Juniper SRX vs. Palo Alto Networks WildFire

SRXs seem to be well suited at the enterprise level for plain routers, firewalls, and IDP/IDS. They work well on MPLS and Ethernet, including Internet. I have 3 SRXs also performing edge duty, with 2 in a high availability (HA) cluster. The Juniper line of SRXs provides a good range of scaling from small business to extremely large enterprise. Wire speed is a common comparison factor and Juniper shines in that area.

Incentivized

Palo Alto Networks Wildfire is well suited for pretty much anywhere that you need the latest and greatest network security. It is extremely good at protecting you from the latest malware threats that might pose a potential problem for your network/endpoints. We've been very please since we installed it and I would say cost of the Palo Altos is the only drawback. If money were no object I'd go with a Palo Alto with Wildfire every time. But unfortunately in some smaller branches it just doesn't make financial sense.

Incentivized

• Edge Device (Tunneling & Routing)
• Routing Instances
• Zone Based Firewall
• L3 Gateway/Vlan termination
• DHCP Server & DHCP Relay
• Good support community & Good available documentation
• Good support by the Vendor

Incentivized

• This is could base and easily manageable for our collocation. While working within the could can review in live time potential treats that it has reported from other devices.
• Worked very well with existing Palo Alto devices.
• Another huge plus is the simplicity of managing and ease of scalability.
• Its cost is competitive with similar/like products available.

Incentivized

• My only real criticism of the product is that it's hard to figure out how to upgrade the firmware from the CLI via TFTP via the docs, but it works great once you get it sorted.

Incentivized

• WildFire, like other sandboxes, has to stay up with malware sandbox evasion techniques, which necessitates larger file size limits.
• More file formats should be able to be submitted and scanned by WildFire, which needs improved initial administration and setup.
• It's quite pricey, and there's no warning choice for performance on the cloud.

Incentivized

It works very well and takes care of protecting us from threats new and well-known. It's been a game changer in terms of threat detection & prevention.

Incentivized

Easy to use and works well. For the most part it's set it and forget it, but there's also some flexibility for high security environments and those with extra privacy concerns.

Incentivized

This is the one area where I have a beef with Juniper. When I called into Cisco TAC, 90% of the time, the first person I spoke with was able to resolve my issue. With Juniper TAC, 90% of the time, the first person I speak with is not able to resolve my issue, seems to almost be reading from a script, and must escalate my ticket. All of which takes time.

Incentivized

PAN support is very good. You can get the reasonable and timely support on any conditions. When the product is already integrated with the PAN firewalls, you can choose the severity levels based on the effect. The customer service/TAC is very helpful, they even have additional recommendations of advises for product usability. Local partners are also assisting the cases and give their expertise.

Incentivized

Juniper SRX stands tall compared to all these products for Large Service Provider Networks, where traffic volume is larger. Also, cost comparison with SRX's few other products can also be another contributing factor while selecting this. As well as Juniper Routers, Switches, and multiple products from the same vendor to maintain one single vendor environment. As well as Juniper Support is also really good.

We wanted a single device to handle numerous jobs, such as antivirus, antimalware, vulnerability detection, url filtering, etc. Palo Alto provides this, while TippingPoint IPS is a more dedicated product. Caveat: I used TippingPoint over 5 years ago, so things may have changed.

Incentivized

• It is a workhorse for our field operations. It provides the last touch for an ISP to the customer. The customer has no view of the device, but with the repeatability of the device, they do not need to.
• The ability to roll out a dynamic routing protocol attached to a security zone allows elasticity to the environment that supports growth.
• VLAN support on the inside interfaces allow this to be the only device in some smaller deployments we install these in.

Incentivized

• As we all know the product of Palo Alto is little bit expensive but its performance is far better than any of its competitors. So as I previously mentioned, Palo Alto should not sell WildFire Licence seperately.
• If the firewall is internet facing then only we should buy WildFire Licence.
• WildFire Licence is not necessary for internal firewall. If you are planning to buy a firewall for internal network where your traffic is not going towards internet so no need to buy WildFire Licence.