Palo Alto Networks Advanced URL Filtering vs. pfSense

Because of it's complexity, Palo may not be well suited for a small organization that may not have dedicated networking staff. But for a mid to large-sized enterprise, Palo shines.

Incentivized

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.

• Threat Detection and Prevention (Malwares, Un-Authorized Access)
• Out of the box patterns for threat detection
• Built in and Updated identification patterns
• Unified Dashboard/Alerting on anomaly

Incentivized

• 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

• Steep learning curve
• The top-down URL filtering match can sometimes be tricky and requires some expertise in setting up the desired policy

Incentivized

• 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

It is very easy to use and setup. It integrates well within all of Palo's products such as NGFWs and Prisma Access. There is a dedicated log inside of Palo products for URL filtering to aid in troubleshooting. It integrates with AD/Azure so that different users can have different URL filtering rules. Filtering can be adjusted in real-time

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

Palo support is excellent, and I have never had to wait when contacting them for support. One of the best support teams in the business, in my opinion.

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

Palo Alto Networks Advanced URL Filtering is the best solution to work with Palo Alto Firewalls and Panorama as an orchestrator. We choose Palo Alto Networks Advanced URL Filtering as it could reach the success criteria during the PoC.

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.

• Palo has been an excellent investment for us.
• Having robust URL filtering built into the same device as the firewall saves the cost of a separate appliance and improves performance.

Incentivized

• 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