%
Symantec Advanced Threat Protection2.1%
Other95.5%
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
 

Featured Reviews

MuhammadNadeem - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr. Network Engineer at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
Has supported urgent deployments and enabled inline threat protection but pricing and features could be more flexible
I am not using Palo Alto Networks VM-Series mostly, but based on my experience, there are some deficiencies in Palo Alto Networks VM-Series. Having those features missing, we are not proposing Palo Alto Networks VM-Series to all customers. However, for urgency and for some solutions that customers need for some of their other sites and subdivisions, we are providing the same.
TapabrataSamanta - PeerSpot reviewer
Lead Architect at Zones
Reliable platform with effective integration capabilities
Our primary use case for the product is to provide advanced threat protection to our clients, primarily in the banking and financial sectors Symantec ATP has been beneficial in ensuring robust security for our clients. Its effectiveness in detecting and mitigating threats has improved customer…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Overall, I give Palo Alto Networks VM-Series a rating of nine out of ten."
"Overall, I rate Palo Alto Networks VM-Series an eight out of ten. I am happy with its performance and rich features."
"The most valuable features are web control and IPS/IDS."
"The most valuable feature is that you can control your traffic flowing out and coming out, allowing you to apply malware and threat protection, as well as vulnerability checks."
"AWS has improved our agility to apply firewall rules."
"Using Palo Alto Networks Panorama, we were able to deploy a single point of management and visualization of the firewall infrastructure in cloud, on-premise and integrated with Azure to automate scale up. Its security features, i.e. anti-malware, threat prevention, URL Filtering, VPN, and antivirus are the most valuable. The ID-User integrated with AD and 2FA features are also very useful to provide secure access to servers and some users in the company. "
"The product provides more visibility into our traffic."
"I like the UI. Most things are accessible from the user interface and it is quite user-friendly. With respect to both VM-based firewalls and physical firewalls, it's easy to create updates."
"They manage to solve detection quite nicely, with rather elaborate detection compared to other providers, and Symantec also provides a useful set of information linked to each of the attacked computers."
"Technical support is very responsive. You just have to open a ticket. They respond in a timely manner. Their response is good. I'm satisfied."
"This is a good solution, and whatever our requirement is, all of the features are there."
"The product integrates well with our systems, and we have not encountered any problems."
"All of the solution's features are quite valuable for us, and we especially like the threat protection it provides."
"Real-time threat analysis is quick and takes action on threats immediately."
"What I like most about Symantec Advanced Threat Protection is its notification capability."
"The Application Control code and the easy integration are valuable features."
 

Cons

"The product could provide protection above Layer 3, which gets into the application layer and provides better visibility into those aspects of application security."
"I would like a way to do everything programmatically, or be able to copy the configs from different prices at different levels."
"Perfection is unlikely as the dynamic nature of traffic and constant changes can result in occasional bugs despite regular updates."
"There are some deficiencies in Palo Alto Networks VM-Series. Having those features missing, we are not proposing Palo Alto Networks VM-Series to all customers."
"The user-friendliness of the UI could be improved."
"We have ran into issues with Palo Alto’s limitations for resolving large IP lists from DNS lookups, as well as the antivirus interfering with App-ID."
"At the beginning of the implementation, we had some difficulties with the scripts, but Palo Alto Networks support together with a local partner finally fixed it."
"It would be helpful if we had a direct number for the support manager or the supporting engineer. That would be better than having to email every time because there would be less wait."
"There are some ‎features that would add value to this product. One of them would be a graphical presentation of threats that the system has encountered."
"They could enhance the solution to work across all devices, including Android, iOS, and Mac, and make it more user-friendly."
"The support team that Symantec offers didn't know how to solve issues even though they referred to themselves as "engineers"."
"Symantec appliances need improvement. The whole appliance environment is a robust system and it needs a massive amount of storage space. If you have to increase or speed up the background storage it's a pretty complicated process. The scalability and sizing is critical, and if you do it wrong you run into issues pretty quickly."
"Entire threat protection is not available for the advanced features."
"The security features need to be improved."
"The cloud platform needs to have improvement in terms of the user interface and the different capabilities it has available. It needs to match the other leading next-gen EDR products that are available in the market. That's the reason why we are stepping away from Symantec. Their cloud environment is just generally lacking in comparison to others."
"It's a strange situation where the infrastructure of the consumer or customer is behind some kind of firewall and they have always used some kind of customized proxy. In this situation, the ATP has a very tough time to pass the information to the cloud and back. To fix, it requires a more elaborate and complex configuration for that particular case."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Regarding pricing, I initially downloaded the product for feature comparison purposes, not specifically due to pricing concerns. However, the current licensing model can be a sore point as we're paying for features we're not fully utilizing. Simplifying the pricing structure would be beneficial, especially given the duplication of services in some cases, leading to increased costs."
"Because the solution was getting deployed on AWS, it was the best place to go and it was available there."
"It is a little bit of crazy if you compare it to Vanguard, Sophos, or even Cisco. The newest version of Cisco, the Next-Generation Firewall of Cisco, is less expensive than Palo Alto. It is more comparable to Check Point."
"I rate Palo Alto Networks VM-Series pricing an eight out of ten."
"We used BYOL, because of the cost to own."
"For what you get, it does do what it says. It is a good value for an enterprise firewall.​"
"Sometimes, it's cheaper to buy a new firewall with licensing instead of renewing the licenses of an old firewall."
"The license fee is slightly high."
"Symantec Advanced Threat Protection's pricing is comparable."
"Symantec Endpoint Protection has an average price."
"Pricing is good. It is nice to have a great product at a fair price."
"The price is quite expensive."
"The pricing of this solution is inexpensive and affordable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Construction Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Marketing Services Firm
10%
University
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business31
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise24
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise13
 

Questions from the Community

Features comparison between Palo Alto and Fortinet firewalls
In the best tradition of these questions, Feature-wise both are quite similar, but each has things it's better at, it kind of depends what you value most. PA is good at app control, web filtering a...
How does Azure Firewall compare with Palo Alto Networks VM Series?
Both products are very stable and easily scalable. The setup of Azure Firewall is easy and very user-friendly and the overall cost is reasonable. Azure Firewall offers a solid threat awareness, can...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Palo Alto Networks VM-Series?
The pricing is more on the expensive side, but it is justified due to its functionality, reliability, and throughput, even with all features enabled. In comparison to FortiGate ( /products/fortinet...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Symantec Advanced Threat Protection?
The price is quite expensive because a different entity has taken over the company.
What needs improvement with Symantec Advanced Threat Protection?
One area for improvement could be the pricing model. Future releases could further enhance integration capabilities with other platforms and simplify the licensing model to compete more with Micros...
What is your primary use case for Symantec Advanced Threat Protection?
Our primary use case for the product is to provide advanced threat protection to our clients, primarily in the banking and financial sectors.
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Warren Rogers Associates
ECI
Find out what your peers are saying about Palo Alto Networks VM-Series vs. Symantec Advanced Threat Protection and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,277 professionals have used our research since 2012.