Palo Alto Networks WildFire Reviews

We had two 800-Series Palo Alto Firewalls, but as they reached end-of-life, we began researching alternatives. Ultimately, we chose to switch to Cisco Firepower, so we no longer use WildFire.

The most valuable feature for us is the VPN. We used GlobalProtect for the VPN, as well as site-to-site.

It is very simple to use.

The support needs to be improved because it takes too long to resolve severity-one issues.

Better integration with third-party products and services is needed.

The need to implement their own multifactor authentication, rather than relying on third-party add-ons for it.

They have malware protection and web-filtering in place, although they are not as effective as Titan or Cisco Umbrella.

I began working with Palo Alto WildFire a year ago when I joined the company.

It is a solid, stable network solution.

In terms of scalability, Palo Alto is at the top of the market.

Managing this solution we had six network administrators, who are network analysts. In terms of end-users, the entire company was using the Palo Alto network.

When you contact support, there is no guarantee that they will be available to help you tackle the issue that you are facing. Sometimes you are left on the phone for three or four hours before you can speak with an engineer, which is very, very poor. If you have an emergency situation or a network outage of severity-one, then you cannot wait for hours to support your clients.

Palo Alto was the first solution of this type that we used. However, we have recently purchased Cisco Firepower and no longer work with Palo Alto products.

Prior to Firepower being released, Palo Alto was very simple and better than Cisco ASA. Now, however, Firepower is simpler and the support is outstanding. With Cisco, if you have a severity-one outage then it will be less than ten minutes before you get an engineer on the phone to help you.

I have also worked with Check Point and Juniper solutions, and I feel that scalability-wise, Palo Alto is better than the rest, except for perhaps Cisco, where it is neck and neck.

The setup is not complex. When you come from a CLI background of Cisco ASA or any other platform, Palo Alto is much easier. As long as you are familiar with the general steps in the procedure, it is not difficult.

This solution is very pricey and it depends on the package that you implement. There are sometimes promotions on, which can save on costs.

The Palo Alto models that we were using are the PA800-500 and PA830. 

I have seen people in different organizations and different industries set their firewall solutions up in different ways. It depends on the level of support, in terms of who will be maintaining the network. It also includes the level of knowledge they have, as well as their management preference. Some people choose Palo Alto because they don't care about the costs, and it is an easy solution to use, especially if they are already familiar with it. I would say that if they have the budget then this is a good choice and I recommend it.

However, if they are looking to consolidate all of their services, then the option to choose is definitely Cisco. It's a cloud-based solution with malware protection, filtering, and everything you need all in one box. It makes a lot of difference.

Finally, some people prefer FortiGate because the pricing is good and it is simple to use, whereas some people prefer Check Point for other reasons. It's an individual choice, but it should be well researched before the final choice is made.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

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 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.

We use the solution for site-to-site VPNs and it replaces the proxy.

The most valuable features of the solution are user-friendliness, price, good security, and cloud-related options.

The solution can improve its traffic management.

I have been using the solution for three months.

I give the stability a ten out of ten.

I give the scalability a seven out of ten. We have seven thousand people using the solution.

We previously used Cisco Networks but we switched to Palo Alto Networks WildFire because it has more options that meet our needs.

The initial setup is straightforward.

The implementation was completed in-house.

The price is fair and comparable to other solutions.

I give the solution an eight out of ten.

A limited number of people are required for maintenance. One person is enough for the day-to-day but we have overlapped for coverage. 

I like the analysis they apply to the unknown files, and I think they have good technology to use as a sandboxing tool. I didn't find something similar to WildFire in the marketplace.

The price could be better.

I have been using Palo Alto Networks WildFire for about four years.

Palo Alto Networks WildFire is a stable solution.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give stability a ten.

Palo Alto Networks WildFire is a scalable solution.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give scalability a ten.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give technical support a seven.

Neutral

The initial setup was straightforward. It takes ten minutes or less because it's just to activate a button. And after that, the client has to apply the security profile to security rules. One cybersecurity engineer can deploy and maintain this solution, but it depends on the company's size.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give the initial setup a ten.

Our clients say they have an ROI because they don't have to analyze the file with a lot of different tools. They consider that all the information is centralized, and they like that.

The price could be better.

I used the solution, and I think that it's wonderful. They have different layers of analysis, but I wouldn't say I like the price. 

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Palo Alto Networks WildFire a nine.

Palo Alto Networks WildFire is being used as an effective zero-day threat prevention solution. When a file comes in from a user innocently clicking on a website, then downloading the file, for example, if your Palo Alto is set up in a way that detects what is happening in that traffic going through, whether the file is an audio file, a DLL, an executable file, etc., if it thinks that file is unsafe, it will ask for a second opinion from Palo Alto Networks WildFire.

If you'll imagine how a network would work: You've got your computer, then your antivirus on the computer, then you have your internet gateway. That suspicious file will stop at the gateway, rather than stopping at the computer. Think about hurdles, where you've got these people running over hurdles, and to win the race, you have to jump over every single hurdle. If you get one of those hurdles wrong, that's it. You're done. That's why we're doing this check almost at the perimeter, or at the edge of the network, instead of on the device, because once you're on the device, it means you're on the network.

What I found most valuable in Palo Alto Networks WildFire is that it's intuitive. I also love the App-ID feature, especially because it works out of the box. I can also instantly see all the traffic going out, e.g. I can just plug a firewall in, then connect one network socket to a switch, etc. There's no configuration I need to do to see it. It just tells me that you're sending BitTorrent traffic, or SLL traffic, or you're going into 365, etc. It just does that out of the box, and it's the best thing that this solution can do. Straight away you can see all the traffic going through your network.

Palo Alto Networks WildFire, because it's from Palo Alto Networks, has better visibility on everything, so they can see what's happening in the world. They recently released the Palo Alto Networks WildFire machine learning feature on the firewall, so it's them saying: "This thing's happening on your firewall, so you should do this," and it just does it for you. Rather than relying on a human to interpret these problems, it will just do it for you, and that's pretty cool. I've not played with the machine learning feature myself, but that's something I'm very keen to have a look at.

We do a lot with charities, and I'd love Palo Alto Networks WildFire to have more discounts, e.g. charity discounts, so we can protect healthcare and schools, then other than aiming at the universities and the big hospitals where it's a lot of money, we can go for the smaller schools, too. They make quite a killing there. 

Again, it's just charity pricing, but because we are a partner with them, we can do that ourselves, e.g. we can buy it and then reduce our margins on it to get them over. We feel that it's better to sell the device that's very good at a lower cost, then, we lock in with their services at the end, so work management, etc. Rather than saying, "It's going to cost you this much money, and it's too expensive to even begin with."

I've been a reseller of Palo Alto Networks WildFire for four years now.

Palo Alto Networks WildFire is a stable solution.

Palo Alto Networks WildFire is scalable, particularly if you pick the right firewall, and that's it: you can do what you need to with it.

With five being the highest and one being the lowest, I'm scoring the technical support for Palo Alto Networks WildFire a four. They're very, very good, but there is still room for improvement when some issues become more complex. If you understand the system, then you'll also understand why it is like it is.

Setting up Palo Alto Networks WildFire is easy out of the box, because you just plug in the cables you need, but the way it works is you need to have an understanding of networking, otherwise, setting it up will be difficult. If you are the right type of person, then you'll have no problems with the setup.

Palo Alto Networks WildFire is quite expensive, and this is what puts people off.

The way Palo Alto Networks WildFire works is that it's essentially a service that you get from Palo Alto as part of your subscription. You can subscribe to it at an additional cost, and the idea is it can communicate with all the Palo Alto devices in the world about a file, e.g. whether a file is suspicious or harmless.

For example, a machine in Australia downloads a file, and it doesn't know if it's a file that can be trusted or not. The Palo Alto Networks WildFire process is that it takes that file, and then moves it to the WildFire service in the cloud, so there's a transaction from the firewall doing that.

Let's say it's a Word file or something that looks suspicious, Palo Alto Networks WildFire then detonates the file, e.g. it takes that file and runs checks against it, before and after, and then it sees the difference and says, "Well, this actual file contains a payload." The way that it works then, is that there are attackers or people who are trying to subvert systems, and they will say, "Oh, if this file is running on a virtual machine, like in a sandbox environment, don't do the thing that you're going to do, only when it's a physical thing, like actual hardware.

The Palo Alto Networks WildFire process is a process that goes through all these other checks, e.g. it runs on physical, on virtual, on different types of Linux, MacOS, etc. This file is checked against all these different environments to see if it's okay or not, so this is done off the box, off the firewall.

This is the service that you pay for as part of that subscription, so when it's done, essentially that file is marked as safe, that's cool. If it's marked as bad, then that file, the hash is taken from it, so it's easily identified, then through the Palo Alto Networks WildFire subscription, all the firewalls in the world then get that information within just one minute, if you set it to that. It will say something similar to: "Look out for this file if you ever see it", and then all the machines now knows that the file is dodgy or suspicious. That's what Palo Alto Networks WildFire does.

Palo Alto Networks is very well rounded. They're building an ecosystem: the Palo Alto ecosystem. You've got global protect VPNs and they are the armor that works on the whole ecosystem. They also have integrations, e.g. there are other applications from HP that plug into the device, because it's got the APIs there.

For the deployment and maintenance of Palo Alto Networks WildFire, one person can do it, but it's a special tool, so a network staff that just looks after a server would probably struggle with it, just because of some of the concepts that you need to use. There are specific trainings you'd need to do to get the best out of it, but one specialist could do it, e.g. it's not unheard of.

My advice to others looking into implementing this solution is for them not to be put off by the cost. It's similar to looking at cars, e.g. there's a reason people like Jaguar cars over the Fords. I've always got this mantra that if you have a network, if you have a data network, and if it's going to cost you, e.g. if you look at the fines associated with various industries, and if you're a school that gets a data breach, it'll cost you this much money. The question is: "Can you afford that much money as a company?" If your answer is "No", then you have to look at mitigating it. I would suggest looking at Palo Alto Networks WildFire and saying, "Well, we do these types of things to protect your network."

If you still don't want to pay that money, then chances are, you don't particularly care about security. If you want to pay for that kind of thing to stave off the bigger fine that results from getting a data breach, or getting hacked, etc., then that's how we think about it. Don't be off put by the cost when you're looking at it. Palo Alto Networks WildFire is a very comprehensive device. They are the best firewalls in the world.

There are also other solutions like UTMs and XGs, e.g. if you like Fortigate, but everyone I've shown the Palo Alto to instantly said: "This big screen here: I can see all the traffic going through", and you just filter it at the top, and it just makes more sense to people. It's very intuitive.

My rating for Palo Alto Networks WildFire is eight out of ten. It's not a perfect score because of its cost.

Palo Alto Networks WildFire is an ATP solution. It provides advanced threat protection, so it can protect customers against zero-day attacks.

The only problem with this solution is the cost. It's expensive.

Palo Alto Networks WildFire demonstrates good performance. It's stable.

Palo Alto Networks WildFire has good scalability.

We came across some issues with the Palo Alto support team, but overall their support is okay.

Like any other firewall, this product is okay, in terms of setup. The initial setup was very quick, and can be done within a few minutes.

This product and its license is expensive.

Most of the customers get a yearly subscription.

I didn't see any costs in addition to the standard license and fees for Palo Alto Networks WildFire.

We also provide Palo Alto Networks WildFire to our customers, and we've been dealing with it since it came into the product line.

We deployed this solution both on cloud and on-premises. It's a mixture of both types of deployment.

Palo Alto Networks WildFire is a good solution. It has been able to mitigate a lot of threats and attacks.

We have a lot of customers using Palo Alto Networks WildFire.

We have network engineers who handle the deployment and maintenance of this solution, and they are the same people who handle the deployment and maintenance of Fortinet FortiGate.

We recommend this product to people who want to start using it, but if the customer only has limited budget, then we cannot recommend it.

I'm giving Palo Alto Networks WildFire a score of eight out of ten.

We use WildFire for malware protection in our customers' companies.

WildFire's application encryption is useful.

The system performance degrades after the solution has been deployed for some time. The data that it gives us becomes a little bit slow. When you try to get some data for troubleshooting, it seems like it's working hard to extract that data. 

I've been selling WildFire for more than two years.

WildFire is stable.

Wildfire is scalable.

Palo Alto support is very slow in this region.

WildFire is easy to deploy. I have been working on these solutions for quite some time, so I don't foresee any issues.

WildFire is a little bit pricey. Sometimes it's difficult to sell it to customers at the current price.

We sometimes use Fortinet FortiGate for clients. It depends upon the requirements, which vary from customer to customer. 

I rate WildFire six out of 10. To people considering WildFire, I recommend that they understand their own needs. They should do the proper due diligence. Right now, everybody's cutting costs because of COVID-19. They're trying to automate most things through the PA, so the cost-cutting is going to be a major factor in the future.