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 Any scenario where a dedicated firewall administrator is on staff and a secure firewall solution that requires high availability is needed will be a good solution for the McAfee Firewall Enterprise product. The McAfee Firewall Enterprise however comes with some of its own parlance that is different from other vendors and does require some comfort on the administrators side when it comes to working in the command line. Added knowledge of protocols and how they interact is a must for any firewall admin but particularly for the McAfee Firewall Enterprise product due to its flexible nature. If the environment is to be mostly hands off where a very limited rule set is to be configured and not likely to change often, I would defer to a different product
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 Based on the SecureComputing Sidewinder firewalls, the McAfee Firewall Enterprise does similar backend containerization of each service which provides for added security in the unlikely event of failures or breeches. Tie in reporting services (if used by the admin) provide very granular details on rules accessed and the firewalls response to the requests. Configurable options are plentiful. Unbound DNS can be configured on each "burb" (SecureComputing/McAfee parlance for interface), similar options for sendmail while rulesets can be configured at the application level down to simple IP-filter making options for enhancing security as well as troubleshooting equally as useful. Full control over shell for scripting and/or scheduling (cron) purposes. Solid HA and patching architecture. Support was always helpful, knowledgeable and insightful (especially the staff that migrated from SecureComputing). 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 For an application-layer firewall the applications supported (at the time I managed them) were too few and would need to be expanded and the application ruleset needed to be expanded as well. The remote access VPN client configuration was overly complex for the average user and would need to be supplemented with a configuration file that had already been generated. Other solutions from CheckPoint or Cisco ASA are not as complex for end user remote access. Enhancing the GUI with a builtin "packet capture" feature would be useful for administrators not familiar with tcpdump. 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 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 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 Compared to other firewalls I've managed (Palo Alto, Cisco ASA & CheckPoint) I would say that McAfee Firewall Enterprise was probably at the time not the leader in its field however it is a product that proved its reliability and flexibility over the other vendors. The addition of many new features usually comes as a detriment to some other area (restricted CLI, decreased logging etc.). In my experience this product gave the flexibility and options that the organization needed.
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 In its highly available configuration the impact on any business objective has been positive given the fact that any downtime of the firewall would negatively impact all business objectives. Read full review ScreenShots