Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls Reviews

Our primary use case is for the perimeter connection of our clients in the network. Our client brings their services to their clients, and they have the option to connect to a webpage. With Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls they can safely provide a username and password to their clients.

It is mainly on-premise, because the majority of the clients at this point want that kind of option. But many of them are already asking for the cloud option, like Prisma, for example.

It has improved our clients' organizations because previously the clients did not have the option to fully connect. In this solution, they have the opportunity to add services to their web page and book clients.

The feature that I have found most valuable is the connection. It's very easy for the clients to connect to their information. They use an SSL connection by BPM.

We work very closely with the vendors here and at this point they use external support.

Maybe they could add some tools and more competing services, like servers, but that would increase the cost of the solution.

My company has been using Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls for almost one year. It is new for us. We have more experience with Cisco and Fortinet.

In my company, I am responsible for the development of the proposal that we give to the client. We develop the spectrum and the pricing. We make presentations to the customer to explain the solution and answer questions about it.

The scalability is very strong. The vendor provides has high availability.

Our clients are medium sized businesses.

Palo Alto is not a cheap solution. It is expensive. But because of its technology it pays itself back. In each case we work with the vendor to obtain a major discount for their business. I give that discount to our customer, who benefit from the services that we can bring them.

This is our first dealing with Palo Alto. With other vendors we have more experience, like with Cisco and Fortinet.

Palo Alto's documentation and manuals are very complete. It's very easy to obtain the information that way.

The client still uses Cisco, Fortinet, and Checkpoint. Palo Alto has very good administration tools which is not the case with the others. You can't compare all vendors. Also, the granularity of the information that they can obtain from the firewalls is better.

The initial setup depends. In the case of one client, for example, they have a very complex connection of networks, which is architectural. It is integrated and we need to pick it out and include all the rules that they have and to put in the firewalls which they want to buy in the next month. That kind of job is not easy for us, not just regarding Palo Alto but for other vendors, too.

On a scale of one to ten, I would give Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls a nine.

I would recommend this product to others.

In terms of what advice I would give to future customers looking into implementing Palo Alto Firewalls, I would tell them that they have a good system operator in the firewalls and that it provides many tools that they can use to protect their networks. You don't find that in the other vendors.

We deploy and provide support for this solution to our customers. The use case depends on customer requirements because Palo Alto Next Generation Firewall can be used as a data center firewall, perimeter firewall or on the cloud for a perimeter firewall or used with communications. Some customers use it for global protect connectivity. I am a senior network engineer and we are partners with Palo Alto Networks. 

The best feature of this solution is the GlobalProtect, followed by the App-ID feature which is very good. I also like the VMS feature. 

They've improved a lot of things but we'd like to see more mobility between on-prem and cloud based. I'd also like to see security synchronization between the firewalls. Managing can be difficult. 

I've been providing this solution for over two years. 

There are occasionally issues with reporting, otherwise stability is fine. 

The scalability of this solution is fine. 

Technical support is fine, although sometimes there have been delays. From a technical perspective, they are knowledgeable. 

Now that I have some experience with it, the initial setup is simple. If it's being deployed on-prem, deployment takes a couple of days. But if it's a cloud deployment, we can complete deployment in a day. 

Palo Alto is more expensive in comparison to Fortinet and other firewalls. It's okay because they do provide quality. 

I would recommend this firewall still. Our system integrates well but it depends on customer requirements so we sometimes choose to go with an alternative firewall.

I would rate this solution an eight out of 10. 

We use the solution to secure our Internet traffic and the application traffic from the Internet. 

There is also no need to connect to a VPN most of the time.

The payload is a very valuable feature. 

The technical support needs improvement. 

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

It is a stable solution. 

The deployment takes five to ten minutes. 

There are security licenses. 

Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten. 

We utilize advanced threat prevention features like web filtering and SSL decryption, which haven't caused any issues.

The tool's central management system is complicated, making it challenging to manage multiple devices centrally. Individually, the firewalls are easy to use and manage.

I'd like to see better central management features in the next release. They've introduced some, but I haven't tried them yet, so I can't say how effective they are. However, having a single management interface would be a big improvement.

I have been working with the product for six years. 

The product is scalable. 

The tool is stable. 

The tool's technical support is good compared to other vendors. 

Positive

Setting up the tool can be challenging, especially if configuring them individually. There's an option for zero-touch configuration, but it still involves managing Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, which adds complexity and doesn't always justify the cost. If you're experienced with the technology and starting from scratch, expect a steep learning curve.

The tool is expensive, especially considering all the necessary licenses for centrally managing firewalls. For medium-sized companies like ours, it's often not feasible within our budget constraints.

We pay around €200k yearly for all our firewalls. Additionally, we received a quote of over 1 million per year for Prisma Access. There is a significant cost difference compared to other options, where it's around €200k per year.

We have to pay a license for support. 

We started with on-premise infrastructure, including domain controllers. Still, as we moved to the cloud, there was a gap in group membership management until Palo Alto came up with a solution. We have multiple firewalls, about 50 of which are difficult to manage. However, the features offered by the firewalls themselves are really good.

In the future, we might consider switching from Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls. We're currently evaluating a new solution. However, cost is a concern, as it seems more expensive than other products and SaaS solutions.

Integration with Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls and other security tools or IT infrastructure is not entirely straightforward but manageable. It's easier compared to some other vendors but still requires effort. I have tried to integrate it with Cisco ISE. 

I recommend Palo Alto NG Firewalls for large enterprises. However, due to their high price, I wouldn't recommend them for small—to medium-sized companies, especially those with limited IT budgets.

We've found that Palo Alto NG Firewalls are particularly good at stopping zero-day attacks. Compared to other companies like Fortinet, we've had fewer security breaches with it.

I rate the overall solution a seven out of ten. 

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. 

Our main use of this solution is to create micro segmentations only in the public cloud, and use the data we receive to see threats passing through the Vnets.

We have found that this solution has improved not only the level of security that is in place, but also reduced the amount of operational time needed for us to handle cloud-based security.

We have found the SSL decryption within this solution to be great; you can enable this feature and have the ability to see more of what is happening across your network.

We also really like the Wi-Fi service feature of this solution.  It has a great base of information, and uses machine learning to improve recognition of issues and threats.

We would like to see improvement in the web interface for this solution, so that it can handle updates without manual intervention to put the data in order.

We have been working with this solution for two years.

We have found this to be a stable solution during our time working with it.

As it is cloud-based, the solution is easily scalable.

We have found the technical support for this solution to be very good; we just open a support chat window and we have assistance when we need it.

Positive

We previously used Fortinet, and changed to this solution because of the superior performance.

The initial setup of this solution was very easy, and the deployment took just under two weeks to complete.

We used a consultancy team from Add Valley Services for our implementation of this solution, and their service was great.

We would advise that this solution has a higher price point than other comparable products, however, the license fee covers all the features that the solution can provide and there are not extra costs involved.

We would recommend that organizations implementing this solution use a good consulting service and plan extensively up front, before implementation, in order to ensure a smooth deployment with no issues.

We would rate this solution as 10 out of 10.

I am a reseller of Palo Alto Networks.

The solution is user-friendly. It's secure and easy to understand your network visibility, control the network, and prevent attacks.

The pricing could be improved. They need to work on the setup over the firewall, VLAN, and PPPoE.

It's stable.

It's scalable.

I seldom call technical support because it's easy to understand and configure the solution.

It could be less expensive.

I would rate this solution 9 out of 10.

If you want to have a secure network, use Palo Alto. 

We primarily use the solution as a datacenter firewall for 0 trust security model

From my experience, comparing it to other products, the granularity you can have in the application is very good. The application detection is excellent. It's certainly one of the best. 

The engine detector application is usually one of the best compared to any other firewall on the market, in my opinion.  With it, I can do a lot of rules based on the application. If you have multiple internet links, you can have an application export from one link, and an application wire from another link. You can have security on the application. The security, for example, can have different functionalities. Basically, the granularity of rules is amazing in Palo Alto.

They have a good reputation for their antivirus capabilities.

The solution offers a strong URL based system or detection for malicious URL or malicious files. 

They even have a machine learning algorithm. They do a lot of very advanced detection for files and URLs. 

Once you deploy the product, you can basically forget about it. It has high customer satisfaction because it's always just working.

The solution would benefit from having a dashboard.

From a normal IPS after attack, routine attack and threat detection attack, in other words, the standard IPS detection attack, I don't see Palo Alto as very good compared to others. The standard network IPS functionality could be better. It's there in solutions like McAfee or Tipping Point, however, I don't see it here in this solution.

We've been working with Palo Alto for about six years now.

From my experience, it's the best hardware compared to other NG firewalls from the perspective of performance stability. While the other firewalls lose 50 or 60% of performance when enabling all policies, Palo Alto loses 10 to 20% maximum, even with enabled IPS and fire detection and all. From our experience performance-wise, it's one of the best hardware solutions for firewalls. 

We haven't lost performance really, so I would describe it as very stable. There are not any issues.

Since the solution is hardware, there are some limitations in terms of scalability.

Usually, in hardware, you can't say it's scalable or not due to the fact that you have the limitations built-in related to the size of the box. The box has a maximum number that it can reach. You can add more hardware, however, the hardware itself is finite.

We usually do a POC first so we can get the figures for performance and we can put in a box that can support 20 or 30 people extra for future expansion.

In general technical support is very good. That said, usually, when we face an issue, we try to solve it ourselves internally before going to level one support. 

In general, we never have had a big issue with support. I don't have much experience with the support team to tell you if they're really good or not. Usually 80% of the cases we open, we talk with the distributor and finish the operation case directly with Palo Alto. It's more like a backend request and therefore I don't have much input that would be objective.

As resellers, we also work with Cisco and some Forcepoint solutions.

I like that in Cisco there's more security parts, like IPS, and a Demandware engine.

I like Cisco, in general, more than Palo Alto if I'm comparing the two. However, from an application perspective, our application's usability and detection and firewall control using an application, it's Palo Alto that's the best on the market. That's, of course, purely from a  firewall point of view. Even in terms of detection of the applications, it has the best system.

The deployment depends on the client's environment as well as how they are using it. For example, an internet NG firewall on the internet, it takes, on average, a week between installation, integration, and tuning. Usually we don't do all the policies because we are system integrator. We do the main policies and we teach the customer and then do a handover to the user for tuning and all the installation extras.

If it's a data center project, it takes more time and effort. It takes a month sometimes due to the fact that we'll be dealing with a lot of traffic. The application and server are usually harder to control than internet applications like Facebook and other standard applications, and easier on the internet. Then there's also internal applications, custom applications, migrating applications, finance education applications, etc., which are not always direct from the customer or directly known.

In short, the implementation isn't always straightforward. There can be quite a bit of complexity, depending on the company.

In general, I prefer hardware, and Palo Alto's is quite good. However, we have a couple of virtual deployments for cases as well.

I would definitely recommend the solution. It's one of the best firewalls on the market. I've worked with four different vendors in the past, and some of the most mature NG firewalls are Palo Alto's. It's their main business, so they are able to really focus on the tech. They spend a lot of time on R&D. They're always leading the way with new technologies. 

While Cisco has more main products, Palo Alto really does focus in on NG firewalls. That's why I always see them as a leader in the space.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

These firewalls are only used for perimeter purposes, in gateway mode.

In addition to our environment being secure, we can monitor compliance of VPN users. Security and monitoring are the two big benefits.

It's also very critical for us that it provides a unified platform that natively integrates all security capabilities. We have multiple vendors and multiple solutions. Palo Alto has to work with them. For example, when it comes to authentication, we can integrate LDAP and RADIUS, among others. And in one of our customer's environments, we have integrated a new, passwordless authentication.

Apart from the security, Palo Alto NG Firewalls have nice features like App-ID and User-ID. These are the two most useful features.

With App-ID, we can identify exact traffic. Even if someone tries to fool the firewall with a different port number, or with the correct port number, Palo Alto is able to identify what kind of traffic it is.

With User-ID, we can configure single sign-on, which makes things easy for users. There is no need for additional authentication for a user. And for documentation and reporting purposes, we can fetch user-based details, based on User-ID, and can generate new reports.

Another good feature is the DNS Security. With the help of DNS security, we can block the initial level of an attack, and we can block malicious things from a DNS perspective.

The GlobalProtect VPN is also very useful.

The solution has normal authentication, but does not have two-factor or multi-factor authentication. There is room for development there.

We have been using Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls for two years. I've worked on the 800 Series and the 3000 Series.

It's quite stable. They are launching a new firmware version, but compared to other products, Palo Alto is quite stable.

I have worked with Palo Alto's support many times and it is quite good. Whenever we create a support ticket, they are on time and they update us in a timely manner. In terms of technical expertise, they have good people who are experts in it. They are very supportive of customers.

Positive

The initial deployment is straightforward; very simple. The primary access for these firewalls is quite simple. We can directly access them, after a few basic steps, and start the configuration. Even the hardware registration process and licensing are quite simple.

The time it takes to deploy a firewall depends upon hardware and upon the customer's environment. But a basic to intermediate deployment takes two to three months.

Our customers definitely see ROI with Palo Alto NG Firewalls, although I don't have metrics.

I am not involved in the commercial side, but I believe that Palo Alto is quite expensive compared to others.

One of the pros of Palo Alto is the GlobalProtect, which is a VPN solution. GlobalProtect has broader compliance checks. I have worked on Check Point and FortiGate, but they don't have this kind of feature in their firewalls. Also, Check Point does not have DNS Security, which Palo Alto has.

If you're going with Palo Alto, you have to use all its features, including the DNS Security, App-ID, and SSL decryption. Otherwise, there is no point in buying Palo Alto.

The customers primarily use this solution for a firewall.

Some of the valuable features in this solution are traffic monitoring, GUI functionality, and it very easy to troubleshoot if there is any problem that happens.

The solution could be simplified.

I have been working with this solution for approximately three years.

I have not found any bugs, this solution is stable.

The technical support I have been using has been through email communication. When I open a support case, shortly there is a response with a solution. They are responsive and have always found solutions for the issues I have been having.

The installation is straightforward. Before I do a deployment for my customers I am able to do a simulation on my laptop.

I rate Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls an eight out of ten.