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Users have praised Palo Alto Firewall for its advanced features, such as content filtering and application filtering, which effectively …
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What is Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series?
Palo Alto next-generation firewalls classify all traffic, including encrypted and internal traffic, based on application, application function, user and content. Users can create security policies to enable only authorized users to run sanctioned applications.
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- Policy-based Controls (21)10.0100%
- Content Inspection (21)9.999%
- Identification Technologies (21)9.999%
- Visualization Tools (21)9.090%
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What is Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series?
Palo Alto next-generation firewalls classify all traffic, including encrypted and internal traffic, based on application, application function, user and content. Users can create security policies to enable only authorized users to run sanctioned applications.
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Cisco Meraki MX Firewalls is a combined UTM and Software-Defined WAN solution. Meraki is managed via the cloud, and provides core firewall services, including site-to-site VPN, plus network monitoring.
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What is Cisco Firepower 9300 Series?
The Cisco Firepower 9300 series is presented by the vendor as a carrier-grade next-generation firewall (NGFW) ideal for data centers and high-performance settings that require low latency and high throughput. With it, the vendor providdes, users can deliver scalable, consistent security to…
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What is Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series?
Palo Alto Network’s Next-Generation Firewalls is a firewall option integrated with other Palo Alto security products. NGFWs classify and monitor all traffic, including encrypted and internal traffic, based on application, function, user, and content. Palo Alto emphasizes the Zero Trust policy, through which users can create security policies to enable only authorized users to run sanctioned applications, reducing the surface area of cyber attacks across the organization. Palo Alto’s NGFW provides in-firewall encryption and decryption, as well as data and application segmentation. It integrates with PA’s WildFire malware prevention service and supports easy adoption with an open-source tool for firewall migration. It encompasses on-premises and cloud environments for full-system security. |
Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series Technical Details
| Operating Systems | Unspecified |
|---|---|
| Mobile Application | No |
Frequently Asked Questions
Palo Alto next-generation firewalls classify all traffic, including encrypted and internal traffic, based on application, application function, user and content. Users can create security policies to enable only authorized users to run sanctioned applications.
Reviewers rate Policy-based Controls and Firewall Management Console and High Availability highest, with a score of 10.
The most common users of Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).
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Community Insights
TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!
- Business Problems Solved
- Pros
- Cons
Users have praised Palo Alto Firewall for its advanced features, such as content filtering and application filtering, which effectively prevent malicious traffic and unauthorized access. The IDS/IPS and advanced malware protection features have been commended for their deep scanning capabilities and sandboxing functionality. Palo Alto Firewall is chosen by customers with large organizations that prioritize deep security investments. It is commonly used to protect perimeter networks, provide VPN connectivity, and mitigate potential misuse of the internet and attacks from shady websites. Users have successfully achieved network security, URL filtering, application control, and prevention of known and zero-day attacks with Palo Alto NGFW. The firewall serves as a reliable perimeter defense product, providing threat assessment, web proxy, and SSL inspection. It effectively addresses the problem of external intrusions and offers both basic and advanced firewall features, including protection against application-level threats, VPN management, and dynamic block lists. Palo Alto Firewall has proven itself in securing data center resources while providing enhanced security and control. The Next-Generation Firewalls are also used to secure the organization's perimeter by providing application visibility and threat intelligence to mitigate risk. Users have reported that Palo Alto Next-Generation Firewalls and WildFire have played a crucial role in quickly identifying and isolating new security threats like WannaCry.
Intuitive User Interface: Users have consistently found the user interface of Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series to be intuitive, making it easy to configure the firewall and perform tasks quickly. Several reviewers have mentioned this as a standout feature.
Advanced Security Features: Many users have praised the advanced features of the firewall, such as application filtering, content filtering, and deep packet inspection. These features provide enhanced security and contribute to the effectiveness of the product in protecting against malware and ransomware.
Seamless Integration with Third-Party Tools: Reviewers have appreciated the seamless integration of Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series with third-party tools and systems. Specifically, they mention ClearPass from HPE Aruba for user authentication and syslog integration. This integration enhances overall functionality and allows for a more streamlined experience when working with multiple tools simultaneously.
Complicated Implementation: Implementing the product into an existing network has proven to be a challenge for many users. Several reviewers have mentioned that they found it complicated and time-consuming to integrate the product with their current network infrastructure.
Difficult Packet Flow Understanding: Beginners have struggled with understanding the packet flow in Palo Alto's product. Some users have expressed frustration at the complexity of the packet flow, finding it difficult to grasp how data is processed within the system.
Expensive Compared to Competitors: The cost of Palo Alto's product is a common concern among users. Many reviewers feel that the price is high compared to other available solutions in the market. Some users believe that similar features can be obtained from competitors at a lower cost.
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April 30, 2022
Powerful and Easy Firewall - For Enterprise Companies
Company wants to create a secured on-premise Datacenter. To do that we implemented 2 PA VM500 in Active-Passive mode and configured them with Layer7 policies and Micro-segmentation. In this way we monitor in\out traffics and also lateral movements between datacenter services
- Easy web management interface
- Search is powerfull and easly
- Many L7 Applications recognize for policies
- SD-WAN feature is quite difficult
- Dedicated logging server missing
- Entry PA Appliance has slowly web interface
- Commit configuration is slower than other competitors
We utilize 5260's at both our Datacenters running in HA Pair mode for redundancy and 3220's running in HA Pair mode at each remote office. All production network traffic is routed via our datacenter firewalls due to our VDI infrastructure, and web traffic uses the local office Palo Alto Networks Next- Generations Firewalls - PA Series for egress. All policies are managed via device groups on Panorama.
- Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series are excellent at utilizing URL filtering to provide us very granular access to individuals or Active directory groups as needed.
- The Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series adds multiple defense layers to include, Anti Spyware, Anti-Malware, File blocking, URL filtering, and we also incorporate the.
- Wildfile malware protection subscription.
- SSL Inspection was very manageable by creating decryption policies by URL category.
- The Global Protect VPN setup could be a little more intuitive.
- Creating IPSec VPN tunnels can be a little challenging. Would be nice if they grouped and forced entries in all the necessary places as a guide.
March 30, 2022
Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls Review
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Palo Alto NGFW helps to protect web and network traffic which up to layer 7. There are many new threats and malware and Palo Alto NGFW is able to prevent and identity any potential threats. Palo Alto NGFW comes with WildFire which able to perform file analysis to detect any zero-day threats which can be very efficient to protect the organization.
- WildFire file analysis.
- Threat prevention.
- DNS security.
- Fasten policy deployment.
- Provide more threat details.
- Visibility over file analysis details.
August 04, 2021
Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - features of a ML based firewall that you need to know!
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We have deployed Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series in our Head office in High availability mode. This Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series is deployed on the internet gateway/perimeter to filter only good traffic and around 300 users and 30-35 servers are connected behind this firewall. Also, this firewall is responsible to prevent intruders, do gateway level Antivirus inspection, Malware filtering, URL filtering, anti-spyware, and file filtering for users to upload or download. We have also procured DNS security and Wildfire Sandbox along with the firewall.
- Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series gives predictive performance, as per our sizing and requirements
- It is integrated very well with internal features it is providing, like, Wildfire Sandbox integrated with gateway AV and URL filtering engine
- Seamlessly integrates with 3rd party tools and systems, like integration with ClearPass from HPE Aruba for user auth, syslog integration, etc
- Enhanced security features like EDL, Credential theft prevention, DNS Security, ML based firewall, which we cannot find in another solutions
- Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series provides platform for network security but lacks features for additional features like built-in MFA, cloud based management, etc
- In file filtering and AV module, there could be a few optional features of white listing a specific file by its name or hash value or some other detail.
- Compared to other vendors, this is costly, but again, feature-rich and hence cannot be with other firewalls.
Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series is one of the best firewall it fulfills all the security parameters. In simple word if I say it's a powerful device against any type of bad actors, attacks, phishing, malware attacks. I [have] used it for [the] past 2 years and [I] still don't see any other firewalls who stand against Palo Alto.
- Application Level filtering is the best feature which is known as AppID.
- Content filtering also the best function which is known as ContentID.
- Data Encryption is very strong.
- Sandboxing also very good function.
- Heavy budget small level company can't afford.
- Only pro level security engineer can handle or work on it.
- To remember CLI based command is very difficult.
December 28, 2020
Best NGFW product I have ever worked with
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Palo
Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series is really a very good product in the category of NGFW firewalls--they have all the advance features that can help you tighten your perimeter gateway security layer. Their hold on and understanding about security threats and their deep understanding about the application helps us deal with a dynamically changing threat landscape. We are using Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series as a network firewall as well as a first layer of defense to deal with external threats. Configuration and administration of all the advance features is very easy and can be done via GUI, wo there's no need to remember so many CLI commands.
Very easy and robust up-gradation process.
- Firewall performance during threat analysis
- Wildfire support to protect from zero-day threats
- Huge database of applications and behavior knowledge
- Virtual wire inline deployment mode
- In the field of GP VPN
- Cloud segment
- Third-party integration support
February 29, 2020
Palo Alto PA Series firewalls deliver tons of features and straightforward management
We are using two Palo Alto PA-5220 firewalls in a high availability configuration as our data center/HQ head-end firewalls as well as our Global Protect VPN portal and gateway. They are used agency-wide for both data center and user traffic, and have allowed us to combine features from our past firewall, VPN and content/URL filtering solutions into one.
- It does an excellent job of securing by applications rather than relying on ports.
- With the separate management and data planes we've never experience performance issues.
- Content updates (apps, URLs, threats) are seamless and automatic.
- It is very flexible and powerful on the network configuration side.
- When web managing, you cannot sort by columns by clicking on a column.
- Palo Alto does not officially bless specific versions as recommended.
- The Global Protect client upgrade process does not provide feedback on progress.
- Logging queries sometimes take a while to complete.
January 13, 2020
Palo Alto PA Series Review
Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls is used as our routing, security, and network core at the resort. All traffic that flows from one network to another must go through our Palo Alto. When I came aboard at Pearl River Resort and Casino the Palo Alto was already the core router and firewall. I was a little hesitant about this design. However, after using the system and seeing the performance and benefits of the Palo Alto I am very impressed with the security it can provide and still meet our needed levels of performance.
- Security Enforcement and Review - The Palo Alto firewall provides all the advanced features you would expect from a modern firewall. Zones based rules, Layer 4 and down rules, and application firewall rules.
- User Definition - The Palo Alto firewall has direct AD integration. This allows rules to be based not just on source an destination information, but also on which security group in the AD that user belong. For example you can limit access to out of band networks to only the users that need it.
- Line Rate Traffic Analysis - When doing my home work I found that Palo Alto firewalls provide high speed analysis to traffic with additional processors to allow line speed results.
- No cloud analytics - I believe industry as a whole is moving to a management suite powered by ML. Palo has a great product, but currently there is no ML backed platform.
- SD WAN - Palo has just announced the addition of SDWAN in its upcoming 9.1 release. I feel they are a bit late to the game compared to others like Fortinet.
- Web based interface can still seem slow at time when compared to more modern HTML 5 interfaces.
December 06, 2019
Palo Alto - Security in a box
Palo Alto serves as our perimeter defense product, from threat assessment on the internal network, to ingressing connectivity from the internet. Provides inline web proxy and ssl inspection without the need of other machines/hardware. A few problems it solves are: 1) perimeter defenses, 2) sanity and 3) DFARs.
- Inline rule threat assessment
- Good information dataplane and graphics
- GlobalProtect VPN needs a user launchable option from pre-logon. This has been a challenge for government customers for years. Their competitor Cisco AnyConnect has SBL.
- Quality of upgrades/updates has been getting worse throughout the years. As of recent things they supposedly fixed have been making it back into the newer updates causing more headache for administrators to roll back. Especially if the update addresses a CVE.
- Some of the lower end units do not perform to the spec on paper - 220/800.
October 14, 2019
Palo Alto NGFW
We use Palo Alto NGFW as our main on-site firewall. There are several units (5000-series) for failover purposes. Firewalls are needed for CIPA compliance and for general Internet Security. We also use the GlobalProtect SSL VPN to provide access to LAN for remote users. We use web-filtering, application filtering (App-ID), etc.
- Web filtering by category is done better than competing solutions (FortiGate, for example). There is a significantly smaller number of false negatives, at least in my experience, on Palo Alto firewalls than on competing solutions.
- Logging. Firewall logs on the Palo Alto are very comprehensive. Firewall stores a lot of information about client connections and log filtering options are incredible.
- Reliable. Palo Alto firewalls we are using were trouble-free so far both software and hardware-wise.
- Very good VPN solution. GlobalProtect VPN works very well - stable and high performance. As it is hard to troubleshoot issues with remote clients, good performance by SSL VPN client is an important point.
- Can be complicated to use. Both the Web interface and the CLI of the Palo Alto firewall are quite sophisticated. It is much harder to perform the configuration of the Palo Alto firewall than a Fortinet one.
- Subscriptions. To properly use the firewall, subscription packages are needed, and licensing can be confusing and/or expensive.
October 09, 2019
Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls
The Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series firewalls are being used to protect the internal assets to our organization as well as being sold to other customers to help provide them threat protection. The customer use case varies greatly and this product allows all of our customers to be provided a level of protection to fit their needs. The GUI driven interface has allow our support staff to develop their skill set rapidly with this product.
- Security performance
- Implementation
- Managment
- Cloud features
- Value
- Support
August 07, 2019
Palo Alto Security Gateways are Simply Secure
Our network uses the Palo Alto PA-Series firewall as an internet edge facing security gateway, focusing on traditional firewalling, SSL decryption, URL-filtering, and threat mitigation. There are two departments that use the firewall, which are the Security team and the Network Engineering team. Our main goal is to ensure that access to internal networks is secured and access to external networks is limited to appropriate sites.
- Simple Policy Management
- Easy-to-read Documentation
- On-Board Troubleshooting Tools
- URL-Filtering rules are complex
- Some Cryptic Error Messages
- Undocumented software bugs
March 11, 2019
A huge improvement over traditional layer 2/3 firewalls.
We started implementing Palo Alto a year or two ago to increase our security posture and increase segmentation between our infrastructure services, shared services, and client networks. By utilizing the Palo Next-Generation Firewalls and WildFire we're able to much more quickly identify and isolate new security threats. They played an integral part in keeping WannaCry from becoming a major problem for us.
- Ease of use.
- Fast response to new security threats (WildFire).
- Application aware firewall (App-ID).
- Logging is fantastic and easy to see what's being blocked/allowed basically in real time.
- Durability/reliability is surprisingly good, only issue we've had is a couple issues with faulty power supplies, but all our units have redundant power supplies so it was a non-issue.
- Support is surprisingly good.
- Cost, these firewalls are awesome, but not cheap.
March 09, 2019
PAN: It costs a lot, but it's worth it!
Palo Alto (PAN) is used by a division of ours who did not have a full-time network person. We found the product easy and intuitive to work with, which is why our team truly enjoys using the PAN products. The wildfire product addressed and dealt with threats in real time, without a major performance hit like Cisco Sourcefire embedded modules within the 55xx-x series.
- Easy to learn and use the web-based console. Learn the platform and be able to manage any Palo Alto device.
- No separate management for control/data plane like the checkpoint.
- VPN is VERY easy to set up, even double/twice NAT VPN, and can use VTI for route-based VPN setups.
- Units are far more expensive than competitors. It's worth it, but the price point can scare potential clients off.
Palo Alto Networks firewalls are replacing legacy port and protocol based firewalls to assist in implementing a security stack that includes layer7 application identification controls, user-based access, threat prevention, as well as zone based segmentation of networks and systems. We are also leveraging Palo Alto Globalprotect for remote-access VPN and testing the new web-based VPN features.
- Palo Alto Networks is a leader in zone-based firewall deployments.
- Palo Alto Networks domain integration makes them a leader in restricting access based on source user/AD group.
- Palo Alto is continuously developing their Application catalog to help restrict traffic on layer 7 apps not just ports/services.
- Palo Alto threat signatures and application signatures are not available to most customers, the black box method makes it hard to determine the root cause of issues in some cases.
- Some updates - especially for new OS releases are buggy and needs to be fully tested before deployment.
December 08, 2018
Palo is about as good as it gets.
We have PA firewalls throughout the City, sizing and capabilities based on the needs of the department.
- Having two engines:
- Routing Engine—The Routing Engine provides three main functions:
- Creates the packet forwarding switch fabric for the Services Router, providing route lookup, filtering, and switching on incoming data packets, then directing outbound packets to the appropriate interface for transmission to the network.
- Maintains the routing tables used by the router and controls the routing protocols that run on the router.
- Provides control and monitoring functions for the router, including controlling power and monitoring system status.
- Packet Forwarding Engine—Processes packets; applies filters, routing policies, and other features; and forwards packets to the next hop along the route to their final destination.
- The search functions of the appliances and the OS is pretty good. Better than most firewalls.
- Engaging support was quicker, which can really make or break your day\week when it comes to an outage.
- Building an OSPF tunnel with another vendor is proving difficult. Support cant seem to fix it even in their sandbox environment.
- The Firewall is extremely granular, sometimes searching can prove tedious and frustrating if you're new to the OS.
November 21, 2018
Great Enterprise Level Networks Next-Generation Firewalls
We use Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls as our primary firewall and our VPN solution for the company. It is very easy to set up and the firewall itself proves to be very effective in managing traffic. They are an industry leader for Enterprise NGFW appliances with numerous security features to protect companies and their networks.
- Very good security features including hardware-level antivirus and intrusion prevention.
- Customizable firewall rules and NAT policies that will match any network's needs.
- Great management interface.
- Different size of appliances for different purposes/environments.
- We have seen that occasionally the reporting feature can be buggy and that certain options might be missing from the menu in the report section. This seems to be a known bug and we have been working with PAN support to apply a hotfix patch to address the issue.
January 30, 2018
Palo Alto will stop the bad guys for you!
We utilize Palo Alto Next Generation Firewalls to protect our perimeter network and provide VPN connectivity for site-to-site and endpoint access. The firewall helps to mitigate potential misuse of the internet as well as stopping attacks from shady websites.
- AppID is able to see what the actual internet traffic is. For instance instead of port 443 just being "Internet traffic" we can define access to Facebook-base or all the other facets of facebook.
- UserID allows us to define policies based on group or user access and integrates with our Active Directory. This helps to configure a least access privilege and if we find misuse of the network we can tighten specific users to a stricter policy.
- GlobalProtect VPN connection helps our employee's connect from home remotely. This provides a very secure connection with minimal configuration.
- Wildfire provides very up-to-date information regarding global attack mitigations and stopping techniques.
- Our specific model is a bit slow and outdated and takes up to 10 minutes to commit a configuration change.
- Nested security rules would be helpful instead of a linear approach. But rule creation in general is very simple.
- Documentation gives a very straight forward answer to some items but is very vague in others.
- Support could be a little better. An issue we had a tech was insistent it was the "other guy" and it ended up being the very latest PAN OS upgrade.
October 17, 2017
Not Beginner-friendly, but Powerful and Comprehensive
We used our Palo Alto firewalls to analyze and filter all traffic coming into and leaving our network, including the DMZ.
- Web Filtering - Analysis is fast and comprehensive, with all the options one should expect from a professional Web filter. Admins can set options to audit, warn, click-through, password-protect, or block sites based on numerous criteria. Changing site categories is easy and Palo Alto do a good job of being pretty up-to-date on their site catalog.
- Packet Identification - This is an area where Palo Alto excels. Want to allow your users to use Facebook, but block IM and/or file transfers? Easy. Have an inbound file that says it's a jpeg but is really an Excel spreadsheet? Busted.
- WildFire - I hated it at first, but it's come a long way. Unknown files can be sent to WildFire for them to sandbox and analyze. The result is fairly fast return times and a process that contributes to the improvement of your firewall's function.
- Updates - They happen often and are quick to install, but new definitions with a threat level of critical should be blocked by default, not set to audit-only.
- SSL Proxy - This works great if you have very little traffic on your PA. If you turn this on, expect to cut the firewall's performance in half. Even then, no SSL Proxy is perfect, so some sites just won't work.
March 17, 2017
Palo Alto Review
Palo Alto is used as our primary firewalls. It addresses the problem of outside intrusions and are configured with both basic and advanced firewall features. We are able to protect against application-level threats and it is also used to manage our VPN and MPLS networks. Many features such as dynamic block lists, DLP, web content filtering, advanced threat protection, wildfire, and DDoS protection are available and are in use with our company.
- Protects against common threats such as unauthorized vulnerability scans
- Protects against malware applications and ransomware such as Cryptowall
- Allows very secure VPN connections for external users
- The web content filtering is good, but could be improved
- Wildfire can take a long time to analyze files
- Alerts and logs could contain a little more information or intelligence to help narrow down a threat.
We needed a solution that would detect threats before they were detected by endpoint software and eliminate the threats of exploits and viruses to our end users, including ransomware attacks.
- Monitoring and detecting unwanted application access by our users, such as streaming and torrent download sites.
- Preventing exploits and malware from hitting our network and infecting all end-user PCs and servers.
- Excellent secure VPN access for our outside staff and partners. The VPN software client is available for PC & Mac as well as mobile client options on Android and Apple stores.
- The products are a bit pricey, but feature filled. Their annual services can really add up quickly.
- The models of devices are somewhat confusing. For instance, we wanted a firewall that had the ability to use Active & Passive fault tolerance, and only the very advanced models (more expensive) do this. It might bring smaller customers in by adding more advanced features to lower-priced models.
October 14, 2016
Firewall and Wildfire? Great!
PA-500 is being used across our entire organization. We currently use it to filter web traffic with geoblocking, implement our VPN, and for general logging of network activity.
- The VPN (GlobalProtect) is easy to use.
- Logging is done well and in an easy to use situation.
- The GeoBlocking is exceptional.
- The web interface to look at real time events is very slow and clunky.
- The searching feature is hard to figure out what parameters you use.
- The GlobalProtect VPN client has a few strange features that have increased support hours. It's easy to work around but caused a few unnecessary tickets.