Cisco Secure Firewall 4200 Series vs. Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series

It is well-suited for a company needing strong edge security with ease of administration. It comes standard with many features such as VPN, Application ID and "Day-1 Config" that make the networks it protects secure from the very start. Palo is definitely a premium product and is much more expensive than other firewalls, but the value is realized immediately. The robust options for firewall rules/policies allow the administrator to apply security in new and creative ways to hit the sweet spot between security and usability.

Incentivized

• The PA handles VPN connectivity without missing a beat. We have multiple VPN tunnels in use for redundancy to cloud-based services.
• The PA has great functionality in supporting failover internet connections, again with the ability to have multiple paths out to our cloud-based services.
• The PA is updated on the regular with various security updates, we are not concerned with the firewall's ability to see what packets are really flowing across the network. Being able to see beyond just IP and port requests lets you know things are locked down better than traditional firewalls.
• It is a great overall kit, with URL filtering and other services that fill in the gaps between other solutions without breaking the bank.

Incentivized

• Setting up certain things can be somewhat complicated due to the numerous options and abstractions involved.
• It would be nice to have somewhere to get simple canned reports easily.
• It would be nice to be able to remove options we never use from various setup dialogs.

Incentivized

The PA5220s have far exceeded what we have expected out of them. It was a bit of a learning curve coming from another vendor, but everything falls into place now with ease. The capabilities of the solution still surprise us, allowing us to remove other costly hardware and providing a single point of management needed

Incentivized

It can be a little tricky at first if you have never used the product or a firewall before. If you have experience with firewalls in general, it does not take long to learn the Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series interface. They offer great training resources and knowledge base articles to help get up to speed.

Incentivized

We've run into a couple undocumented bugs, but that seems to happen with every brand and technology. Any time we've had to engage Palo Alto support they've always been professional, knowledgeable and prompt. In almost all cases we've been able to resolve our issues without having to escalate our tickets.

Incentivized

We are using Cisco ASA before in our environment but when it comes to deep scanning & layer 7 security it doesn't have that capability. After using Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewall we are using sandboxing & advance malware protection that provides high-level end-user security. Also after implementing it we can easily monitor user-level traffic.

Incentivized

• We used to outsource our Firewall and it's management. Not only did we find their SLA's to be lacking, in general, but communication between us was horrible. Many times we could not understand them and that resulted in less than desirable rule creation or troubleshooting.
• Since we no longer have to pay a company for 24/7 management (and SLOW SLA's) we are saving a ton of money each year. Also our fellow employee's are much happier that things can be resolved in a timely manner.

Incentivized