Palo Alto Networks WildFire Reviews

My company uses Palo Alto Networks WildFire to protect itself from unknown or zero-day attacks. We use machine learning to send the file or the URL we've never seen before to the cloud and WildFire. WildFire uses machine learning and an appliance update before providing a signature in less than five minutes. All the customers globally receive the signature from WildFire. WildFire is a good feature in Palo Alto besides IPS allowing us to prepare for unknown attacks.

The most valuable features of the solution are its static and dynamic analysis that analyzes many of your files, allowing you to know if it is a good or the best file.

Palo Alto Networks WildFire should be more real-time in nature. The signature updates should happen in a minute or less than a minute to be a very good feature for the customer.

When an unknown attack occurs, Palo Alto Networks WildFire takes less than five minutes to confirm users about the attack, so it should be possible in a minute or less than that.

In the future, it should support uploading files to WildFire Cloud. The solution already supports many other file formats. We should be able to analyze any file before we send it to the cloud.

I have been using Palo Alto Networks WildFire for over four years. I am a reseller of Palo Alto solutions.

Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten since we never faced any issues.

Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

Mostly we have enterprise-sized businesses with over 1,000 employees in such businesses.

I rate the technical support a nine out of ten.

I rate the initial setup a ten out of ten.

The solution is deployed on-premises.

The solution can be deployed in less than five minutes.

Regarding the steps for deployment, we need to go to the security profile of WildFire, which is something you can do before, or create a new custom WildFire profile. After the creation of the profile on WildFire, we use it after we can create a policy to check the unknown file and send it to the cloud. We use the policy to start with the deployment process.

I rate the pricing an eight out of ten since it can be pretty expensive.

The pricing of the solution depends on the hardware model. Some can be cheap, while others can be more based on the hardware model. Our company only buys licenses for Palo Alto Networks WildFire, so we don't need any additional licenses.

I think the customer implementing a one-tier or two-tier firewall should have Palo Alto Networks WildFire's subscription. When the unknown types of attacks are coming in, we need to have WildFire for protection.

I rate the overall product a nine out of ten.

The solution is used for threat protection.

The solution can be deployed on-prem and in the cloud.

All the features are valuable.

The technical support response needs improvement.

I have been a reseller of the solution for ten years.

I give the stability an eight out of ten.

I give the scalability a nine out of ten.

A long-term customer who has been purchasing Palo Alto products from us for the past five or six years experienced major issues. Despite raising the issue with about ten tickets, the customer did not have an account manager at Palo Alto that we could turn to for assistance. Furthermore, the support team was not responding to their messages or the tickets they opened. Consequently, I had to take action to assist the customer. Unfortunately, I did not receive any response either. It took about four or five months for us to receive a reply, which was not even from Palo Alto but from the distributor we purchased the solution from. We cannot buy directly from Palo Alto. Ultimately, it was the distributor who helped us, as Palo Alto did not resolve the case.

Negative

I give the initial setup an eight out of ten. The deployment of one firewall requires one day.

We implement the solution for our clients.

The pricing is affordable and fixed. I give the price an eight out of ten.

I give the solution a nine out of ten.

The Palo Alto Networks WildFire solution is effective, however, it is limited in terms of support. Therefore, I recommend using this solution only if adequate support is provided.

We use this solution to identify whether an unknown file is managed or not. We also use it to identify any unknown file that is executable without reputation. We do this before releasing it to the end-user.

We release the email and the network traffic but also analyze the file. We can do it concurrently before we release the actual traffic to the end user when we have already completed the analysis.

The analysis is very fast. The intermittent is a millisecond and has a speedy response time.

There are some formats that the solution cannot support today, but they are mostly very rare formats. So that can be improved.

We have been using this solution for the past three years. We are using the latest version, and it is deployed on Google cloud. In addition, we do an integration with the Cortex XDR together with Palo Alto Networks WildFire.

It is a stable solution. 

Regarding scalability, 1000 to 5000 is not a problem, but anything more than that, I am unsure. However, it is scalable, and most of the people in our company that use the solution are from our group's information.

We have used the technical support for analysis purposes. They are sound, and the testing system and updates are good. They proactively give us updates, and they are doing a good job. I rate the technical support an eight out of ten.

Positive

We have used different solutions in the past but switched to Palo Alto Networks WildFire due to the fast analysis.

The installation was straightforward. It is a cloud and FaaS-based platform and took about one to two hours to deploy. We completed the deployment in-house, and very minimal maintenance is required.

We have about ten people on our team. We needed only one person to install and deploy and about three to maintain.

I am unsure about the specific ROI, but we have managed to quarantine and block multiple manages on the enterprise price, which is good. We have benefited from Wildfire.

Our licensing costs are annual, and I believe it is not that expensive. I rate the pricing a six out of ten, so it is on the cheaper side.

We evaluated getting proof of concept for another solution and end-user analyzer, but there were limitations to the integration, so we didn't proceed with it.

I rate this solution an eight out of ten. Regarding advice, I would recommend doing a proof of concept first before deciding on the solution.

It gives a more accurate assessment of a virus in terms of whether it's truly a virus, malware, or a false positive. We have some legacy software that could pop up as being something that is malware. WildFire goes through and inspects it, and then it comes back and lets us know if it's a false positive. Usually, when it finds out that it's not a virus, it lets us know that it's benign, and it can exclude it from that scan, which means I don't even have to worry about that one popping up anymore.

I haven't seen anything that needs improvement on it. It's a very stable platform. They can keep on doing more updates. As new malware and viruses are coming out, they can make sure that WildFire is up to date.

It has been very stable. It doesn't cause any slowdown on our computers. It filters out what is good and what's bad.

We haven't had a need to scale it. We have a hybrid environment. We have some cloud, but we still have a lot of on-prem.

It's comparable to what the competition is. It is probably a little lesser than what the competition is because, as a state government, we go for whatever the lowest cost is.

I would rate it a 10 out of 10 because it has been a really good tool.

I love the idea of Palo Alto Networks WildFire. It's more geared toward preventing malware. If someone's laptop or phone is malware-infected, the tool prevents it from uploading valuable corporate data outside the corporate network. That's what I love about Palo Alto Networks WildFire. It stops malware in its tracks.

I didn't experience any pain points in Palo Alto Networks WildFire. It's good "as is".

In terms of what I'd like to see in the next release of Palo Alto Networks WildFire, each release is based on malware that has been identified. The key problem is an average of six months from the time malware is written to the time it's discovered and a signature is created for it. The only advice that I can give is for them to shorten that timeframe. I don't know how they would do it, but if they shorten that, for example, cut it in half, they'll make themselves more famous.

Stability in Palo Alto Networks WildFire is significantly better, compared to other solutions.

Palo Alto Networks WildFire, in terms of scalability, is significantly good, though you have to right-size or plan for the future for group capacity. A lot of the Palo Alto solutions, especially the chassis-based or the "non-fixed" solutions give you the ability to scale on port density, and I like that.

Technical support for Palo Alto Networks WildFire is good.

Setting up Palo Alto Networks WildFire is much more straightforward, especially when compared to Cisco.

I use Palo Alto Networks WildFire. I like it.

The number of people you need for maintaining Palo Alto Networks WildFire will depend on the number of devices you have. If you had one firewall, what do you need to maintain? You'll just need one guy, and he's going to be bored most of the time. One guy could maintain ten to twenty firewalls. If you have one hundred firewalls on your network, or you manage one hundred firewalls for your customers, then you're going to need five times as many engineers for maintaining Palo Alto Networks WildFire.

I have no advice for others looking into using the solution because it's so simple. You can turn it on with a button, then there's a radio box, then you click it, and away you go. If you need information, you can enter a support email, and it'll fire off an email saying, "I caught something. I shut it down, but you should know about this."

Nobody gets a ten, so I'll give Palo Alto Networks WildFire a rating of nine out of ten.

The solution is deployed on-premise.

The most valuable features are all of the security features in terms of protection and SSL and VPN.

Palo Alto is the top leader in the Magic Quadrant of Gartner. So, I don't think it needs to improve anything, except maybe the speed to deploy the changes.

I have been using this solution for one year.

The stability is very good. It's at the top of the market.

The scalability is good.

I have never needed to contact technical support.

Initial setup is straightforward. It's user-friendly. It's not too difficult to use it, and the learning curve is pretty good.

We used a system integrator.

The solution is a bit expensive. You pay for security.

For the cost, I would rate the pricing a 5 out of 5.

Palo Alto is a good product, but in the future I will deploy FortiGate because I prefer it.

I would rate this solution 10 out of 10. 

There are things to improve, and nobody is a perfect 10 in security.

You have better control because you define apps. You just don't define ports. You define apps, and the apps are monitored in the traffic. It is more specific than the Cisco firewall when it comes to our needs.

The configuration should be made a little bit easier. I understand why it is as it is, but there should be a way to make it easier from the user side.

I'm going into my second year here now.

Its stability is good.

It is good in terms of scalability. We have around 25 users currently, and we don't have any plans to increase the usage. The current solution supports up to 1,500 users. It is a little bit overkill for what we actually need. It would probably be good for quite a while in the future.

Their support is fantastic. You can call them and have a technician sitting with you at three o'clock in the morning to help you through things.

Previously, we were running Cisco's solution, but then we got told from headquarters in the US that we needed to change.

If you know what you're doing, it goes quickly. If you don't know what you're doing, it's going to take a while. That is why I requested an easier setup.

In terms of maintenance, our IT unit is responsible for all VPN traffic. We have now automated things a bit, but in the beginning, it was manual. 

We did it ourselves.

The physical appliance is around €3,000 or €4,000, and then, you have the licensing for a year for around €3,000.

I would recommend this solution to others. I would rate it at an eight out of 10.

We have the Palo Alto Firewall sitting on the edge and everything that comes through it is analyzed. Even if anything comes through via email, it is forwarded to the WildFire service, which then opens up email attachments to see if they do any damage to the system. If it reports back that the attachment should not be forwarded then it keeps it out.

WildFire has discovered a lot of stuff that our other anti-spam tool did not, so it has been quite good.

Using WildFire has reduced the number of viruses and the amount of malware that comes into our system, which means that I don't have to rely on the end-users to identify it. This results in less chance that our systems will get infected. I would estimate that there has been a 15% - 20% reduction in that kind of stuff getting through.

The most valuable feature is where it automatically opens up the emails and checks to see if any damage occurs to the system. That's something that would be difficult for us to do here manually, simply because we get so many emails coming in. I think about 80% of the emails we get are spam and for us to be able to manually go through that, one by one, looking to see whether they are good or not, would take perhaps 50 people full-time.

Palo Alto is very tech-heavy, and the average user can't just go and deploy one. You really need to know what you're doing. I've been doing IT for more than 25 years and I sometimes have to double-check things or ask for help. The reason is that there is so much included in the solution. It would be nice if there was an easier way to install and deploy it, such as through the inclusion of wizards. Having a more complex product generally means that you need more technical expertise, although if very experienced people are still having trouble then it is probably worth revisiting and trying to improve.

It would be nice to have some sort of remote management tool. As far as I'm aware, they don't have a tool that runs on a mobile device, so you need to be in front of a workstation in order to get it up and running. If I had a remote tool that allowed me to access it then it would be very helpful. Even if I have to VPN into the network, that's fine, because being able to remotely do stuff on my phone would be useful. Everything is going that way.

We have been using Palo Alto WildFire for about seven years.

This solution is quite stable and we've had very few problems.

We did have one false positive that nobody was able to figure out, including Palo Alto and our consultants. Ultimately, I was able to find the problem, write some code and embed it, and that has kept the problem from reoccurring. Otherwise, it has been rock solid.

It is quite extensively used in our organization. Literally, it is used non-stop.

This solution is quite scalable. The specific solution that we have was sized for our environment but I know that you can get other models that will scale up or down, depending on what you need. I think that it should work fine, regardless of what type of organization you're in.

We have between 60 and 70 users. Everybody from the CEO to delivery drivers, office workers, and mobile employees use this solution.

Technical support from Palo Alto is very strong. Whenever I've had problems, they've been able to help me out, every single time. I've gone to them with some pretty complex stuff and they will sit with you until it's done. They have technical support that follows the sun, so if I've got somebody who is in the same timezone and their shift ends, they will transfer me to another person who is just starting their day and can spend another eight hours with me, if necessary. 

The biggest lesson that I learned from using this solution is not to hesitate to call support. You're going to bang your head against the wall trying to figure things out, and meanwhile, these guys are just sitting there waiting to help you. They will figure things out a lot faster than you will. 

The company did have a previous solution. I don't know what it was, but the switch to this product was based on the recommendation from the telco.

The initial setup is fairly complex.

One of the challenges is that you often need to have a third-party implement the solution, and whoever handles the task needs to understand your network and your use case extremely well. They have to know it so well that really, they need to be an employee and work with the environment in order to roll it out properly. It's difficult to do, so that means you need to have a highly technically skilled individual who can go in and implement stuff that works with the company. Unfortunately, most smaller companies just don't have that kind of person.

From the point that we first started talking about it, followed by the installation, setting it up, and testing, it probably took a couple of months. We first implemented a test network, which was segmented off and used in parallel. We had some people who were willing to test the new system and helped us to gain confidence in the implementation. Once it was complete, we brought everybody over to the new network and remove the old one.

We had a consultant come in and he did an okay-job. However, I had to go back in later on and rework a bunch of stuff, simply because he didn't understand the environment.

The company we used was Telus, which is a telco in Canada. When the primary consultant would run into problems then he would call somebody else, who in turn called somebody else. In total, we had several people from Telus who were working on the implementation.

For the deployment staff, you will be needing two or three people. They have to have an understanding of the business, networking, networking protocols, and security.

With respect to the maintenance, it is pretty hands-off. One or two people can handle it, as long as they've got a strong understanding of how the Palo Alto system works. The only time you really need to touch it is if you need to make a modification to the web filtering rules or if you need to modify the configuration to allow for different services or different devices on the network.

This solution saves us a pile of money because we don't have to manually go through all of our emails.

Smaller organizations may find it a bit costly. It is not a cheap solution, simply because of everything that it can do, so there might be a cost barrier for smaller organizations.

We pay between $3,000 and $4,000 CAD ($2,200 - $3,000 USD) per year to maintain this solution. There are different charges the depend on the different options, such as WildFire or different virus signatures. 

This is a very good solution and from a technical perspective and it does a fantastic job. At the same time, we are actually planning on getting rid of it, as it is probably overkill for what we need. I think that when they were looking at this device, they didn't really know where to turn. I was not working here at the time, so they took the recommendation from their telco.

My intention is to replace it with four or five individual firewalls, which gives us a little bit of redundancy and does some other things for us. Palo Alto has a lot of advanced stuff that it brings with it, and we don't have a need for it.

Specifically for WildFire, we're shifting away from on-premises email and going to a cloud-based email system. In that type of managed solution, the provider handles messaging security.

My advice for anybody who is researching this solution is to consider the requirements and the cost. I guarantee that this product will do what you need, but you have to make sure that what you need is what it provides. It is possible that there is more in there than what you'll actually use, so you need to think about whether it is worth the cost. The reason that we're changing is cost-related. For what they are charging us every year, I will completely replace all of our hardware, get exactly what we need, and only pay for it once. We will be saving $3,000 - $5,000 CAD ($2,200 - $3,800 USD) every year after this, just because we don't have those licensing costs associated with it.

The bottom line is that this solution has the ability to do an awful lot of stuff, and if it were easier to configure then it would be even better.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We use the product to identify and analyze unknown threats. This includes handling new files or URLs that are not yet known to be malicious. It operates in a secure environment, ensuring that no infrastructure is at risk while determining if a file is harmful.

The most valuable feature is WildFire's integration with other threat prevention modules on the firewall. This capability allows for the automatic marking of malicious URLs and rapid propagation of this information, which is crucial for defending against widespread phishing campaigns.

One area for improvement is the expansion of the sandbox environment to include a broader range of platforms, such as Linux, macOS, and mobile operating systems.

The solution is stable and effectively handles the analysis and identification of unknown threats without significant issues.

The platform is scalable as it integrates with other threat prevention modules.

The integration with threat prevention modules and the quick propagation of malicious URL data make WildFire a valuable tool for threat detection and response.

I rate it an eight. 

We primarily use the solution for threat protection. 

I found the solution easy to deploy.

It has a nice IP set.

The VPN technologies are very good. 

It's largely very feature-rich.

The solution is scalable. 

Technical support is generally helpful.

It is stable and reliable. 

I don't have any real problems with the solution. 

High availability features are lacking. It's a bit too standard as a solution. It needs high availability. 

We'd like the solution to be a bit cheaper. It's quite pricey. 

I've been working with the solution for three or four years. 

The solution is pretty stable. I'd rate it eight or nine out of ten in terms of reliability. It has limitations for high-availability features. It's more traditional. 

It's a good solution if you need to scale. 

We have three or four customers using the solution right now. 

Technical support is fine. We haven't had issues with them when we need help. 

The solution is straightforward to set up. Since it is so easy, it takes one or two months for a migration. An initial setup might take one or two weeks. 

We need Panorama. We give the IP to the team and Panorama as well. Then we have to ensure the firewall has internet access. 

There are a lot of licensing options. It can be a bit complicated for users. They could work to simplify the options. The product is also a very expensive firewall. 

I'm an integrator. We do use a variety of versions of the solution. We have a few clients using the product. 

I'd recommend the solution to others. It improves protection and is a good firewall. 

I would rate the solution eight out of ten. I'm happy with its capabilities.