Cisco Secure Firewall vs. Palo Alto Networks Virtualized Next-Generation Firewalls - VM Series

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Cisco Secure Firewall
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
Cisco Secure Firewall delivers comprehensive threat protection for modern, distributed environments. It offers an architecture designed to support hybrid and multicloud strategies, enabling Zero Trust access, robust application visibility, and secure remote work. With integrations across the Cisco Secure portfolio and threat intelligence from Talos, Cisco Secure Firewall helps organizations stop more threats, respond faster, and reduce complexity through centralized management and automation.N/A
Palo Alto Networks Virtualized Next-Generation Firewalls - VM Series
Score 9.4 out of 10
N/A
The VM-Series is a virtualized form of Palo Alto next-generation firewall that can be deployed in a range of cloud environments. The VM-Series natively analyzes all traffic in a single pass to determine the application identity, the content within, and the user identity.N/A
Pricing
Cisco Secure FirewallPalo Alto Networks Virtualized Next-Generation Firewalls - VM Series
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Cisco Secure FirewallPalo Alto Networks Virtualized Next-Generation Firewalls - VM Series
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Cisco Secure FirewallPalo Alto Networks Virtualized Next-Generation Firewalls - VM Series
Considered Both Products
Cisco Secure Firewall
Chose Cisco Secure Firewall
Cisco Firepower NGFW is much more user friendly than its competitors and their customer service is top notch. It was a no brainer in choosing a company that has the backing to help provide a great product and service to its customers. Cisco Firepower NGFW is easy to use, easy …
Palo Alto Networks Virtualized Next-Generation Firewalls - VM Series

No answer on this topic

Features
Cisco Secure FirewallPalo Alto Networks Virtualized Next-Generation Firewalls - VM Series
Firewall
Comparison of Firewall features of Product A and Product B
Cisco Secure Firewall
7.8
128 Ratings
10% below category average
Palo Alto Networks Virtualized Next-Generation Firewalls - VM Series
8.5
8 Ratings
1% below category average
Identification Technologies8.0112 Ratings8.58 Ratings
Visualization Tools7.0113 Ratings8.08 Ratings
Content Inspection7.8110 Ratings8.08 Ratings
Policy-based Controls8.4118 Ratings8.58 Ratings
Active Directory and LDAP8.0101 Ratings8.08 Ratings
Firewall Management Console7.5117 Ratings8.58 Ratings
Reporting and Logging7.5119 Ratings7.58 Ratings
VPN7.9104 Ratings9.07 Ratings
High Availability8.3113 Ratings9.07 Ratings
Stateful Inspection8.3109 Ratings9.08 Ratings
Proxy Server6.958 Ratings9.44 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Cisco Secure FirewallPalo Alto Networks Virtualized Next-Generation Firewalls - VM Series
Small Businesses
pfSense
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Score 9.2 out of 10
pfSense
pfSense
Score 9.2 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Quantum Firewalls and Security Gateways
Quantum Firewalls and Security Gateways
Score 9.3 out of 10
Quantum Firewalls and Security Gateways
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Score 9.3 out of 10
Enterprises
Palo Alto Networks Virtualized Next-Generation Firewalls - VM Series
Palo Alto Networks Virtualized Next-Generation Firewalls - VM Series
Score 9.4 out of 10
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Quantum Firewalls and Security Gateways
Score 9.3 out of 10
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User Ratings
Cisco Secure FirewallPalo Alto Networks Virtualized Next-Generation Firewalls - VM Series
Likelihood to Recommend
7.8
(136 ratings)
9.0
(9 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.4
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(2 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Availability
9.1
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
5.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
7.3
(77 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.0
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
8.2
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
5.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Cisco Secure FirewallPalo Alto Networks Virtualized Next-Generation Firewalls - VM Series
Likelihood to Recommend
Cisco
Kind of going back to my previous point, segregating networks, it's super useful for that. It's easy to look through firewall logs and see what's going on in your network. Also like intrusion detection and prevention. So great security products for the network.
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Palo Alto Networks
PaloAlto VM-200 is a virtualized firewall with high processing power and network edge protection. The great advantage is being able to implement in a VMware environment without worrying about hardware, rack space, physical network connections and others. It can be easily managed via the web and remotely to create protection, access and reporting rules. The VM-200 firewall can be used by any company, small or large because it has several models available according to the real needs of each one.
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Pros
Cisco
  • Gives detailed information on what user is utilizing the VPN such as Ip address and the origin of country for the Ip address.
  • The graphical user interface is detailed and organized, a good level of intuition.
  • It provides troubleshooting tools such as packet tracer, that allows individuals to see where the packets are being accepted or dropped.
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Palo Alto Networks
  • Decrypt internet traffic
  • daily reporting of top internet users
  • classify internet traffic in real-time to allow us to understand the organization needs.
  • Strong AI capabilities
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Cons
Cisco
  • I have one argument, failover scenario. It's not quite easy. Failover scenario of firewalls. It's sometimes not quite easy to know the issue. But if we open a tech case, a technical case to Cisco, Cisco will help us, it's a little bit con, but we are happy with this product.
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Palo Alto Networks
  • High Availability can be improved to allow active-active deployment
  • All command line documentation to provide and support automation
  • It will be nice to have link aggregation just like in the hardware firewall models.
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Likelihood to Renew
Cisco
It works really well. We can do most anything we want or need to with it, and you don’t have to have a doctorate or multiple certs to necessarily figure it out. The thing that would probably have to happen to make us switch would be if we just got priced out - Cisco’s more powerful and higher bandwidth models cost a pretty penny.
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Palo Alto Networks
No answers on this topic
Usability
Cisco
Solution is highly effective, offers a lot of features with constant improvements and additions of new features over time. It's relatively easy to get familiar with the system, especially if transitioning from adaptive security appliances. If this is not the case, as for learnability there's a learning curve but once learned it is relatively easy to remember the details about the system even after a period of non-use
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Palo Alto Networks
It is very easy to use, even for those with little experience in this particular firewall. Some of the advanced content filtering and content-based policies are difficult to pick up; however, almost all required decoders are built in. Built-in logging and rule testing make rule definition easy, and labels/tags allow filtering, grouping, and categorisation of rules. Updates are easy, and high availability is also reliable.
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Reliability and Availability
Cisco
We have had really good success with Cisco Secure Firewall when it comes to availability. Even when we’ve had temporary issues with one appliance or the other, or with the Firewall Management Center, it has stayed up and defended our network diligently. We even had an issue where the licensing got disabled for multiple days, and it kept spinning like a top
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Palo Alto Networks
No answers on this topic
Performance
Cisco
no slowing down, vpn is working fast
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Palo Alto Networks
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Cisco
Firewall support is professional just like any other technology Cisco sells. From answering simple questions to bringing out outages affecting a large population of our workforce, Cisco support is always courteous, professional, and communicates with our team to keep our request on their radar. Some of the brightest people I've met are from Cisco support both in IQ and EQ which shows the talent Cisco is able to onboard to their team.
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Palo Alto Networks
Palo Alto VM series are best selling and industry's top-selling security product which customers prefer while securing their public cloud environment
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In-Person Training
Cisco
very good
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Palo Alto Networks
No answers on this topic
Online Training
Cisco
was a good training but questions was answered not so good. Training was "Fundamentals of Cisco Firewall Threat Defense and Intrusion Prevention (SFWIPF)".
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Palo Alto Networks
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
Cisco
Our initial implementation was aided by Cisco's professional services and was excellent. The engineer was very knowledgeable and helped us work through issues while building out our new internet security edge Part of this involved tools to migrate the firewall configuration from old to new.
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Palo Alto Networks
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Cisco
Cisco Secure Firewall works better with the Cisco ecosystem when we can utilize it and feels beefy enough when we utilize it in the data center. The Fortinet we have found are great, small cost boxes for remote offices with a better UI then Cisco Secure Firewalls. The feature set included with the firewalls feels similar from a security point of view.
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Palo Alto Networks
palo alto firewalls are application-oriented systems. They can beat other product which are based on layer 3/4 inspection. Vm series are also quickly available and could be useful in urgent deployment needs . other vendors like Fortinet and cisco could take much more time to provide the VM and in some cases installation and license validation are complicated
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Contract Terms and Pricing Model
Cisco
was not involved
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Palo Alto Networks
No answers on this topic
Scalability
Cisco
you can choose up to 50 devices i think thats enough for our organization
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Palo Alto Networks
No answers on this topic
Professional Services
Cisco
was not involved
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Palo Alto Networks
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
Cisco
  • I think it's all been positive, except for the fact, like I was mentioning before, when we had problems with the initial integration, we were trying to migrate over to the new FMC and from the 1500 to the 1600, we had some downtime during that time and we had to do some escalations within Cisco Tech. They were very helpful, but I think that was the biggest thing, and that's long since been resolved. So I don't really have any other thing, anything negative to say at this point. I think it's all positive.
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Palo Alto Networks
  • ROI has been achieved quickly through lack of security incidents.
  • Inline filtering happens at line rate, unline Sourcefire from Cisco.
  • Great incentives from PAN to switch made a difference in the choice to change.
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