Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series

Watchguard is recommended in Midsize Companies. It hasn't a real L7 feature for policies pfSense is powerful and open-source but L7 feature missing so it's impossible to goal our objectives

The Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series are much easier to configure than both Checkpoint and Cisco, in my opinion. From Security policy management and traffic inspection standpoints, there is no comparison.

Palo Alto NGFW is quite stable and able to perform most of the security features. It is also have real-time updates for the latest signatures which helps to identify and prevent threats efficiently. The overall deployment is straight forward and easy to implement. User interface is simple and easy to adapt by the administrators.

Fortinet - faster than Palo Alto, but features are less.
Cisco ASA
Palo Alto Single Pass gathering all [of] the data in a series of logs is the best among other firewalls. It is very clear in inspection and providing you insight [into] data [that] is passing through the network.

On other firewalls creating the policy is a bit complex, but with the Palo Alto Next-Generation Firewalls, it can be done with ease as it provides the best user-friendly GUI. It provides complete protection from both signature-based and signature-less attacks both. With its sandboxing feature and Wildfire solutions, protection can be enriched.

Cisco Firepower only has basic functionality, URL filtering always create problems also GUI is very bad that's why most organization [are] using Palo Alto rather than Cisco Firepower.

I don't think we can compare other firewalls with this powerful firewall device. All have less features as compared to this device.

We are using Cisco ASA before in our environment but when it comes to deep scanning & layer 7 security it doesn't have that capability. After using Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewall we are using sandboxing & advance malware protection that provides high-level end-user security. Also after implementing it we can easily monitor user-level traffic.

No one can say any other companies in this time is better than Palo Alto Networks Next-Generatoin Firewalls. Palo Alto offers very advanced features which protect you[r] organization. Advanced malware protection, anti spam, lots of other threats.

Palo Alto has a user-friendly GUI and it comes with a single console from where you can manage all the policies and routing. It has advanced capabilities to prevent APT (Advanced Persistent Threat) attacks. Cisco Firepower lacks in capabilities with Palo Alto if we compare it.

Biggest reason to select Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series over these products is for the performance during traffic inspection via various engines like UID, AppID, and ContentID. Another factor was both the other products were not very capable of providing such a strong URL filtering which Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series is providing during our POC. Also, administration can be done via GUI console completely with Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series, while in other two products, you have to play with CLI commands most of the time.

At first we continued using Check Point as our port-based firewall while using Palo Alto for content/URL filtering and threat prevention. However, we soon realized the Palo Alto did everything the Check Point did, plus quite a bit more. Hence, it made sense to consolidate all functions on the Palo Alto instead of splitting them between the two. The Palo Alto was also quite a bit more advanced as far as routing and policy-based routing goes.

I did not originally choose Palo Alto as our core firewall appliance. It has already been purchased when I came on board. However, I did recently choose to purchase new Palo Alto firewalls to replaced our older models. I have had experience working with Cisco ASAs and SonicWall appliances in other jobs, and we have a CheckPoint stack stood up in our lab here at the resort we compared to the Palo Altos. None of the others could compare in features and management. SonicWall did not have the features we had grown accustomed to having already used the Palo Altos. And with their recent purchase and then spun back out cycle the company had been thru we were reluctant. My engineers and I have use ASA in the past. They are good products, but still very "old school". Checkpoint we did not feel treated as well as a company and we took them off the potential list.

I've been using NGFW since 2014. When it really was the main player in the new term "Next Gen Firewall". I'm sure the bar is pretty matched across the board with Fireeye and other niche players and even Juniper/Cisco etc. Eventually there will be equilibrium. I chose Palo Alto because I am comfortable with them, I know the product fairly well from my time using them at Raytheon/(Websense/Forcepoint). I would certainly choose them over a Sophos UTM or Forcepoint Firewalls at the moment. I say this with extreme caution, if PA cannot get their update quality resolved in the future, I may be forced to look at other products that may spend more time QA'ing their updates.

A prime example is in the upgrade/iupdate stream, there are newer versions out that are not stable or recommended by support, but yet there is no indication from the "Update Software" if that release is GA, ED, or Beta/Alpha. There needs to be more visual communication to [system administrators] whether a release is GA or no from within the update options in the firewall.

The main competitor I can compare Palo Alto to is the FortiGate series of devices by Fortinet. FortiGates are capable UMTs and also less expensive than Palo Altos. That being said, category filtering on FortiGates is less effective, and they are not as feature-rich as Palo Altos. My suggestion would be to use FortiGate for simpler deployments and Palo Altos for more demanding ones.

Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls outperform and better security model for HQ and remote offices.

We previously used Cisco 5585 ASAs with firepower. We wanted a more holistic solution than what the Cisco ASA was providing for us. In this situation, we needed to have consistency in how rules were applied across multiple types of traffic, while also knowing what kind of traffic was being sent. The inspection capabilities alone sold us on the Palo Alto, and we have reaped significant other benefits as well.

We put Palo Alto in place over Cisco ASA as a product set. Until a few years ago, Cisco didn’t have a next-generation firewall, primarily meaning their appliances didn’t have application identification or control. Since their acquisition of Sourcefire, however, they’ve reintroduced the X series with FirePOWER, which includes these features. FirePOWER has been nothing but a pain to implement, install, maintain, and upgrade. I would highly suggest this not be your solution if you want anything other than firewalling and VPN.

In my opinion, Palo Alto provides the most easily managed firewall on the market, with the most options for device management. Compared to other vendors it's very obvious that Palo Alto focuses on their firewall technologies and supporting them. The monitoring and visibility features are the simplest to implement and clearest to observe.

1.Good Technical support with strong expertise
2.Easy to deploy
3.Good features like APP ID and CONTENT ID.

Palo Alto has the ability to secure public cloud which none of the vendors have currently. With Palo Alto VM series you can deploy firewall VM in minutes and secure your public cloud.

PA was cheaper than the managed services I would be purchasing with Sonicwall.

I've been really happy with our Palo Alto [solutions] and we're replacing a good chunk of our ASAs with Palo Alto. As far as firewalls go the Palo Alto firewalls are significantly better in my opinion, but we still use ASAs as VPN devices in a few scenarios and they work just fine for that, but when looking for the best firewall I'd go with Palo Alto in most cases.

Why did we choose PAN? The number of exploits written for PAN devices are much smaller than ASA. It's much simpler to manage than the checkpoint. It includes web filtering module with the product. Quite simply, it was just the best bang for the buck. Our management consistently requires that we use network devices for 5-7 years, so these units fit the bill.