According to the information provided by the vendor, Palo
Alto Panorama is a network security management solution that intends to
simplify and enhance cybersecurity processes for businesses. The product's
primary objective is to offer various features, including unified policy
management, centralized visibility, automated threat response, simplified
configuration, unrivaled scalability, and rapid security adoption. It claims to
assist organizations in efficiently managing their firewalls and…
$9,500
WatchGuard Network Security
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
WatchGuard Network Security is a network security and firewall software. WatchGuard includes secure Wi-Fi, multi-factor authentication, and network intelligence products and services designed for SMB’s.
I think Palo Alto Panorama is suited for administrators of all levels because certain things can be locked down to certain permission levels. But there are executive dashboards all the way down to the weeds for the highest of administrators. This truly is a single pane of glass tool because you never have to go into the individual firewalls for anything.
I've been impressed to consider how many Watchguard Network products we utilize. Firewall/VPN, Wireless APs, and endpoint antivirus. It makes it easy to diagnose issues and find resolutions with minimal interactions with the end user or their system. Reliability of the network hardware has been superb, and we have minimal issues with their software
If you need to push a setting or config to multiple firewalls Panorama can do that flawlessly.
Panorama has its logging centralized and this makes it easy to locate and reviews logs compared to having to get logs from each device.
I love how the interface matches the interface on the firewall. This makes the learning curve less steep.
Adding new firewalls to Panorama is super easy and not complex. Panorama can push a lot of the config and settings so you don't have to manually do it.
The ability to push out OS updates could be improved in Panorama. It has the abilities, but the use is not intuitive, to the point that we generally connect directly to the firewalls to download the OS updates directly.
Scheduling. It would be nice to be able to schedule jobs to run at certain times. Pushing out updates, like OS updates mentioned above, can require significant bandwidth. So being able to schedule that work for hours that would not directly affect the users would be a welcome addition.
The list of devices in the Templates tabs should be sorted the same way that he devices are grouped in the Device Group tab, rather than just alphabetical. If there was a way to chose the order of the devices, maybe by tag, that would work as well.
Sometimes, it is not very intuitive. You'll not know how to use certain features unless you read the documentation.
Some settings in the firebox are not visible unless you enter edit mode. This can cause inadvertent issues if you make a change when you just want to review the settings.
The use of blocks in the design of the Firewatch interface can be confusing. A better design could have been used.
Panorama has given us much more than we expected and the support for the product, by Palo Alto Networks has been great. We would like to see some improvements that I mentioned in another review, like scheduling changes, but overall Panorama has provided a very capable product and we are very happy with it.
I'm giving this note to WatchGuard Network Security due to its ease of daily support (after acquiring necessary knowledge in the solution), which allows agility in configuration changes, its integration of several reliable security features (such as SSL VPN, VPN Virtual Interfaces between companies, and others) and functional and stability in operation, with no downtime in the equipment due to problems or malfunctions
You can do anything via the GUI without going to the CLI. High real time security as every five minutes, it updates the list of phishing websites. High protection as the firewall communicates with the cloud, a machine running artificial intelligence helps to detect malware or other threats.
Although it might take some time to figure out, we have been able to use WatchGuard's online reference library and tech support to create/implement/modify all of our filtering rules and exceptions needed. There really has not been a shortcoming other than perhaps a learning curve.
Availability has always been a strong point of this product, it is rare that watchguard does not have a solution for customers' network monitoring needs.
The performance of WatchGuard Network Security is very good, in the years that we have used the solution we have only had a single error and Watchguard itself was able to solve it. Furthermore, when purchasing any product, the partner always evaluates the capacity of the solution to recommend the most appropriate product for our needs.
Palo Alto has a very nice customer support. People are very nice and were quick to reply, whenever we had an issue with the subscription or the blacklist tool. There is also a great deal of information on their website that covers each and every detail about the uses and the threat signatures. The community keeps on updating their information very frequently. Small issues are easily solved from the documentation, and for other issues, the customer support service is always present. However, on Fridays it becomes a little delayed as per my observation.
We have only had to contact them once during the initial set up to help bring the internet back on line. After that for the most part our systems have been automated, and could easily be checked form their online FAQ and Knowledge base that they provide. Everything else is easily handled from their browser based interface
We participate to a in person training and the three days of learning was really useful and complete to gain skill to solve the major part of the problem we encounter during our life. And more the in person training give us the opportunity to create a network with other WatchGuard partner.
I had my key information for setting up the firewall, and they assisted me in finding the settings and appropriate places to enter data. They also helped troubleshoot when I didn't understand some of their feature concepts, and we got it running.
Palo Alto Panorama and Junos Space Security Director have many similar features but Palo Alto Panorama excels in almost all of them. The monitoring tools in Palo Alto Panorama are easy to use and give more in-depth insight into what is going on in your network. Palo Alto's security is ranked much higher and the Web Application Security is also superior to that of the Junos counterpart.
Watchguard Network Security is easier to use and more effective that its competitors, with certifications you can trust and a good reputation, we can rest assured that our network security is in good hands. Competitors have also demonstrated poor aftersales support, which has not been the case with WG
This product is very scalable since previously everything related to Watchguard was on premises but that has now changed with the inclusion of watchguard cloud. Now the product has evolved to have full control of firewalls at the cloud level.
At a previous company, I deployed Palo Alto firewalls to a data center, and 12 branch locations. This allowed us to replace MPLS links with IPSec tunnels between the sites. This resulted in significantly more throughput and soft savings of increased productivity. However, the estimated net of $220,000 in hard savings over five years is what is most impressive. I could not have effectively managed all those devices without Palo Alto Panorama.
The intuitive Web Interface reduces the entry to learning for new techs, so less training is required and inexperienced techs can figure out tasks if they understand basic networking and firewall functions.
The licensing model for the hardware places them at the top of the list for mid-tier devices that are overpriced. They are barely competitive considering that you can't use a device for more than 5 years no matter what. And the security/maintenance costs are in addition to the hardware costs which are already high compared to other mid-tier brands.
