Cisco IPS Sensor (Discontinued) vs. Palo Alto Networks Advanced Threat Prevention

IPS sensors are more suited for companies that do not have visibility into their network with third-party analyzing tools. Scenarios would be to place IPS sensors at the perimeter firewalls mainly. IPS sensors are less appropriate for companies that have third-party analyzing tools that will mitigate vulnerabilities and malicious traffic and activities already.

Incentivized

Palo Alto NTP is an appropriate suite of protection for any enterprise environment or anyone that truly needs some serious perimeter protection in a one-stop, all-in-one unit. There are no modules or add-ons or clunky interfaces to deal with it; everything works out of one management plane, licensing, implementation, monitoring. updating, etc. As a network admin, that is immensely valuable to me. Additionally, I get real-time reporting on all the stuff NTP is catching, and it is nothing to shirk at. The real value in NTP comes in only after you begin doing SSL-decryption, however, to truly inspect the traffic. Short of that, you are just seeing a bunch of encrypted data and the NTP suite of tools isn't going to avail you. NTP plus decryption, though, is invaluable!

Incentivized

• Identifies and blocks malicious traffic.
• Detects unwanted traffic and allows your company to be proactive, let alone reactive.
• Comprehensive Threat protection allows companies to adjust thresholds and policies at will.

Incentivized

• Anti virus
• Vulnerability protection
• Anti spyware

Incentivized

• The web GUI is somewhat slow.
• Sometimes difficult to adjust policies.
• Fail open feature may not work properly all the time.

Incentivized

• Sometimes I struggle to find the deny or specific traffic log for file blocking profile under Unified logs.
• Reporting around Threat Prevention suite could be much better.
• Possibly a specific threat prevention search function that spans across of threat features.

Incentivized

Cisco TAC has been great at helping with configurations and issues that may arise

Incentivized

IPS sensors provides the necessary network visibility my company needs to satisfy its security appetite. By doing so, we have been able to stay compliant and up to date with today's network security requirements and procedures. We are able to be proactive with vulnerabilities and reactive to malicious traffic and intrusions in our day to day operations.

Incentivized

It is comparable but not as robust as other stand alone IPS/IDS.

Incentivized

• Provided less need to purchase third party analyzing tools.
• Needed more dedicated staff to build/review/and maintain policies and such.
• Answers companies need for network security.

Incentivized

• We have various compliance standards we have to meet and the Palo Alto with its Networks Threat Protection suite has checked off pretty much all the boxes we needed and at a price point that couldn't be easily beat for comparable features, throughput, etc.
• IT/Network staff has saved a A LOT of time using this platform for protection (coming from an ASA)

Incentivized