Norton 360 vs. pfSense

For a stand-alone business this should do the trick, but if using across multiple clients (multi-tenancy not an option). Default settings within the program will cause performance issues if not tweaked, meaning someone with networking experience may be necessary. Not ideal for MSP's unless they only have a few clients, as the manageability must be done within "the walls" of each company.

I believe PFSense is well suited for both home lab environments as well as up to small to mid-size business environments on a tight budget. However, I would implore that anything in production requires the use of the authorized hardware that PFSense sells to receive support. However, in my experience, PFSense is a solid set-and-forget firewall solution.

• Norton works quite quickly and is efficient enough to detect threats
• It is very easy and simple to install and is without any complications and irrelevant inquiries.
• Norton is available at a very reasonable price in the market and is not heavy on pocket.

• Easy to use. Good user interface design! Easy to understand and easy to set up.
• Lower hardware requirement. 3 years ago, we used an old PC to run it. Now, we have changed to a router device with Celeron CPU and 8GB RAM. It runs smoothly with a 1000G commercial broadband.

Incentivized

• Cost could be an issue. They could perform a free trial at the beginning for people to check.
• It would be good if you can do an online free check of your computer.
• While the updates are good sometimes your computer is attacked by a virus they did not expect.

• I did kind of mention a Con in the Pro section with OpenVPN.
• When I create a config for an employee other employees are able to login to that config.
• I could be doing something wrong when I am making it - I am not afraid to admit that as I am pretty new to all of this, but it seems like it builds a key and I would think the key would be unique in some way to each employee, but I could be wrong.
• I actually do not have a lot of Con's for this software - I did not get to set this up on our work network so I am not sure of any downfalls when installing.
• I installed this on my personal machine in a Hyper-V environment to get a feel for it before I started working on it at work and it seemed pretty smooth. I didn't run into any issues.

Incentivized

I did renew it before because support is great and cost is great. I believe that Norton has a very long experience in what they do and they are doing a great job with all the updates they provide and the work they are doing. Moreover Norton is going in the right direction for sure.

User interface is excellent. The green tickmark in the tray ensuring everything is undercontrol is so satisfying. I have turned on Auto updates so, I am not bothered about unnecessary download updates popup

Incentivized

The pfSense UI is easy to navigate and pretty go look at. It is much better than some high dollar firewalls that just throw menus you you. The pfSense UI is quick and responsive and makes sense 99% of the time. Changes are committed quickly and the hardware rarely requires a reboot. It just runs.

Incentivized

Security software with very good features that works in the background.

Price suitable for companies of any size and easy to install and use.

Incentivized

pfSense+ basic provides "As Available" email support. pfSense+ Pro offers 24 hr turn around email support. pfSense+ Enterprise offers 24/7 phone support.

Incentivized

Would like a manual or online version that is simple to understand and explains in detail what choices we have and why to make these choices.

Incentivized

User-friendly interface (it's not just AV and users who were interacting with the product), performance, resource usage (most of the computers were not very fresh and that factor was very critical), efficiency, it shouldn't be just sitting on a PC - it should protect it, what was perfectly done with that product.

Incentivized

Meraki has a unified management login for all devices, which is nice. It also has decent content filtering, both areas where pfSense is weaker. Where pfSense far ouclasses Meraki is in the ease of use and the other width of features. These include features such as better VPN interoperability, non-subscription based pricing, auditability, not relying on the infrastructure of a third party, more transparency of what's actually going on, easier to deploy replacements if hardware fails. Additionally, the NAT management for pfSense seems to be a bit better, as you can NAT between any network segment and not just the LAN segments out the WAN interfaces.

• Poor performance against Spyware and other threats despite claiming to act against them (recognizes very few and eliminates less) It is limited to viruses.
• Regular blocking of incoming scripts (in front of other antivirus)
• Little or almost no compatibility with the Windows XP Firewall, but they are involved.

• pfSense can be installed on commodity hardware with no licensing fees. With a simple less than 10 minute restore time, on most hardware, it's an extremely inexpensive way to achieve the same results that some of the more expensive vendors provide.
• The easy to use interface has allowed configuration management to be preformed by lower level technicians with quick and easy training.

Incentivized