Palo Alto Networks Panorama Reviews

We primarily use the solution for automation purposes and for security.

The underlying technology is very good, considering that we are moving to a work-from-home environment.

Panorama is a straightforward tool. Palo Alto is comparative to other firewalls. Some firewall tools are more user friendly, and, from a technical perspective, it is very user friendly as well. It's not like Check Point. We use a setup for offshore development centers. For all those ODCs, we usually use a Palo Alto device. We have few perimeter firewalls which are Palo Alto but for the perimeter predominantly we use Check Point.

You don't need an overly experienced workforce to handle Palo Alto. It's very easy to use.

The solution if extremely flexible and scalable.

There are too many OS upgrades. We've had six new versions in the past six months. Even if they are updating it to fix bugs, it's hard to keep pace with the change when you have 800 or more Palo Alto devices that you now need to update and upgrade.

We try to follow version minus one or two for security reasons. To keep pace with the changes, it takes us nearly six months as we have to check with the business, arrange downtime, and count and cover all devices.

These upgrades aren't just little fixes either. Whenever there is a new release, it requires an OS upgrade. It would be nice if there was some automation on the upgrades of the devices.

They need to do less bug-related releases and create versions that are stable for at least six months at a time. I don't find this issue in other solutions like Cisco, Check Point, FortiGate, or others. Those just provide a patch if there is a bug and we don't have to worry about downtime.

We've been using the solution for close to seven years at this point. It's definitely been about six years.

The solution is very, very stable. There aren't too many issues on it once you get it up and running. We consider it reliable.

The solution is very scalable. If a company needs to expand its services, it can do so rather easily.

We have different businesses running inside the organization. We have close to 800 devices, so it means about 800 different projects are using those devices. Each project has a firewall, so most of these, 80%, are on Palo Alto.

We use Check Point as well, however, we don't really like it as much. It's not as user friendly.

Prior to this solution, we were using the ASA products and then Check Point. Check Point is a little complicated. I can use Check Point on my perimeter firewall, but not on my overseas businesses. That's what makes Palo Alto is more user friendly. I can use the GUI to do everything due to the fact that I don't need a skilled person to work on the Palo Alto. On Check Point, I have to go to CLA and do all the changes. 

 It's easy to upgrade or to do anything with the Palo Alto. Technically it's quite sound. It's dynamic, scalable, and there's a lot of things that can be done easily. Plus, I don't need an extremely experienced person to work on Palo Alto. Anybody with two or three years of experience can easily work on a Palo Alto device.

The initial setup is not complex. It's pretty straightforward.

The deployment is easy and uncomplicated. It takes about an hour or so, if not less than an hour. It's pretty quick.

However, we have 800 or more devices. It takes about six months to deploy everything, especially if I have to do everything manually.

We have eight to ten people who manage deployment and maintenance.

We haven't used an integrator or reseller. We handled the implementation ourselves in-house.

In terms of licensing for Panorama and Palo Alto products, we have only the DMC cost and we are billed every year.

It's not overly expensive. It is comparatively okay if you look at other devices. Compared to the top three devices, pricing is okay due to the fact that you have multiple vendors who are selling firewalls and competing with each other for the same clients. 

We're just a customer. We don't have a business relationship with the company.

We have multiple variants of the solution's model. Currently, we are using 8.1.15-H. We also have some virtual firewalls that are recently in Tokyo. We are using close to around 800+ Palo Alto firewalls. 

We're currently developing our virtual firewalls and have them in different locations. 

It is not just Palo Alto. We have other devices as well, so we have close to around 1300 plus firewall devices.

I would recommend the solution to others.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. If you need a perimeter type of device, Check Point may be a better option. However, for my businesses, I would choose Palo Alto due to its scalability and user-friendliness. It also has great security features. That said, if it didn't release so many new updates, I would rate it higher, simply due to the fact that so many upgrades requires a lot of work on our part.

We primarily use the solution for security.

The solution works on a single pane of glass, so we have a good overview of everything happening.

We can easily look at security alerts.

Our team has the option to make configuration changes at any given time.

There are excellent reporting capabilities within the product.

The setup is quite easy.

The pricing should be reconsidered. It's too high right now.

At times we have noticed that we get into issues where Panorama is going too slow or has other little problems. The performance can suffer occasionally.

I've worked with the solution for three to four years at this point. It's been a while now.

The solution is stable, aside from a few performance issues. We find it to be reliable. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's not really buggy. It's pretty good.

The solution isn't too scalable. Organizations should keep this in mind if they are considering installing it.

We have about ten or more people on the team that make use of the solution. They're admins and they monitor it.

Technical support has been good so far. I'd say that we are satisfied with the service. They seem to be knowledgable and responsive.

The initial setup isn't too complex. It's pretty straightforward.

The production instances take about an hour or so. Deployment is fast.

We have ten admins that make sure the solution is working properly at any given time.

The pricing is too high for us. We'd like it to be more affordable.

We're just a customer. We don't have a business relationship with Palo Alto.

I'm not sure of which version of the solution I'm using. I've worked with many versions, including both newer and older ones.

We use multiple deployment models. We use both cloud and on-premises deployments.

In general, I'd recommend the solution to other organizations. It's worked well for us and we don't believe there's anything feature-wise that is really missing. 

I'd rate the solution, on a scale from one to ten, at an eight. Of course, if it was less expensive and had a more stable performance, I'd mark it higher.

My obligations consist of overseeing cyber threat intelligence, threat defense operation, digital forensic incident response, and data loss prevention. So in the context of endpoint solutions, my position pertains mainly to the DLP (data loss prevention) function.  

Cisco AMP (Advanced Malware Protection) plays a significant role in our perimeter strategy for protecting the infrastructure. I work primarily with making sure that we have indicators of compromise in Cisco AMP. I am not on the network engineering or network operations side of things. I am mainly a consumer of services from those particular groups.  

We use Snort rules (open source network intrusion detection system [NIDS]). We use Yara rules (Yet Another Recursive/Ridiculous Acronym, rules for malware identification). We have Palo Alto IPSs (Intrusion Prevention Systems).  

Our use cases are primarily perimeter-based for runtime malware defense.  

The most valuable features are the management features like the ACL (Access Control List) management. These give us the capacity to make effective use of the capabilities of the product.   

Pricing is always something that consumers hope will be addressed in their favor. I think that some method of allowing for more customization and open integration with other controls within the enterprise is something that we want to have. We want to be able to have more orchestration of disparate parts.  

I think the features that most of the features that I would like to see are currently being implemented. Behavioral heuristic analysis of connections, for example. That is something that I know is being done now.  

We have been using Networks Panorama for a couple of years now.  

The stability is good. If you consider the size of our organization and the number of users that can verge on being impressive.  

I have good impressions of the scalability of this solution. We have not really had any issue scaling the usage.  

The tech support is actually pretty good. In general, they address issues in a timely manner with reasonable responses.  

My team has not previously used any different solutions in this company, but I have definitely, in the past, used other solutions. It is really necessary for the evaluation of product capabilities.  

The installation was straightforward in a complex environment. That means that we could have had far more issues were the product not well-designed from an installation standpoint. We are a big organization. Deployment can be a matter of weeks or it could be a matter of months depending on what jurisdiction the installation happens to be in.  

We have various partners and consultants that we work with in addition to having expensive competencies in-house. We do not often have a reason to go beyond the network of expertise that we have established.  

My advice to anyone considering Networks Panorama is to thoroughly research the competitive landscape. Do your Gartner research. Make sure you develop a set of requirements — a feature matrix that you can use to compare your requirements with the functionality offered by the various solutions under consideration. There are a lot of solutions out there and the goal would be to pick the one that best fits your situation rather than just one that someone recommends.  

On a scale of one to ten (where one is the worst and ten is the best), I would rate this product as an eight-of-ten considering the knowledge and insight I have into it now.  

It works as a centralized management solution for Palo Alto Networks firewalls. It allows administrators to manage all firewalls from a single interface, reducing the time and effort required for configuration. Panorama also provides pre-configurations and allows for easy deployment of configuration rules to multiple firewalls. Administrators can also leverage Panorama to change smart IPS rules to Panorama IPS rules, allowing for customization and flexibility in managing security signatures. It also simplifies the process of performing upgrades and complex tasks, making it a valuable tool for efficient firewall management.

If a large company uses Panorama as a log collector, it may require setting up multiple local collector devices due to potential limitations in handling firewall logs. It would be beneficial to improve the capabilities of Panorama to handle logs more efficiently, potentially reducing the need for additional local collectors. Adding more predefined dashboards as features would enhance the monitoring and reporting capabilities. The iOPS tools, which are currently offered separately, could be integrated into Panorama to eliminate the need for an additional dashboard or GUI.

I have been working with it for nearly four years.

It is a stable and reliable solution.

They offer two types of support: Partner Enabled Support and Premium Support. With Partner Enabled Support, partners can open cases with distributors who then relay them to Palo Alto. This process can be time-consuming, leading to customer dissatisfaction. Premium Support allows customers to directly open cases with Palo Alto, bypassing the distributor, but it comes at a higher cost. The majority of high-level clients opt for Partner Enabled Support, despite its drawbacks.

Positive

Among the various high-level firewalls that we previously used, including Check Point and Cisco, Palo Alto Networks Panorama stands out for its stability and ease of configuration. It provides a user-friendly interface that simplifies the process of managing firewall rules. 

Configuring firewall rules is generally straightforward and user-friendly. Certain advanced tasks, such as setting up local collectors and changing log types or indexing can be challenging for end-users. In such cases, assistance from partner companies or Palo Alto Support may be required.

Palo Alto products are generally priced higher compared to their competitors. Its higher price is justified by the reliability, scalability, and extensive feature set that is offered. 

The suitability of Palo Alto products and their pricing depends on the size and the requirements of the company. It would not be a good fit for smaller companies with a limited number of firewalls. For larger companies with multiple clusters or complex configurations, Palo Alto products are highly recommended due to their comprehensive range of features and capabilities. I would rate it nine out of ten.

Palo Alto Networks Panorama can be used for managing all your files at once. Its primary use case is that it's a centralized management system for firewalls. For example: we have a company with four different sites, and each one of those sites has two Palo Alto networks in there, so rather than do one integration, then replicate it four times, what we do is we plug it all into Palo Alto Networks Panorama and make the change once, and it pushes out to all the firewalls, regardless of where those are located.

What I find brilliant in Palo Alto Networks Panorama is that you can create variables. The template stack function of the system is also valuable. You can create one profile for several firewalls, and I find that really, really cool. If there's a file on the network that needs to have an address arrangement, you can just import it similar to how you do a CSV import. It's a solid product and it does what it's supposed to do.

The ease of use of Palo Alto Networks Panorama is an area for improvement, because it's not very easy to use. The downside with the system is that you need a lot of comprehension to understand what it is. There are also risks associated with making a change, e.g. you can accidentally break your network which knocks off the firewall, and then you can't get back on again. If you know what you're doing, e.g. if you're a specialist, then there won't be any problems, in general.

It's important to gain an understanding of Palo Alto Networks Panorama, or the concept, before you start. It works like Palo Alto, but it doesn't at the same time, because you have templates, and the templates have to be applied before your variables, and then those variables directly affect your objects. It's important to understand how it works. I wish they could make it easier, and a bit more intuitive, but if you're doing the training, and you're properly in the system, then it will make sense the way it's explained to you, otherwise, it'll be hard to make sense of it.

It could be difficult to get to the stage you want to be on with this system. It's similar to a different language, and it's so hard to just do it on your own, but if you are in the culture and you're speaking to other people, then it becomes easier because you're doing it. That's the learning curve right there, e.g. if you've never done it before, you'll sit and look around saying: "What is this? I don't understand." If you're doing the training, and you're more involved in the product, or even if you speak to specialists, they will be able to help you, then you start to learning it and what it can do.

I've been dealing with Palo Alto Networks Panorama for four years now.

Palo Alto Networks Panorama is very, very scalable. The way the system works is that you have clustering, so you can have all these machines connect to each other in stacks. It's a completely scalable system.

Technical support for Palo Alto Networks Panorama is good. I'm giving them a score of four out of five.

The setup for Palo Alto Networks Panorama is quite difficult, because you're essentially building this one machine, then you have to create all the log ins, then once you've done that, you start registering your files, but you have to do an ingestion on them. You have to bring the file all in, and then it takes the config then puts the config back out again, but that config will then be a "protected config", so if I was logging onto that machine locally, I can't change that file.

The setup is quite easy just to build the machine, but to get it to work is quite difficult.

I've been dealing with version 10.0 of Palo Alto Networks Panorama. I'm a reseller of this solution.

One person could do the deployment and maintenance for Palo Alto Networks Panorama, but what we do in our office is: we have a buddy system. If there's a change that needs to be made, e.g. if someone does the work, someone verifies it, and then catches any problems there, because if you're managing several firewalls, one more change might break all of them. That's the risk that you're in.

My advice to others who are planning to implement Palo Alto Networks Panorama is to look at the use case, e.g. if you have two firewalls, or if you have several firewalls across the country, it's best to get a specialist in to help you deploy it. For a regular IT guy who works in a company managing the server, etc., it'll be such a hard learning curve to go through. Try and learn it yourself if you can, but if not, always defer to a specialist.

I'm rating Palo Alto Networks Panorama seven out of ten, just because it's quite difficult.

We have used this solution to design LLD, HLD and PLB queues as well as development queues. Once approved, we implement and configure drone and drone protections. We have also used this solution for App-IDs.

This solution is user-friendly. It is centrally managed and provides role optimization, without the need for additional tools. We also make use of URL filtering and App-IDs. 

We have experienced a few bugs which the team at Palo Alto don't have solutions for. 

In the next release, it would be good to have features which increase the processing power in clusters.

This is a stable solution.

This is a scalable solution. 

The technical team are knowledgeable and have helped us solve some complex issues. However, there are some team members who are not very knowledgable and some issues take longer than a week to resolve. 

Neutral

The initial setup is easy and takes less than three hours. The setup time does depend on migration activity and how much configuration needs to be done, as that takes additional time. 

I have worked with FortiGate and Palo Alto. Both are quite similar but I have experienced more bugs in FortiGate compared to Palo Alto. Both products have the same functionality, although FortiGate does have more features. 

Palo Alto has rule optimizers, reporting and many other capabilities built in and so other products (such as FortiGate or Check Point) do not need to be used with this solution. This is what makes Pal Alto affordable compared to other solutions. 
Compared to other firewalls, this is the most reliable solution. 

I would rate this solution a ten out of ten. 

My primary use of Panorama is as a management unit, including firewall and log management.

The most valuable feature is that the management unit is centralized, so you can manage different regions from one place.

An area for improvement would be the connectivity, which sometimes means logs can be slow to display.

Panorama's stability is very good.

This solution is scalable.

The technical support is very good.

The initial setup isn't very complex, it's user-friendly. The deployment time depends on your capacity planning - how many firewalls will be managed and how many logs or discs you require.

When implementing, make sure someone involved has a good technical understanding of the product and how it will work. I would rate this solution as nine out of ten.

We have a managed services offering, which we give to our clients where we can monitor the different database applications and environments on their behalf. We bundle a service between Palo Alto Panorama and Palo Alto BMCDs, as a set of security controls for them.

The telemetry visibility is really good as well as the automated workflows for creating policies. The overall solution is quite intuitive to use.

The solution could improve by having a true single pane of glass environment for unified management. At the present time, you still have to use three or four different solutions to bring everything together.

I have been using Palo Alto Networks Panorama for approximately two years.

We have not had any major bugs. However, there have been unexpected restarts and a memory leak a while ago, but nothing that the vendor did not fix in a few days.

The solution is easy to scale.

We have approximately 50 people using the solution in my organization.

The support was able to help us with the issues we were having. They are very good.

The initial setup is somewhat straightforward, you most likely will need assistants.

You will need managed services or an IT professional to do the implementation.

The solution is expensive and could be cheaper.

When implementing Palo Alto Networks Panorama with solutions you might require professional services.

I rate Palo Alto Networks Panorama a nine out of ten.