Likelihood to Recommend 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.
Read full review I would suggest this tool to any user that has to monitor multiple sites and locations where bandwidth monitoring can be a labor. This software works really well for central monitoring of multiple sites and services where having a technician onsite isn't feasible. I really like the reporting, though, and would recommend this for someone wanting to keep an eye on bandwidth usage for replication of data across sites.
Read full review Pros 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. Read full review The level of customization possible with Network Bandwidth Analyzer is very valuable. Rather than being stuck with a "one-size-fits-all" presentation, an administrator can easily create customized views, reports, and alerts so that users can have a more tailored view of the data provided by Network Bandwidth Analyzer. This has the effect of making the tool more attractive to the end user. The NetFlow Traffic Analyzer piece of Network Bandwidth Analyzer provides the details on bandwidth usage on the network. More than knowing how much bandwidth is being used, one is provided with detailed information on how that bandwidth is being used. This provides invaluable information for capacity planning and even certain forensic tasks faced by the network engineer. The ability to produce network maps provides an easy way to create an attractive and functional NOC/SOC view of the entire network. Both technician and the occasional passerby can quickly determine if there are issues to be addressed. The ability to customize a map with background images and custom icons and stencils can make these maps really pop. Read full review Cons 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. Read full review The ability to intuitively and quickly serve up specified information up to a dashboard for general “public” consumption, that cycles through several pages of information. The ability to intuitively set up alerting on bandwidth levels, instead of having to dig through all types of alerts available to find the one needed. Provide a pricing model based on different support levels: if I want only available update installations, don’t make me pay the same amount as those wanting full support. Read full review Likelihood to Renew 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.
Read full review Usability 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.
Read full review As far as rating for usability is concerned I would give 10/10 as NTA is very easy to use. All you need to do is install that module and ask network Team to configure the Netflow towards Server IP. [The] rest is pre-configured and reports are pre-built. Moment you receive the flows from Network all you will have is information about traffic.
Read full review Support Rating 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.
Read full review It is useful for our Infrastructure team and also provides valuable insights to our application team regarding the traffic being sent from various endpoints. They can monitor their applications and ensure there are no network issues that may impact their application.
Read full review Online Training The training offered by SolarWinds is some of the best out there. They have several different videos that go into great detail from initial setup to advanced configurations. In addition to the view at your own pace video, they also have live training for customers that focus on a single product and you can ask questions with the folks who develop the software. I have had good success with their live sessions and getting questions answered.
Read full review Alternatives Considered 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.
Read full review SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer compared to
Wireshark and
PRTG Network Monitor beats it by just the simple interface. Though all are manual setup, NTA takes it a step further with graphs and reports that analyze the data for you. In comparing to Extrahop from a bandwidth comparison, Extrahop wins but Extrahop is a lot more than just a bandwidth monitoring and cost.
Read full review Return on Investment 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. Read full review Be prepared to answer lots of questions. When people see the data in NTA they are going to want to know why App A is talking to App B. Be ready to explain! Hand the keys to the NTA kingdom to the network team. They will thank you. Everyone wants to have friends on the network team, right? Be prepared to invest in some significant compute and storage performance to keep up with your NTA monitoring Running the latest firmware for your network gear is (often) required to take advantage of all the flow-monitoring. You upgrade regularly, right?? Read full review ScreenShots