Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls Reviews

We have implemented peripheral firewalls and micro-segmentation within our LAN network. To further segment our data center, we have deployed firewalls in the middle of the network. Additionally, we utilize Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls in our GCP environment for various use cases, including URL filtering, URP, file blocking, and threat prevention.

Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls natively integrate all security capabilities, making it crucial for our XDR integration. To address the challenges of our small cybersecurity team, we have implemented significant optimizations. This streamlined approach allows us to efficiently monitor and analyze all logs, ultimately providing a comprehensive view of our security posture.

Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls embed machine learning at their core to provide crucial, real-time inline attack prevention. In today's world of relentless cyber threats, detecting and blocking malware, viruses, and hacker intrusions is paramount. These attacks pose a constant threat to our data security, making firewalls essential tools for safeguarding our digital assets.

It provided immediate benefits to our organization through their seamless integration, automation capabilities, enhanced visibility, and robust traceability features.

Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls are consistent in securing data centers across all our workplaces.

The Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls excel in their integration capabilities. By combining them with XDR, Prisma Access, or other Palo Alto Networks SaaS products, organizations can achieve enhanced visibility, trust, and threat prevention. The integration with Cortex XDR enables automated threat prevention through the use of playbooks. This comprehensive solution is ideal for advanced threat detection, log correlation, and other security-related tasks.

The integration with AI needs improvement.

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

We provide the initial level of support for our customers' firewalls. If a customer requires direct assistance from Palo Alto support, we can open a case and facilitate their connection.

Positive

The initial deployment is straightforward. I would rate the ease of deployment a nine out of ten.

When comparing Cisco, Check Point, and Palo Alto firewalls, I found Palo Alto to be the most effective. Its configuration interface is more intuitive, making it easier to set up policies and manage the firewall. In contrast, I encountered significant challenges with Cisco and Check Point firewalls. To date, I have not experienced any issues with Palo Alto.

I would rate Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls ten out of ten.

Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls offer a robust security solution. However, when integrated with a comprehensive platform like Cortex XDR and XSOAR, their value proposition significantly increases for businesses. By leveraging indicators of compromise, NG Firewalls can generate Extended Detection and Response alerts, streamlining the identification and mitigation of threats. This automation eliminates the need for manual intervention by technicians and cybersecurity analysts, resulting in improved efficiency and overall security posture.

The unified platform provided is very important to us as it allows us to manage all traffic and ensure security without using separate tools. It has AI and ML capabilities, which work well for real-time attack prevention.

Since implementing Palo Alto, we've seen an 80-90 percent reduction in issues. It handles ISP links, ensuring minimal downtime. Recently, we upgraded our secondary ISP to 3 Gbps, and when the primary link goes down, it automatically switches to the secondary. As a result, end users do not experience bandwidth shortages or interruptions in internet access.

One area for improvement with Palo Alto Networks NG Firewall would be customer support. Currently, in regions like India, customer support is handled by third-party partners. Unfortunately, the support provided by these partners has not been satisfactory. It would be beneficial if the tool handled customer support directly, similar to how Cisco maintains high-quality customer care. This would ensure that customers receive the level of support they expect.

Getting reliable service is important when you're a customer, especially with critical devices like firewalls. Firewalls are key parts of a network; if they fail, the whole network can become unstable. So, the support you get needs to be just as reliable as the device itself.

I have been working with the product for a year. 

I haven't experienced any downtime. 

We used Cisco ASA before. At that time, Cisco didn’t have a unified next-generation (NG) firewall, and I’m unsure if they offer one now. The main reason we decided to switch was that we needed a unified NG firewall. Besides the unified features that NG firewalls provide, there were other differences between Cisco and Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, particularly in terms of features and price. However, the features are mostly similar across different firewalls; it depends on how they’re implemented, how effective they are for end users, and how well they handle security. This varies from company to company and firewall to firewall because each has its architecture, data plan, processing, control, and so on. So, it depends on the original equipment manufacturer.

The tool's deployment is complex and takes seven to eight days to complete. 

The tool's pricing is similar to that of Cisco. It's a security appliance; the cost depends on your network topology and specific requirements. The suitability of NG firewalls should be chosen based on your network and what you need. If a colleague from a different company asked for the cheapest and fastest firewall, I suggest they consider options like Sophos. Sophos took over Cyberoam, which was previously a leader in NG firewalls

I work with the product, and we purchased our box after a demo. We also have IoT security, but I don't personally handle that. I rate the overall product a nine out of ten. 

We provide localization services and use Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls to protect our environment.

We have two on-premises Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls that are managed in the cloud.

Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls provide a unified platform for centralized management. This is one of the most critical features of the NG Firewalls.

Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls utilize embedded machine learning to combat the evolving landscape of cyber threats. This is crucial because traditional security methods often fall short against modern malware and sophisticated attacks. By employing machine learning, these firewalls proactively identify and mitigate risks in a way that static rules-based systems cannot, effectively countering the advanced techniques increasingly used by malicious actors.

It helps reduce downtime in our organization by 98 percent.

Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls offer a comprehensive suite of security features, with Intrusion Prevention System and certificate inspection being among the most valuable.

The machine learning feature, with its continuous potential for improvement, directly enhances the security of Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls.

I have been using Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls for almost 12 years.

The technical support is good, and Palo Alto has excellent documentation.

Positive

We also use FortiGate Firewalls in addition to Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls. Both offer similar features and prices and are considered top competitors in the market.

The return on investment from Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls has been significant, as the enhanced security they provide to the enterprise effectively offsets their cost.

Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls are affordable, and we get what we pay for.

I would rate Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls ten out of ten.

We have over 10,000 end users.

When choosing a firewall, cost often reflects capability. While budget-friendly options exist, their security levels may not match those of higher-end providers like Palo Alto or Fortinet. Investing in a robust firewall often provides enhanced protection and advanced features, justifying the higher cost.

We have three employees and one consultant who are responsible for the maintenance of our NG Firewalls.

NG Firewalls form the edge between customers' networks and the internet. They often provide load balancing to multiple internet providers. In most cases, people use NG Firewalls for more than just a basic firewall function. 

The intrusion detection and prevention feature is usually the most significant piece that people want because it provides layers of protection against malware, ransomware, and things of that nature.

My colleague likes to tell our clients that none of his customers who installed a Palo Alto have ever had a ransomware attack. I'm always nervous when he says that because things change so fast. However, it gives people peace of mind that they're protected at the network's edge. 

The firewall is going to do everything possible to protect resources and data. We have customers with social security numbers, HIPAA data, and other sensitive customer information. Other products don't seem to provide the same level of protection and leave customers open to malware or ransomware attacks.

Palo Alto has many features to protect against data leakage and unauthorized downloads, so it can do quite a lot to protect a network against any attack. The leadership at our client companies feel reassured that they've done what they can with the best solution out there to protect themselves.

Smart people always do stupid things, like clicking on something they shouldn't. They often realize their mistake five minutes or five seconds after doing it. We've seen what these mistakes can quickly do to an organization. Palo Alto's features help you prevent those types of things from happening. You can immediately block suspicious file downloads and push those up to Palo Alto to investigate. You can get ahead of the problem and help other folks who might not have seen that attack.

NG Firewalls provide a unified platform that natively integrates all security capabilities. Having all those features in one platform at the edge is essential. That's a massive component of the customers' overall security structure. It isn't everything, but it protects the edge of the network. 

It does not prevent someone from getting their company laptop infected at home and infecting the network when they come to the office the next day. That's where other pieces come into play to make an overall security structure. The firewall is designed to protect everything at the edge and has everything you need to do that. It protects you at the edges and provides reports that give people information about what's happening on the network at a given time and date. 

NG Firewalls take care of any holes in the client's network and reduces the number of security tools needed. A decade ago, deploying these types of tools required multiple devices, whether that was Barracuda email, firewall, and an intrusion detection platform. Generally, people had antivirus and anti-spyware systems running in their enterprises. All of that is now integrated into the Palo Alto Firewall platform. 

The antivirus and anti-spyware features are as good as anything out there. It's updated constantly, so any novel threats are automatically detected. On top of all these features, it provides a solid edge platform that incorporates all of the security features necessary in that edge component.

One of the simple features I like about Palo Alto firewalls is that it's extremely easy to find out what's happening in the network. The reporting is phenomenal, and it's easy to find which threats have been detected and what traffic is going through the box. When a customer notices something is wrong, you can quickly check the amount of traffic going through the firewall around that time. If there is anything out of the ordinary, you can decide it needs to be investigated further.

I talk to customers a lot about simple aspects. Palo Alto firewalls have vast technical capabilities in the signature database, which is constantly updated. Palo Alto does a lot of work to find threats in the wild, which is rare among vendors. From a practical and operational standpoint, the ability to see what's happening at any time, live or historically, is a huge benefit compared to other firewalls that are out there.

Machine learning is a massive part of it. Threats are always evolving, and they can constantly update the signatures they're hunting and the raw data streams they're looking for outside of something that's been defined as a true signature type of attack.

Most of my customers use what Palo Alto refers to as the Wildfire functionality. Their online analysis team checks every 15 minutes to find anything new that has been detected in the wild anywhere in the world. Once their team finds something, they immediately disseminate that information down to the firewalls so they can start looking for something new. That includes anything that has evolved from one version of an attack to another. So far, we have not run into any issues with changing attacks creating problems for customers with a Palo Alto firewall in place.

It's rare for our customers to use the zero-day intelligence feature to upload information to Palo Alto. Still, receiving anything from Palo Alto that others have detected out in the wild is beneficial. Any zero-day signature people find in a data stream can be pushed down to the firewalls, and it's a huge benefit to know that the firewall can stay on top of the changes in the attack world.

The PA 400 series is excellent. It's the product that they were missing. Years ago, there was a Palo Alto 200 and a Palo Alto 500. The 500 was a relatively low-cost platform that focused more on team-sized businesses. It reached the end of its life, and they replaced it with an 800, a similar form factor but quite a bit more expensive. The 200 was replaced with a 220, which was at the low end cost-wise in the product family, but they never had anything in the middle. 

They didn't have something that offered high performance at a reasonable cost. The 400s provide that missing link inside their product family to cater to small and medium-sized businesses. Because more and more, even though companies are small, with 50 to 100 people in a company, internet bandwidth has gotten so cheap that they're typically running 1+ gigabit-per-second connections out to the internet.

While they may not be using that much bandwidth today, that will change as they do more and more online. We saw during the pandemic how that could change quickly. Suddenly, everybody's working from home, and internet connectivity is the company's lifeblood. The 400 series gives customers decent performance at a lower price point in a small form factor. It's a product they can deploy, knowing it will protect them and provide the performance they need for years.

The reporting and visibility are phenomenal, but you don't get that information out of the box. They can email reports regularly, and the functionality is all there. However, a lot of it is based on an older model for email, where customers have in-house email servers. The small and medium-sized business customers I deal with are moving toward Office 365 or some other cloud-based mail and not maintaining their own internal mail servers. 

Palo Alto is developing that, and I need to understand how they integrate with an Office 365-type mail environment. The next piece is figuring out how to get that information to the people who need it without somebody physically sitting in front of the screen or going to the firewall to have it delivered to them regularly. The capability is there, but it's primarily based on an older email architecture that customers rarely use anymore.

I'm an integrator who has been doing professional services with Palo Alto installations for at least eight years.

Palo Alto firewalls are solid. I can recall that we haven't had platform failures or product issues with the Palo Alto Firewalls. Everything can have a power supply failure. We have seen that occasionally, but it's rare. In eight years, we've had to replace power supplies in two firewalls out of hundreds we've deployed. It's a physically stable platform, and the software is also solid. I typically avoid the most recent software versions until they reach what I consider mature and seasoned. 

We've seldom had issues with performance. I always tell people that internet bandwidth will be bigger and cheaper in the future, so firewalls need to keep pace from a performance standpoint. Palo Alto has done a decent job of bringing out new models with higher throughput levels while maintaining all the threat-driven functions. But we constantly need to evaluate where we are with internet bandwidth and where we expect to be in the future. 

We tell people that the physical hardware platform they choose will protect them today, no matter which one. However, the choice will determine how long that can stay in your network. It ultimately comes down to pure bandwidth. As we move towards the cloud, more and more internet bandwidth becomes critical. Multiple internet providers are now essential on most of our customers' networks. The raw bandwidth and performance through the box must keep up with that. Palo Alto's newer platforms have multiple-gigabit throughput, and I assume they'll continue with that as they evolve the product line further.

Their product line includes sizeable chassis-based firewall systems that can do multiple virtual firewalls within a single platform. Even their middle-tier products have that capability. Some of our customers have numerous divisions that need separation between departments, so those scalable features come in handy. Most are organizations with one or two firewalls per site. Still, I've worked with large enterprises that had tens or hundreds of firewalls in their overall environment to maintain a separation between departments and to separate users from servers.

Palo Alto also has a product called Panorama that lets you centralize the configurations of vast numbers of firewalls. It acts as a central point for changing firewall settings, and you can push the changes out to a subset of firewalls in your environment or all of them. The bottom line is that Palo Alto can scale up NG firewalls to massive numbers of platforms.

I rate Palo Alto support eight out of 10. 

Positive

NG Firewalls are easy to set up. I've been doing it for a long time, so it's effortless for me to set them up. When registering a firewall with Palo Alto, you can download a Day 1 configuration into the box with many of the standard protection features activated. 

I don't use that, but I periodically check it to see if there is something else Palo Alto has determined should be enabled or a feature that should be tuned differently than I typically do. They provide the initial configuration with the critical features activated.

Deployment requires a small team. Sometimes, it's only a person from the customer side and me. Usually, it is me plus one other engineer working on deploying these where we've got changes on switches to support the firewall or adjustments to the DNS systems. A lot of different areas come into play when we change the edge. Frequently, our customers are transitioning from a rudimentary network design to a new design where we're implementing firewall and network segmentation within their environment. That's easy, but we use a team of two or three folks to finish the job as quickly as possible.

While all next-generation firewall platforms have some degree of these different components built into them, Palo Alto has rock-solid antivirus, anti-spyware, threat prevention, data leakage prevention, and file blocking, plus all of the typical functions that a firewall does. It does all of these functions exceptionally well in addition to regular firewall aspects like blocking DDoS attacks and generic types of attacks. It tends to be more expensive than most competing platforms, but the return on investment is huge. I'm almost to the point of saying that I won't support any other firewall platforms out there.

There are several new firewall models that have come along, but I tell people that Palo Alto will provide all the protection you could need. There's no reason to look at anything else out there because most other platforms don't provide the same level of protection. The value proposition to customers is the peace of knowing they've got the best protection at the edge they can buy.

The licensing model is becoming more and more typical of vendors. There are several different licenses that we usually provide with the firewalls. DNS security is a newer one, and we're considering the types of customers who might benefit from that. 

The cost of the license is platform-dependent. It would be nice if they standardized that across the board to make the license a flat fee instead of based on scale and the platform you're using. Functionality shouldn't change based on the platform or the amount of data going through it. It's the same functionality on there. That's one aspect customers often raise. The platform's price is what it is, but the ongoing cost of the annual license is hard for some customers to wrap their heads around. 

Many people are just looking for the cheapest, fastest firewall, and my answer is always the same. It's a cliche to say you get what you pay for, but when you opt for the cheapest product, you have to understand that the costs of an attack are monumental. We had a customer who deployed SonicWall firewalls because they wanted something inexpensive that provides a basic level of functionality. They have spent three weeks trying to recover from a ransomware attack because the firewall didn't prevent them from downloading files into their environment, and it lacked some of the features a Palo Alto firewall has.

I tend to use examples like that. It's like switches. When everything's working great, you can go to the local store and buy yourself a cheap and expensive switch, and it'll be fine. But when there are problems, how do you recover? And what can you do with the firewall that will protect you against attacks you don't anticipate? That's where Palo Alto shines. You know you are protected when you deploy it.

Other products are less expensive because they don't provide the same level of functionality. They'll talk about threat prevention, anti-spyware, and malware functions, but they have not been updated automatically like Palo Alto and they lack zero-day functionality. Maybe they don't have some other components, like data leakage protection or file download protections to thwart a concerted attack against organizations.

I always ask people what it would cost to shut down their business for several days. This customer had a solid backup strategy for their servers at least, enabling them to start using cloud-based versions of all their servers within three days. They still were out of business for three days. Now that we've put Palo Alto firewalls in place, they feel confident that's not going to happen again.

I get nervous when people say it can't happen, but we haven't seen it happen with the Palo Alto firewall with the capabilities and features we enable on these boxes. When people say they don't want to spend that money, they need to consider it as something protecting their entire business. An internet connection isn't a nice-to-have; it's the lifeblood of their business, being protected by the firewalls.

I rate Palo Alto NG Firewalls 10 out of 10. People who are only starting with these firewalls should rely on the technical notes and briefs Palo Alto provides on functionality. I started using Palo Alto firewalls years ago, and we deployed firewalls the way we knew how. Later, I worked with another integrator who had been doing it for about two or three years more than I had. He was configuring areas on the firewalls that I had never considered. That becomes the critical piece; turning a firewall up based on what another firewall vendor does is enough to get you the same level of functionality that the other vendors provide.

But with the additional capabilities that Palo Alto includes in the firewalls, it's imperative to have all the different pieces activated as much as the customer can accommodate in their environment. And that's a critical piece that Palo Alto provides a lot of online resources, and there are a lot of technical notes that are out there on what needs to be enabled in addition to that Day 1 configuration. That can give you a big headstart on all the different areas that need to be enabled within the firewall.

We're using Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls as a backup hardware solution. When the main firewalls have an issue, we're using the backup solution and hardware firewalls to avoid any network issues or prolonged downtime.

Palo Alto Networks Firewalls helped us reduce downtime. When we have another backup solution, the firewalls come down, we have backup hardware, and we have a Docker site that can work if we have an issue in our HQ data center.

Palo Alto provides more security. 

I have no issues if the subscription is renewed on time. 

Some configurations can take time.

The dashboard needs improvement as I find it more complicated compared to Sophos. It is not as user-friendly, especially when trying to easily check problems or generate reports which are easier with Sophos.

I've used the solution for two years.

The solution is stable. It has a feature that allows load balancing across multiple lines. If one line drops, another line can maintain service until the issue is resolved and we return to the original line.

The solution is scalable for large companies, however, it is expensive for medium and small companies.

I would rate technical support from Palo Alto at an eight out of ten.

Positive

We are still using a Sophos appliance as well. However, we are planning to consolidate to using just one solution soon.

I was involved in the setup. I participated with the company that ran the implementation. They didn't provide me with most of the information necessary to help implement in other areas.

The consultant company we're dealing with is the one handling the setup for this solution, not us. The consultant is a partner with Palo Alto.

As an investment, if you're going to use it for enterprise, it's good.

The price of Palo Alto Firewalls is too expensive compared to Sophos licenses and appliance hardware.

For medium companies, I would advise using Sophos. For larger enterprises, Palo Alto is more suitable.

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten.

We use the solution for all the capabilities that the firewall offers, including proxy filtering, VPN connection, and Next-Gen firewall capability. We integrate the solution with clients that use ExpressRoute, which is a very common and popular service in Australia. We route all our client's local traffic, 10.x, and the client's Class B public address traffic all into Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls. We use the solution to provide hub and spoke integration, web filtering, and for VPN. 

The solution is a fully managed centralized firewall service for both public and private traffic, including on-prem traffic and Azure traffic.

The solution ties into existing services. We offer network-based services and SD-WAN overlay. We use VeloCloud appliances and put the solution at the heart of that to provide Next-Gen security capability. The solution benefits our clients by reducing the number of firewalls required in their organization, which is hosted in Azure. The solution's aggregation gives us the ability to service our clients by reducing their firewall footprint. The solution also enables us to route all traffic, including internet outbound traffic from a client's side onto Palo Alto NG Firewalls across an ExpressRoute connection.

Palo Alto NG Firewalls provide a unified platform that natively integrates all security capabilities.

In combination with additional tools and services we offer, the solution makes a significant contribution to eliminating security holes.

The solution helps eliminate multiple network security tools and the effort required to have them work together. The solution simplified our operations. We only support and deliver Palo Alto NG firewalls as a service. We don't offer a firewall as a service on any other appliance. We chose Palo Alto because of its Next-Gen capabilities and being the market leader in terms of security appliances. 

I like the native integration into Azure AD and the solution is fantastic from the perspective of managing user access and using the VPN client. The TLS inspection is a fantastic service that's offered in Palo Alto NG Firewalls. In my opinion, the solution is best of breed, which is one of the reasons why we adopted it in the first place.

We have had a couple of DNS attacks and predictive analytics and machine learning for instantly blocking DNS attacks worked well. 

Depending on the license skew, we implement the zero delay signatures feature for some of our customers.

I can enable the features I want and configure the policies based on the user and network traffic, making firewall management much easier.

There are some features of Fortinet such as the virtual domain capability, that I would love to see in this solution, but they don't outweigh the technical capabilities of Palo Alto as the firewall.

We have not taken Palo Alto's firewall management solution because it's too expensive and we don't feel it delivers significant value. We have developed our own reporting. Sometimes there are limitations around the APIs and it would be great if the APIs could be enhanced.

I have been using Palo Alto Networks for about 10 years, but not the Next-Generation version. Five years ago, we set up a Palo Alto firewall as a service with Palo Alto in the back end. We did this for Telstra in Australia, and we're the only company in the world that can support the default route over ExpressRoute, using the Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls as a service that we offer.

The stability of this solution is unbelievable and the best on the market. We've never had an outage as a result of a technical problem on hundreds of firewalls that we run or thousands when we include the HA pairs and clusters that we've built.

The solution is scalable and we have never reached the limits. We stuck with Palo Alto because of their Next-Gen capabilities, and we have about 500 clients using this solution as a service.

The technical support is exceptionally good. They have more capabilities in Australia now and we've had no problems. The technical support has been so good, we haven't had to look for another vendor.

Positive

The initial setup is straightforward. We have a multi-tenanted version and a single version. We have different flavors of the implementation and it's all scripted. We can build a fully operational firewall HA pair with follow-the-sun, 24-hour, seven-days-a-week support in about 30 minutes. We use DevOps to set everything up and it is effective because it is all scripted.

The implementation was completed in-house.

Our service is incredibly profitable. We don't feel we can offer an alternative that will give us the same return on investment.

The pricing is straightforward with no hidden costs. There is a cost for the licensing, the Virtual Network if the solution is run in Azure, and there is also a cost for the operational support.

I suggest sizing correctly when in the cloud because the skew can always be changed at a later time.

We've evaluated a couple of other products in the past to make sure that we still have the right solution in the market.

I give the solution a nine out of ten.

The embedded machine learning included in the solution's firewall core used to provide inline real-time attack prevention is an important capability because it gives us the heuristics. The solution uses existing knowledge of the service and how we use the firewall, to determine if something nefarious is being undertaken. I don't believe that we are using the feature to its fullest capability.

We integrate Palo Alto NG Firewalls into Sentinel and we use additional data points to determine attacks.

We use the solution's DNS security for some of our clients.

We use a lot of data points from various systems and not only this solution to determine if a threat is live and active. We don't recommend publishing using the solution. We do local DNS resolution using the Palo Alto NG Firewalls. We're purely an Azure consultancy. We use Azure publishing services to publish. We integrate the solution into virtual networks from a DNS point of view, but we are always on the safe side, and we never use the solution for DNS publishing to the public internet. We are an ISB. We provide managed services, but we are primarily an integrator.

In terms of a trade-off between security and network performance, there will always be a performance lag when doing TLS inspections because the traffic has to be decrypted in real-time, however, the benefit outweighs the disadvantages from a network performance perspective. When the TLS inspections are sized properly, the performance lag is hardly noticeable.

We sometimes work with Palo Alto, for example, to support the default route over ExpressRoute.

The maintenance is all scripted and fully automated. We are always at the current stable release and we update as regularly as we get the updates from Palo Alto. There is no impact, no downtime, and no loss of service unless we've got a customer with a single firewall that requires a reboot, in which case we schedule the outage.

I have worked with many different appliances in Azure over the years, and I still do with some clients who already have incumbent NBAs, but for our firewall as a service, I have always used Palo Alto.

What we find is that clients want to utilize the features but don't know how to implement them or have the capability. We offer that support. Palo Alto is extremely good value for the money if we maximize its capabilities. If we want a cheap firewall, then Palo Alto isn't the answer. If we want a capable value-for-money firewall, when we are utilizing all of the services available, Palo Alto is the best on the market. If we want a cheap solution we can go to Fortinet which is not as technically sound but for someone who is price sensitive and doesn't want to use all the features and functions of Palo Alto NG Firewalls that is an option. We work with Palo Alto for our firewall as a service, and we work with Velo for our network as a service. The operational run cost for us is low with these vendors because those firewalls are extremely reliable and because we don't have problems with the firewalls, we don't need a big operational support team.

We did some work with the NHS Test and Trace program and they had a multi-client solution that we deployed hundreds of firewalls across Azure and AWS, using Palo Alto. The client did explore other vendors that were cheaper and after looking at the operational support capability, features, and how reliable the firewall was, the option was clear and not driven by price. 

I would automate the solution. I would use infrastructure as code deployment and manage my devices using IHC. If I was going for a larger state, I would use the solution's management tool.

In most cases, our use cases were for migration and conversions. People were coming off of dated Cisco platforms and other types of firewall technologies that might not have met next-generation standards, like App-ID. Then, Palo Alto Unit 42 had to go out there and investigate with threat hunters, etc, which was not that well-known or used. Then, Palo Alto sort of showed everybody that world back in 2007 or 2008.

Mostly, I was dealing with people migrating off of their platforms onto Palo Alto. Unfortunately, in most cases, they wound up just converting them into service-based firewalls, like what they were already using, because they weren't ready to accept the requirements behind actually creating an effective App-ID policy yet for their company.

It wasn't well adopted at first. Even though everybody wanted it, people were putting it in and not really fully deploying it. Once I started working for Palo Alto, we had a whole lot more control over getting people to actually utilize the technology, like it was meant to be used. Mostly, it was going in as a service-based firewall with some App-ID. However, people weren't really taking advantage of the SSL decryption and other things necessary to truly utilize the firewall effectively.

I have an active customer who has 600 users using Palo Alto. I have another active customer with 300 users using Palo Alto.

It helps the organization function better by virtue of cleaner and more predictive Internet access and usage being conducted by the employees and constituents of the company. It helps ensure that they have a stronger security posture. It is preventive medicine If you have DNS Security in place. You will be happy you had it. If you don't have it, you may never need it. However, if you did need it, and didn't have it, you will wish that you did. It is one of those things, like insurance.

Machine learning is definitely here to stay. Machine learning has to be a part of everybody's solution now, especially going out into the cloud where we don't have as much hardware control. We don't control our perimeters as much anymore. We need to have machine learning. So, machine learning has been a critical point in the evolution of this product.

DNS Security incorporates Unit 42, WildFire, and all the rest of their antivirus and threat features. It can be very effective because it will know about these bad actor zones and DNS hacks before it gets to your network, which is important. Everybody should be using it, but I haven't found as many people adopting it as they should.

For anything manipulating TCP 453 or any type of DNS-type application, you will want to be all over that. It is definitely a big problem.

It is not a unified solution yet. That is probably why it has been hurting them in the cloud evolution. It does not have a complete single-pane-of-glass management,

I worked for Palo Alto for about three and a half to four years. I retired from them last year. Before that, I was with Juniper firewalls. So, I have about 10 years experience, on and off, with Palo Alto in various, different scenarios.

They push stuff out that is not quite ready. If you use the product one version back, then you are pretty good. However, if you try to stay cutting edge, you are going to run into stuff that doesn't work. They are forever releasing stuff that doesn't work right or as designed. Every company does that though, so it is just a question of who is worse. You need to be careful with some of the newer stuff that they release. You need to bake it very well before you put it into production.

I am not absolutely certain they have done a good job in scaling out. They may start to suffer now and going forward because there are other, more cloud-ready platforms out there starting to shine over Palo Alto. They are not the prodigal son anymore.

It has limited scalability since it is still very hardware-centric. They have a cloud VM model, but I haven't had too much experience with it.

The tech support was once great, but now it is poor. The tech support has gone south. It is really difficult. I had a Priority 1 case last a week in their queue, and after multiple complaints, I finally got somebody to take the case. These are things that are unacceptable in the business world. They could train their employees better.

Several years ago, I would put technical support at eight or nine out of 10. Now, they are down around two or three, which is really low. I have had very bad luck with their support lately.

Negative

It depends on whether you are coming in from a migration, which means that you expect everything that you will be doing to be out-of-the-box. It has to be if you are putting it in place. You can then evolve it from there to make it more capable. 

I find the technology pretty easy to work with. Some people don't find it as straightforward. That probably leaves some areas for improvement, where people almost have to do a boot camp to fully take advantage of the product. That shouldn't be the case for a new customer. It should be a little bit more seamless than it is, but it's not bad. I can't really knock it. It is fairly simple to employ, if you know what you are doing.

Most migrations take anywhere from two to six weeks.

I did the deployment. I was using it while I was at Palo Alto. I am still managing them, even outside of Palo Alto. It has been a consistent experience.

The return on investment doesn't necessarily show right away. However, if a company gets hacked and taken down, they are out of business. So, was your return on investment strong if you put these firewalls in and it prevented that? Absolutely. However, if you put them in and you never get attacked, then you might ask, "Would you have gotten attacked before?

There is a license for DNS Security, which I have never actually licensed, but it is a very powerful tool. DNS security is important, and I think that Palo Alto's capabilities are effective and strong there. However, I don't find a lot of companies taking advantage of it.

This is not the firewall to choose if you are looking for the cheapest and fastest solution. Palo Alto NGFWs are expensive. By the time you license them up and get them fully functional, you have spent quite a bit of money. If it is a small branch office with 10 to 15 users, that is hard to justify. However, my customers will do that if I tell them, "You still need to do that," then they will do it since it is still an entry point into the network. 

You really need Premium Support, Applications and Threats, DNS Security, and antivirus. The extra bolt-ons, such as Advanced URL Filtering, you need to determine by use case where you are going to use those licenses, then see if you really need them. You might be adding a bunch of licenses that you will never actually get to effectively use. Their licensing model has gotten a bit exorbitant and a la carte . You will wind up spending quite a bit of money on licenses and renewals.

There is another company out there that I like quite a bit in the firewall space who does a really good job and has a very fast, inexpensive firewall. That is Fortinet. My two favorite firewall companies are Fortinet and Palo Alto. I recommend Fortinet in cases where people don't have the money, as you can get a very nice solution from Fortinet for a lot less money. Fortinet is a good player. I like Fortinet. 

Palo Alto's interface is a little nicer to work with, e.g., a little easier and more intuitive than Fortinet. This makes Palo Alto a little nicer for the end user, but Fortinet is a kick-ass solution. I would never downplay it. It is definitely really strong. For $600, you can get a fully functional next-generation firewall on Fortinet, and you can't do that with Palo Alto. That is a world of difference in pricing.

Machine learning is taking logs and feeding them back through. Everybody is doing machine learning now. You need to have some type of machine learning in order to understand what is going through your environment since you can't be predictive anymore, like you used to be able to be. There is no way of knowing what things are going to do. Therefore, machine learning helps the firewall become smarter. However, machine learning is only as good as how it is utilized and how effectively it is deployed, and it is not always obvious. With Palo Alto, it was difficult to get the API keys and whatnot to work correctly, getting real, effective, actual, usable machine language stuff to use in the policies. It was a lot more hype than reality.

Their zero-pass architecture is not really zero-pass, but it is better than others. It still has to run the traffic through again, once it is recognized at the port, service, and route level, to be acceptable. Then, it has to bring it back through to try to recognize the application. So, it is not necessarily a 100% zero-pass, but the way it works. 

It is like in the Indianapolis 500 when a car pulls into a pit stop. Instead of having one place in the pit stop where the tires are changed, another place in the pit stop that does the windows, and another place that does the gas, they have all the guys come around the car and do their work on the car at the same exact time. That is what is happening with Palo Alto. The packet gets there and the services attack the packet versus having to run the packet through the mill. That is what makes it faster, but it still has to do it more than once before it really knows. It is definitely better than what anybody else has done up to this point. 

With a single-pass cloud, we are not concerned with hardware as much anymore. Now, we are concerned with technology, implementation, and how controls are deployed. That is more important now than where the hardware is, e.g., if the hardware is integrated or deintegrated. I don't know if that is even that important anymore, but it was at one time.

As long as you are comfortable with the price point, you are not going to make a mistake going this way. It is definitely best-in-class and a first-class firewall. I would never be ashamed of putting Palo Alto Networks NGFWs into my network. It's a very good product. As much as I might complain about this and that, there isn't any product that you would put in the network where you are going to have 100% confidence in it. There will always be something. Palo Alto NGFWs are the best way to go.

I would rate this solution as nine out of 10.

We use Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls in our offices and data centers.

Embedded machine learning within our firewall core has enhanced our business performance by enabling us to process higher volumes of data more efficiently. Single-pass parallel processing and machine learning provide real-time insights, allowing us to maintain a strong security posture.

There is no trade-off for the single-pass architecture. The firewall meets the standards and expectations.

The most valuable features are Wildfire, URL filtering, and IPS.

Palo Alto's support could be improved. Compared to Cisco's community portal, its support resources appear lacking.

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

Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls are stable.

Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls are scalable.

We previously used Cisco but found it not on par with Palo Alto, especially with throughput. Performance is essential, and Cisco was lacking in this area.

From a technical standpoint, our engineers have significantly reduced labor hours by utilizing Palo Alto, resulting in a substantial return on investment.

I would rate Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls nine out of ten.

We have a large number of users within our organization.

We have a maintenance team for Palo Alto.

For organizations with budget constraints, Fortinet is a viable alternative; however, if budgetary limitations are not a concern, the Palo Alto PA-440 Firewall is recommended.