Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls Reviews

We use both the NG and VM series of Palo Alto firewalls. We sell and install them for clients to provide the best security that money can buy. Additionally, adding SD WAN on the same edge device has made an all-in-one, security-edge-intelligent routing solution possible without sacrificing performance or a secure environment.

The product stability and level of security are second to none in the industry. We value the security of our client's infrastructure so these features are valuable to us. 

An example of a very valuable feature behind Palo Alto is the application-aware identifiers that help the firewall know what its users are trying to do. It can block specific activities instead of just blocking categories. For example, you can block an application, or all unknown applications. On one occasion, I was alerted by Palo Alto that something unusual was happening through a particular port at a client location. I blocked the port access because I didn't know what exactly was going on and alerted the client. Then the client called me up and said, "Hey, I need the port that was blocked because [of this]." We could then test what was going on in a secure environment where it couldn't affect anything else to be sure the behavior was not something to be concerned about. In this case, Palo Alto kept the client totally safe. That is a fantastic capability.

Palo Alto needs to adjust their pricing a little bit. If they would work on their pricing to make it more cost-effective and bring it in line with their high-end competition, it would be extremely disruptive to the industry. They rank among the best firewall solutions, but because of pricing — even if it is deserved — they cut themselves out of consideration for some companies based on that alone.

I have been using the solution with clients since at least 2008 when I became a solutions architect.

Palo Alto is the most stable firewall that I have experience with. Firepower is second to Palo Alto. Fortinet is third coming in just after Firepower. Meraki is in there around number 100. The stability of that solution is absolutely horrific. That it is a security device — a firewall — makes that relatively more frightening because it affects the stability of the entire infrastructure.

Palo Alto's stability means that it is always on the alert and it keeps infrastructure safe.

Palo Alto is quite scalable and versatile.

Easy to speak with, level of professionalism is high.

Anyone should tinker with hardware from different manufacturers, then see what fits with your application. 

The complexity of the setup is somewhere in the middle of the road. It certainly isn't the most difficult, nor is it the easiest. 

MSP

Palo Alto is a little expensive compared to every other solution, but you get what you pay for. The question I have been asking customers since I became a solutions architect is what the best in security is worth. The problem with people seeking security solutions is thinking that all solutions are the same, thinking the newest technology solutions are best and thinking cost-first. A better way to think about it would be how expensive a break-in is. 

If I am shopping around for a firewall solution and I see I have to pay a lot per year for Palo Alto and I see Meraki is a much lower price, I might be attracted by the less expensive product. When it is deployed, we get broken into and lose $10 million worth of design documents. It may be quite possible that break-in could have been avoided by paying more for a better security solution. Because I went the cheap route, I lost many times what I 'saved.' For possibilities like this alone, it is hard to put a price on security. 

Take a deeper look at what happens when you try to save money on security. Meraki does SD-WAN (Software-defined Wide Area Network). That is touted as fantastic because the client is going to save a whole lot of money because they don't need MPLS (Multi-Protocol Label Switching) anymore. But the reality behind it is, there is absolutely no application acceleration, no data deduplication, and no forward error correction. Forward error correction is extremely important when you're using a device between points. But Meraki sells its devices for nickels or pennies on the dollar in comparison to other security solutions. Only then you only learn the lesson of what happens when you go cheap. Your network gets broken into more easily because of the inherent exposure in SD-WAN and it goes down a lot. 

If you have sales offices and those sales offices have Meraki firewalls, the device may observe a problem out on the internet. When it does, the Meraki's failover results in an outage. With Meraki, failover to a better link takes 30-seconds. Whether it is a 30-minute failover or 30-second failover, you can drop a call. If you are cold calling and you dropped a call, you don't get a second chance. It is impossible to say how much money you might lose. For example, if my company sells microchips and that call was going to develop into a $40 million sale, that sale is gone. It is gone because of the small comparative cost savings in security and the instability of the solution you chose to use. But a 30-second outage every single time a route is withdrawn across the internet means your phone is going to ring if you are the IT Director, and you will eventually lose your job. 

The costs for Palo Alto are structured in a similar way to other products. With Palo Alto you can do one, two, three and five years contracts. It is the same thing with Fortinet and Meraki. Hardware cost is very different than the application license. The hardware maintenance agreement is separate. With all of the firewall solutions, you will pay for a hardware maintenance agreement. That protects the hardware itself. That is an annual billing and separate from the software in all cases. Nobody bills for firewalls on a monthly basis. Even the VM version of the Palo Alto is billed per year. Using that license, you can build up a VPN that forces all default traffic to a particular device before it goes out to the internet. It is comparatively pretty cheap in practice, and it works. It works well because you only need one piece of hardware. Build the server and start slicing out VMs. Then it becomes possible for everybody in a network to be protected by Palo Altos security at a lower cost. 

As a solutions architect group, we are what you would call "vendor-agnostic." We evaluate any solution that seems like it may be viable to provide clients with some advantages. I will never go to a customer and say that these are the only products that we are going to support. However, if there is something that a client wants to use which I feel would be detrimental to their business or that doesn't fit their needs, I will encourage them to look at other solutions and explain why the choice they were leaning towards may not be the best. When a solution they want to use means that no matter what we do they are going to get broken into, I'll let them know. It isn't good for their business or ours.

That said, some of the most requested or considered firewall solutions by clients beside Palo Alto are Fortinet, Firepower, and Meraki. Looking at each provides a background into how we look at solutions and how we evaluate options for clients. You have to look at the benefits and disadvantages.

Cisco Firepower NGFW (Next-Generation Firewall)

I think that Firepower can be simplified and can be made into a more viable product in the Cisco line. I think that Cisco has the ability to get into the Firepower management platform and trim it, doing so by breaking down all of the different areas of concern and configuration and categorizing them into overviews, implementation across the board, and steady-state management. If they were to do that, then users could start at the top layer and drill down more as they see fit to customize to their needs. I believe that Cisco can do that with Firepower and make it a much better security tool.

Firepower is not just a firewall, it is an SD-WAN. It is an application that Cisco sells that gets loaded onto an ASA 5500 series appliance (the appliance has to be the X platform). It is not a bad solution. I can use it to get into your network and protect a lot of your customers who will be running traffic through it. But a problem that you are going to get into as a result of using Firepower is that it is extremely difficult to configure. Security engineers that I have handed the setup after a sale came back from the service and asked me never to sell it again because it was very difficult for them to set up. However, it is also very secure. The difficulty is in using the GUI, which is the console that you would log into to set up your rules and applications. It can take about 10 times as long as Meraki to set up, and that is no exaggeration. Palo Alto is easier to set up than Firepower, but not as easy to set up as Meraki. But, the security in Palo Alto is phenomenal compared to Meraki. Firepower is pretty secure. If it was a little easier to operate, I'd be recommending it up one side and down the next, but ease-of-use also comes into play when it comes to recommending products.

I'll support what Firepower has to offer considering the quality of the security. But I can't take anyone seriously who is proud of themselves just because they think their firewall is next generation. It might have that capability but it might not be 'next generation' if it is set up wrong. Some vendors who sell firewall solutions that I've spoken to admit to dancing their customers around the 'next generation' promise and they make amazing claims about what it can do. Things like "This firewall will protect the heck out of your network," or "This firewall has built-in SD-WAN and can save you lots of money." These things are true, perhaps, depending on the clients' needs and the likelihood that they will be able to properly manage the product. 

Firepower is a capable solution but it is difficult to set up and manage.

Cisco Meraki NGFW (Next-Generation Firewall)

Meraki was a horrible acquisition by Cisco and it is harming their name. All of us who are familiar enough with the firewall know how bad that firewall is and we know that Cisco needs to make changes. The acquisition is almost funny. The logic seemed to be something like "Let's buy an inferior security solution and put our name on it." That is a textbook case on how not to run a company.

If Cisco wanted to improve Meraki, the first thing they need to do is simply activate the ability to block an unknown application. Start with that and then also improve utility by blocking every threat by default like other products so that users can open up traffic only to what they need to. That saves innumerable threats right there.

There are situations where Meraki works very well as is. One example is at a coffee shop. What the coffee shop needed for their firewall solution was to have a firewall at every location for guests. The guests go there to eat their donuts, drink their coffee, and surf the internet. The company's need was simply to blockade a VLAN for guest access to the internet while maintaining a VLAN for corporate access. They need corporate access because they need to process their transactions and communications. All corporate devices can only communicate through a VPN to headquarters or through a VPN to the bank. For example, they need to process transactions when somebody uses their debit card at a POS station. It works great at the coffee shop. 

It works great at department stores as well. All employees have a little device on their hip that enables them to find what aisle a product is in when a customer asks them. If the store doesn't have the product on hand, the employee can do a search for another store that does have it in stock right on the device. They can do that right on the spot and use that service for that device. For that reason, they are not going across the internet to find the information they are searching for. They are forced into a secure tunnel for a specific purpose. That is something you can do with Meraki. If you don't let employees surf the web on the device, then Meraki will work.

I can actually give you the methodologies in which hackers are able to completely hack into a Cisco customer's network and steal extremely valuable information. Meraki is the most simple of all firewalls to infiltrate in the industry. It is an extremely dangerous piece of hardware. What comes into play is that Meraki, by default, does the opposite of what all of the other firewalls do. Every firewall not called Meraki will block every means of attack until you start saying to permit things. The Meraki solution is the opposite. Meraki, by default, blocks nothing, and then you have to go in and custom key everything that you want to block. This is dangerous because most people don't know everything in the world that they need to block. With Meraki, you have to get hacked in order to be able to find out. Now, tell me who really wants that.

An example of this is that Meraki cannot block an application it doesn't know about, which means that all unknown applications are forever allowed in by Meraki. If I am a hacker and I know that you are using a Meraki firewall, I can write an application to use for an attack. When I do, it is unknown because I just wrote it today. If I load it up on a website, anybody that goes to that website using a Meraki firewall has this application loaded onto their computer. Meraki can't block it. That application I wrote is designed to copy everything from that person's computer and everything across the network that he or she has access to, up to a server offshore in a non-extradition country. I will have your data. Now I can sell it or I can hold you for ransom on it.

Customers love it because it is simple to configure. I don't even need to be a security architect to sit down at a Meraki console and configure every device across my network. It is an extremely simple device and it's extremely cheap. But you get what you pay for. You are generally going to suffer because of the simplicity. You are going to suffer because of the low cost and "savings."

All I can say about Meraki is that it is cheap and easy to use and fits well in niche situations. If you need broader security capabilities, spend a few bucks on your network and get a better security solution.

Fortinet FortiGate NGFW (Next-Generation Firewall)

I'm supportive of Fortinet because it is a decent next-generation firewall solution. While not as secure as Palo Alto, it is a cost-effective and reasonably reliable product. I have customers choose it over Palo Alto. But if they decide to use this solution, I want to charge them to manage it for them. The reason for that is, if anything goes wrong in the network and they get hacked, my client will likely get fired and replaced. If anything goes wrong in the network and I am paid to manage their firewall, I am the one in trouble if they get hacked — not the client. I apply my services to the network, make sure everything is working as it should and give them my business card. I tell them that they can give the business card to their boss if anything goes wrong because the guy on the card is the one to blame. That way I remain sure that nothing will go wrong because of poor administration, and my client contact sleeps better at night.

Fortinet is sort of middle-of-the-road as a solution. It has a relative simplicity in setup and management, it has a lower price and provides capable security. Fortinet FortiGate still gets some of my respect as a viable alternative to Palo Alto.
     

Comparing the Complexity of Setup

Firepower is the most complex to set up. The second most complex is Palo Alto. The third is Fortinet. The fourth is Meraki as the simplest.

Rating the Products

On a scale from one to ten with ten being the best, I would rate each of these products like this:

• Meraki is a one out of ten (if I could give it a zero or negative number I would).
• Fortinet is seven out of ten because it is simple but not so secure.
• Firepower is seven out of ten because it is more secure, but not so simple.
• Palo Alto is a ten out of ten because the security side of it is fantastic, and the gui is not a nightmare.
  
  

An Aside About Cisco Products 

It is interesting to note that the two offerings by Cisco are on completely opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to the learning curve. Firepower is on one end of the spectrum as the most difficult to configure and having the worst learning curve, and Meraki is on the other as the easiest to configure and learn. Both are owned by Cisco but Cisco did not actually develop either of product. They got them both by acquisition.

Palo Alto is my number one choice for firewalls. I support and utilize more Palo Alto firewalls throughout my company and with my customers than any other device. Number two would be Fortinet. I don't really like Fortinet that that much because it is not as secure as Palo Alto, but I have customers who want to use it because it is a lot less expensive. Number three is Cisco Meraki, which I obviously don't like, but people request that because the Cisco name is very popular and a lot of other people are using it. I couldn't recommend against choosing a device more than choosing it by name instead of functionality. 

Palo Alto invented the method of looking at the application identifier in each packet and making a decision. For instance, many companies may want to do something like prohibiting all chat applications with the exclusion of whatever application the company is choosing to use. Let's say the company is using IP Communicator for customers and for employees to chat with each other, but the company wants to block Skype. The reason why might be because they don't want anybody bringing up a Skype call, sharing information via that Skype call, or maybe turning on a Skype call and letting other people see inside the facility. Skype has a very interesting platform in which you block one IP address on the Skype server and it allows another one. You block Skype.com and it creates another URL. Skype loves to get in and around simple security steps. Palo Alto is phenomenal because it takes a look at the application identifier within each packet and will find that it is Skype and block it. If you want to block AOL Instant Messenger, you just block it. Anything out there you don't want employees to use can just be blocked by referencing the identifier.

Netflix is another one that seems to find it's way into corporate networks. It is normal not to want employees sitting around watching movies. The Palo Alto will find out that someone is trying to access a Netflix movie and block it. Then it can also send an email to alert different people of the activity. You could set it up so that when something like that happens, an email goes to the director of IT to say, "Hey, this person may be trying to access Netflix." You may want it to just block the access type and forgo the alert. Or you can block the activity and alert anyone you want that someone appears to have tried to subvert security. The idea of this type of security measure isn't just to lay blame and get people fired, it is to identify different types of breaches and why they occur. It could be that a potential breach requires a sit-down conversation with the persons involved. But the truth is that many malicious sites — like adult related websites, platforms like gambling sites, obviously hacking-related sites, violence or gore — are loaded with malware. You don't want that on your computer, and your employer doesn't want it on the network either. It is just as bad as bringing a device to work and allowing that device to be connected to the network without protection as that is just another potential malware exposure.

Another beautiful thing with Palo Alto is that they have Wildfire. Wildfire can prohibit malware in either direction. Malware is not going to get into the network via a customer or a user surfing and it is not going to get out and affect the network and spread around via a user's BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) that got infected while he was working at home.

Our primary use case was to configure our PSAs for our customized configuration. 

I like that it has high security. 

The whole performance takes a long time. It takes a long time to configure. 

I have been using Palo Alto for six years. 

I contact Palo Alto by email or by phone. Their support is good. 

I have previously worked with Cisco ASA. Palo Alto is a lot easier especially in regards to security. It is a well-integrated software.

The difficulty of the deployment depends on our clients' environment and their requests.

We require a two-member team for support. 

In terms of how long it takes to deploy, again, it depends on the customers' environment. If the request is easy, it can take around two weeks.

I would rate Palo Alto a nine out of ten. 

In the next release, they should simplify the deployment process. 

We use this firewall as part of our overall security solution. It is used to protect our perimeter on the internet side. We have the on-premises version installed for our offices and the cloud-based version for our cloud offerings. For our cloud setup, we use both Azure and AWS.

The most valuable feature is the security provided by the ATP. It is definitely better than the security provided by other firewalls.

The API is available for integration with tools for automation and AI, which is very good.

The interface contains some decentralized tools, so simplifying it would be an improvement.

I would like the option to be able to block the traffic from a specific country in a few clicks.

Some of the implements under artificial intelligence should provide better visibility in terms of my traffic, such as where it originates and where it is going.

Better integration with industry tools would allow me to do quicker automation and reduce my operational costs.

We have been using the Palo Alto Next-Generation firewall for almost five years.

This solution is definitely not scalable. Although it is a next-generation firewall, it has its limitations in terms of policies. At one point in time, it becomes the bottleneck, which is something that we have to optimize.

We are using this firewall at between 10 and 15 locations.

We have been in contact with technical support and we are satisfied with the service.

We also use FortiGate VDOM, although this is for internal protection. The FortiGate interface is simpler in design than Palo Alto.

Prior to Palo Alto, we were using the Cisco ASA platform. When it was through with its lifecycle, we switched. Seeing the next-generation firewall competition in the market, Cisco definitely has a larger portfolio, but it is not as competitive in the security domain. Solutions from Palo Alto and Fortinet are better in this space.

It is easy to install and we did not find the initial setup complex at all. The basic firewall can be set up, and then it takes a little time for the hardening. In total, the deployment can usually be completed within two or three hours.

The pricing is competitive in the market.

Palo Alto NG is definitely a firewall that I recommend for the right size of deployment.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

The solution has many great features. I don't know if there's one single one that stands above and beyond everything, however.

The application visibility is excellent. There is no other solution that does it quite as well. Palo Alto definitely has an edge in that sense.

The ability of the security features to adapt is also very good. They offer great DNS protection.

They include everything from a network point of view and a security perspective. For the most part, the endpoints are great.

The interface and dashboards are good.

The GSW needs some improvements right now.

The endpoints could use improvement. The solution is mostly a cloud solution now, and there are a lot of competing solutions that are playing in the space and may be doing things a bit better.

The pricing could be improved upon.

We've been dealing with the solution for the last four or five years at least.

The stability of the solution is good. It's quite reliable. I haven't experienced bugs or glitches that affect its performance. It doesn't crash.

If you size everything appropriately, you shouldn't have any issues with scaling. It's quite good. Users can scale it up if they need to.

I'd say that technical support is excellent. They are very helpful. We've quite satisfied with the level of support we got from the company.

I've never dealt with Huawei, however, our company has worked with Cisco, Dell, and HP among other solutions.

The pricing of the solution is quite high. It's too expensive, considering there's so much competition in the space.

There aren't extra costs on top of the standard licensing policy. Still, Palo Alto seems to be adding some premium costs that competitors just don't have.

While we mainly deal with on-premises deployment models, occasionally we also do hybrid deployments.

We're not a customer. We're a systems integrator. We're a reseller. We sell solutions to our clients.

Palo Alto is very good at policymaking. It's like they have a single policy that you can use. Other solutions don't have single policy use, which means you have to configure everything. There may be many consoles or many tasks that you'll have to worry about other solutions. Multiple task configuration should not be there, and yet, for many companies, it is. This isn't the case with Palo Alto. Palo Alto is easy compared to Fortinet. 

It's overall a very solid solution. I would rate it nine out of ten.

We primarily use the solution for the firewalls. We're also using the next-gen features to shape what's going on. For example, to figure out what is allowed out and what isn't allowed out on a layer-7 application-aware firewall. We can block based on the application, as opposed to port access.

The solution helped us stop being policemen to our users. We don't have to run around telling people they can't do certain things. We can just not allow it and walk away from it. We're not out there seeing who is doing what, we just don't allow the what.

The solution allows us to set parameters on where our users can go. We can block certain sites or ads if we want to.

The firewall capabilities are very good.

We're working with the entry-level appliances, so I don't know what the higher-end ones are like, however, on the entry-level models I would say commit speeds need to be improved. 

The appliances I'm working on are relatively old now. We're talking five-year old hardware. That slow commit speed might be addressed with just the newer hardware. However, even though it is slow, the speed at which they do their job is very acceptable. The throughput even from a five-year-old appliance shocks me sometimes.

Currently, if I make changes on the firewall and I want to commit changes, that can take two or three minutes to commit those changes. It doesn't happen instantly.

The solution doesn't offer spam filtering. I don't know whether it's part of their plan to add something of that aspect in or not. I can always get spam filtering someplace else. It's not a deal-breaker for me. A lot of appliances do that, and there are just appliances that handle nothing but spam. 

I've been using the solution for five years.

The stability is awesome. I haven't had any issues with the solution stability-wise. I've got the same firewalls that have been out there for five years and they work great.

I don't work with enterprise-class products. I'm not in that environment. However, so as far as I know, Palo Alto has products that will go that large. Panorama may be able to scale quite well. You can manage all your appliances out of it. They are a very popular license.

Their GlobalProtect license is very much like Cisco's AnyConnect. It does the endpoint security checks. It makes sure they've got the latest patches on and the antivirus running and they've got the latest antivirus definitions and whatnot installed before they allow the VPN connection to happen. It's quite nice.

Their support is very good. I've never had any issues with their support. I would say that we've been satisfied with their level of service. 

Occasionally there may be a bit of a language issue based on where their support is located.

The initial setup is pretty typical. It's like any firewall. As long as you've worked with next-gen firewalls, it's just a matter of getting your head around the interface. It's the same sort of thing from one firewall to the other. It's just a matter of learning how Palo Alto does stuff. Palo Alto as a system, for me, makes a whole lot of sense in the way that they treat things. It makes sense and is easy to figure out. That's unlike, for example, the Cisco firewalls that seem to do everything backwards and in a complicated way to me. 

I haven't worked with enough Cisco due to the fact I don't really like the way they work. That isn't to say that Cisco firewalls are bad or anything. It's just that they don't operate the way I think. That might have changed since they acquired FireEye which they bought a couple of years back.

I know the solution is not inexpensive. It depends on what you ultimately sign up for or whether you just want the warranty on the hardware. 

I'm not really a customer. I'm like a consultant. I'm an introduction expert. If I think a client needs a certain technology I point them in the direction of whoever sells it. I do go in and configure it, so I do have experience actually using the product.

When I'm looking for something, I just find someone that sells Palo Alto and I redirect the client towards them. I'm not interested in being in a hardware vendor. There's no money in it. There's so much competition out there with people selling hardware. It doesn't matter where the client gets it from.

We tend to use the 200-series models of the solution.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. They do a very good job. The product works well.

Upstream and data center NGFW.

Security, visibility and control, you can secure your environment from many types of attacks such as virus, malware, DoS attacks, intrusions, bad URLs, bad domains with basic DNS security which it an awesome feature.Visibility, that you will be aware of the is going on inside your network, such as malicious activities, decrypt the encrypted packets, as well as policy audit review.

This solution has really helped the technical engineers to deliver the implementation faster than the before.

All of the features are good. The new release of the new basic platform provides you with a huge number of features, such as policy review, DNS security, Machine learning, Network traffic profiling, Bare metal analysis

(Malware) On-prime scanning should be considered.

Endpoint management (traps) better to be on-prime than cloud.

QoS, It should be more sophisticated than it is now.

TAC support should cover meddle east area by Arabic support, such as in France, Germany, Italy and Japanese.

I like the stability of the solution. From a stability perspective, all of them are stable. Sometimes Cisco's older versions, maybe from two years ago, were not as stable. Now, Cisco has improved its firewall and security products.

In terms of scalability, no security products are scalable to upgrade. Not ever. While assuming you are dealing with scalability, you have room to increase or to have room to expand, but actually, you don't because there is limited support. Even if you bring in the highest model, it's still limited.

Their support is very limited. It's limited compared to the competitors. They need multi-language support. Now, they provide support in English only. 

If anyone in the Middle East opens a ticket, they have to do it in Arabic but they get support in English, not in Arabic. The communication between the technical people or the campus sites to the vendors now is in English.

The initial setup was very easy. All the initial setups have become very easy. Before, the setup used to take a week to implement a firewall. Now it's a couple of minutes or one day maximum for fine-tuning. To fine-tune the firewall it can take one day, two days if you are junior. In terms of how many people you will need to deploy the solution, it depends because the firewall is not a straightforward technology like any security program. 

We used on-site security advisors.

7 years

In terms of pricing, every model has a license. For example a small model, the license around 1,000 USD. The next one around 2,000 USD. The next range is 11,000 USD to 13,000 USD. It's expensive compared to PaloAlto competitors.

Yes, was fortinet

Palo Alto's firewall protects your network against attacks, threats, and many other things. Networking can be more advanced. You can upgrade the edition of Palo Alto. There's competition between Palo Alto and Fortinet firewalls. Most IT security people don't know which to pick. For a basic firewall, I recommend Fortinet because it has two or three basic firewalls. I personally need a data center firewall. Datacenter firewalls I would recommend FortiGate because of the support. It provides a high level of support.

The latest Palo Alto release has many new features. It can provide you with audits, and policy auditing for a policy review. This allows you to know what's going on inside the network from a quality perspective because sometimes you can create new policies - up to one million policies. You can choose policies, and sometimes you get something by mistake. It provides you with an ability to view or do a policy review or policy audit. This is a major feature. It's a very important feature because before it was impossible to bring the visibility to the policy audits to let me know what's going on inside my policies. Now Palo Alto has provided this feature. 

In terms of advice I'd give to someone considering this solution, I'd say they should read more before going to the implementation phase. They have to read the administrative guides, and product guides before going to implementation. They have to check the platform because different versions of the platform have some new features. The technical people have to review before going to implement it because sometimes they don't need to upgrade this platform or this version. It is not a stable version. You have to read more before going to do the implementation. Ask an advisor, the vendors or call Palo Alto. You can call them, they have great coverage in any country in the world. You can ask the technical engineers what is the best design, their recommended design.

I would rate this solution an eight out of 10. 

We use this solution as a firewall. We use it for VPN setup, threat protection, and for internet breakout also. We actually deploy several different versions. We have a TA200, a PA820, and a PA3200 series.

The most valuable features are the threat prevention and policy-based routing features. 

I think they need to have a proper hardware version for a smaller enterprise. We had to go to a very high-end version which is very expensive. If we chose the lower-end version, it would not meet our goals. A middle-end is missing in its portfolio.

For example, there's the PA820 and the PA220, but there's nothing between. So they are really missing some kind of small-size or medium-size usage. Right now, you have to choose either a big one or you have a very small one, which is not really good.

In the next release, it would be helpful if there was some kind of a visualized feature that showed the traffic flow, or something like that, to be able to simulate. When we define something if we could see a simulation of how the flow will be treated that would be great. Because today everything is done by experts by checking logs, but it's very time-consuming. If there's also a simulator to use when you apply some configuration, you can also apply on the simulator, to copy the configuration. So, you can see maybe to generate some traffic and to see how it will be treated. That will be very good.

The solution is pretty stable. Once you have it configured, normally it shouldn't have any issues. It does sometimes impact the metric flow, but that's natural because it filters everything going through, so it slows down the speed.

I don't think that product is really scalable. You have to either replace it with a higher version or use what you have. I think that's the only way. You cannot add something to increase its capacity, so you have to replace the current equipment to a new version or a new, higher version.

For technical support, we have a contract with some local suppliers. It depends on our partner, so it's probably different from location to location, but as long as they are certified with Palo Alto, normally they should have a one or two experts in their organization. So you just need to find a good person to work with.

We did previously have a different kind of a firewall. We used Check Point before. We also used NetScreen and Cisco. But in the end, we defined our standard and now use Palo Alto.

Firewalls are never easy. You have to have very good network expertise to set it up, so it's not about the product being easy to use or not. It's because of the nature of the firewall. You have to understand how it works, how it should be set up, and to understand your data flows and things like that. 

I'm not really the person who does the hands-on setup and integration. I'm the guy who monitors the global deployment. I'm in charge of defining the standard, to deploy the standard to the site, but there's an operational team to do the final installation, configuration, and those types of things.

On the one side, it will take maybe two or three days to enable the firewall, but if you are talking about the global deployment, that depends on the budget, and the resources that will take different time periods to deploy worldwide, so we are still not finished for all the locations. So we are still doing it.

Globally we have around 100 locations. We have two major network engineers who manage the firewall, but to deploy it you also need a local IT because they have to physically be on site. And the two experts remotely control the equipment, configuration, and upgrades, etc. So it's very hard to say how many people you need. It depends on your company size and where your locations are based. For us, we have two dedicated people, but we also have the local IT when we need them to physically help in the integration. 

We do use external partners for the setup. We use also our internal teams as well.

It's a bit pricey.

Once you install it, you use it every day. You can't stop because it's a security feature and a precaution. Also, we are using it to do some local breakouts, so we use utilize the local internet to carry some business traffic, to ensure there's no interruption. You have to let it run 24/7.

I would suggest you be careful when choosing your model. Consider your bandwidth as well as how you want to run the local area network because the throughput of the firewall has to be well designed.

I would rate this solution a nine out of10.

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.