Azure Firewall vs Palo Alto Networks VM-Series comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary
Updated on Mar 6, 2024

We compared Palo Alto Networks VM-Series and Azure Firewall based on our user's reviews in several parameters.

The Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is praised for its strong security measures, effective threat prevention, and reliable customer support, offering scalability and flexible pricing. On the other hand, Azure Firewall is commended for its seamless integration with Azure services, robust security capabilities, and excellent customer service from Microsoft, but could benefit from enhancements in logging and reporting capabilities, rule customization, and user interface improvements.

Features: According to user feedback, the most valuable features of Palo Alto Networks VM-Series are its strong security measures, comprehensive firewall capabilities, effective threat prevention, and seamless integration with existing infrastructure. In contrast, Azure Firewall is praised for its robust security capabilities, seamless integration with other Azure services, comprehensive monitoring and logging functionality, user-friendly interface, and excellent support from Microsoft.

Pricing and ROI: The setup cost for Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is considered to be affordable and straightforward, with flexible licensing options. In comparison, Azure Firewall also offers a reasonable pricing and straightforward setup cost, with a hassle-free licensing process., The Palo Alto Networks VM-Series offers increased network security, threat prevention, and visibility, along with scalability and flexibility. Users have praised its comprehensive features and responsive support. On the other hand, Azure Firewall enhances ROI by offering cost-effectiveness, improved security measures, and reliable performance.

Room for Improvement: Palo Alto Networks VM-Series could improve its user interface, documentation, performance, integration with third-party apps, supported platforms, and reporting capabilities. Azure Firewall could benefit from advanced logging and reporting, better customization options, and an improved user interface.

Deployment and customer support: The user reviews for Palo Alto Networks VM-Series show a varying duration for establishing a new tech solution, with some users spending three months on deployment and an additional week on setup. On the other hand, the reviews for Azure Firewall also mention a varying duration, with some users spending three months on deployment and an additional week on setup. However, for users who required a week for both deployment and setup, it can be assumed that these terms refer to the same period and should not be considered separately., The customer service for the Palo Alto Networks VM-Series product has been highly rated and reliable, with customers speaking highly of the professional, prompt, and knowledgeable assistance provided. On the other hand, Azure Firewall also receives positive responses for its excellent customer service, with users appreciating the prompt and helpful assistance provided by the Azure team. Both products ensure users feel supported and valued.

The summary above is based on 27 interviews we conducted recently with Palo Alto Networks VM-Series and Azure Firewall users. To access the review's full transcripts, download our report.

To learn more, read our detailed Azure Firewall vs. Palo Alto Networks VM-Series Report (Updated: March 2024).
765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"We use the FortiGate Sandbox to detect zero-day vulnerabilities, such as anomalies or malware, that are unknown and have not yet been discovered.""The UTM feature is quite good. FortiAP is easy to deploy because both Fortigate and FortiAP are under the same brand. Otherwise, you need to do more work on the configuration.""The product is easy to use and is stable. The SV1 functionality is a benefit.""You can purchase switches and you don't need to do anything with them. You just put in the firewall and the switches get all the policies and rules that you already have in the firewall. With Fortinet, you just connect the FortiSwitch to the Fortinet and that's it.""I like Fortinet FortiGate's antispam filter, SPN, and clustering features.""The most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiGate is the simple configuration.""The inspection and web security features are most valuable.""FortiGate Secure SD-WAN includes best-of-breed next-generation firewall (NGFW) security, SD-WAN, advanced routing, and WAN optimization capabilities, delivering a security-driven networking WAN edge transformation in a unified offering."

More Fortinet FortiGate Pros →

"I think that one of the best features is definitely the premium version, along with the IDPs in terms of the intrusion detection and prevention system.""The most valuable feature is the integration into the overall cloud platform.""Microsoft's technical support is very good. They're quite knowledgable and responsive.""Performance and stability are the key features of this product.""The solution can autoscale.""It provided ease of maintenance. If a new firewall was needed, we only had to run the pipelines for this. So, the maintenance was very easy.""The initial setup is straightforward; Azure Firewall does not have a complex implementation process. It is very simple; you just need to enable the service within Azure. It does not require any maintenance because it is managed by Microsoft, that is, it is a fully managed service.""We secure the entry point to the virtual data center with the firewall."

More Azure Firewall Pros →

"The most effective features of the solution for threat prevention are Layer 7 inspection, SSL decryption, IPS, and the web filtering profile.""We can monitor the traffic manually and detect threats. Additionally, we can block different IP addresses and URLs.""The most valuable feature is the Posture Assessment.""The most valuable features are security and support.""It gives us the ease that we are secure. We have set up the proper things that help make our data safe.""In Palo Alto the most important feature is the App-ID.""The most valuable features of the solution are its stability, ease of implementation, ease of operation, and security.""The most valuable feature of the solution is the zero-trust security architecture."

More Palo Alto Networks VM-Series Pros →

Cons
"The Wi-Fi controller needs a lot of improvement.""The logging details need to be improved.""There are some problems that support cannot give you a logical reason as to why it happened. For example, I had a case where I was dealing with a WhatsApp application that was giving issues. Technical support gave more than one reason it could be giving issues, but none of them solved the problem. Eventually I solved the problem, but it was far from the solutions that support had given.""The updates Fortinet provides are sometimes unstable.""The UTM filtering needs improvement.""Fortinet FortiGate should improve the VPN tokens.""The solution lacks multi-language support.""The inability to scale the FortiAnalyzer to match our growth necessitates the purchase of new hardware."

More Fortinet FortiGate Cons →

"For larger enterprises, they need to adjust the scalability.""The product could be made more customizable.""We find it's different implementing it region-to-region. It might help if it was universal across all regions.""It has fewer features than you can get from other firewalls, like anti-spam and anti-phishing. Those kinds of things are not included. It only includes IDS and IDB.""The solution lacks artificial intelligence and machine learning. It might be in the roadmap. However, currently, it's not available.""You have to have a defined IP range within your network to associate it with your network. The problem is you have to plan ahead of time if you expect to use the firewall in the future so that you don't have to reconfigure your subnets or that specific IP range. Other than that, I don't any issues. I use it for basic configuration for a single application, so I really don't try to leverage it for multiple applications where I might find some complexity or challenges.""It would be nice to be able to create groupings for servers and offer groups of IP addresses.""There are a number of things that need to be simplified, but it's mostly costs. It needs to be simplified because it's pretty expensive."

More Azure Firewall Cons →

"On the cloud side, they need to come up with more HA solutions to support the multi-region.""The web interface is very slow, and it needs to be faster.""They made only a halfhearted attempt to put in DLP (Data Loss Prevention).""The product could provide protection above Layer 3, which gets into the application layer and provides better visibility into those aspects of application security.""The tool is very costly.""From time to time, they have released some content updates that have some issues, maybe twice a year.""We don't know how it will scale once we start putting more load on it.""There could be dynamic DNS features similar to Fortinet in the product."

More Palo Alto Networks VM-Series Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "Fortinet has one or two license types, and the VPN numbers are only limited by the hardware chassis make."
  • "These boxes are not that expensive compared to what they can do, their functionality, and the reporting you receive. Fortinet licensing is straightforward and less confusing compared to Cisco."
  • "Go for long term pricing negotiated at the time of purchase."
  • "Work through partners for the best pricing."
  • "The value is the capability of having multiple services with one unique license, not having the limitation per user licensing schema, like other vendors."
  • "Easy to understand licensing requirements."
  • "​We saved a bundle by not needing all the past appliances from an NGFW.​"
  • "The cost is too high... They have to focus on more features with less cost for the customer. If you see the market, where it's going, there are a lot of players offering more features for less cost."
  • More Fortinet FortiGate Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "Azure Firewall is more expensive. If Microsoft can make Azure Firewall cheaper, I can see that all clients will think of using it. One client used FortiGate because it is much cheaper. Some clients ask me for Cisco, but in the cloud estimate, I found its cost is the same as Azure Firewall."
  • "Azure Firewall is quite an expensive product."
  • "The licensing module is good."
  • "The total cost of ownership is much less than Palo Alto, Cisco, or any other brand."
  • "It is pay-as-you-go. So, you pay based on the usage. If I remember it well, there is a basic fee, and there is a traffic fee. It is not per month. It is per hour or something like that. It is not so expensive."
  • "Azure Firewalls operate on a pay-as-you-go model, similar to cloud services."
  • "The solution is cheaper than other brands. My company has an enterprise contract and we finally got a good price with Azure."
  • "Azure Firewall comes with Azure native services. We did not buy any kind of license for it. Whether you have a free subscription or a pay-as-you-go model, you can deploy the Azure Firewall service... The amount that you use will determine how much you pay."
  • More Azure Firewall Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "For what you get, it does do what it says. It is a good value for an enterprise firewall.​"
  • "​The licensing is pretty much like everyone else."
  • "When you have a client compare box against box, a lot of times Palo Alto is a bit more expensive, but its network firewalls have a very rich ratio."
  • "Do not buy larges box if you do not need them. Rightsizing is a great task to do before​hand."
  • "I know Palo Alto is not cheap. They have been telling me, the members of the finance team, it is not a cheap solution. It is a solution whose target is that no matter how big your organization is, small, medium, or large, it is about the maturity of your security team or infrastructure team whom you want to work with."
  • "It is a little bit of crazy if you compare it to Vanguard, Sophos, or even Cisco. The newest version of Cisco, the Next-Generation Firewall of Cisco, is less expensive than Palo Alto. It is more comparable to Check Point."
  • "For licensing, It depends how they want to use the firewall. The firewall can be used only for IPS purposes. If you only want that firewall IPSs, you will only need a license that is called threat prevention. That license, threat prevention, includes vulnerabilities, antivirus signatures and one additional measure (that I can't remember), but it includes three measures and security updates."
  • "The box, if you do not want to buy the threat prevention license in the box, you can buy it only with the support license. It is for the support of the hardware. It works like a simple firewall. It integrates what it calls user IDs and application IDs. If you do not buy any other license, only the firewall, Palo Alto will also help you improve a lot of your security."
  • More Palo Alto Networks VM-Series Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    FortiGate 60b, FortiGate 60c, FortiGate 80c, FortiGate 50b, FortiGate 200b, FortiGate 110c, FortiGate
    Learn More
    Overview

    Fortinet FortiGate enhances network security, prevents unauthorized access, and offers robust firewall protection. Valued features include advanced threat protection, reliable performance, and a user-friendly interface. It improves efficiency, streamlines processes, and boosts collaboration, providing valuable insights for informed decision-making and growth.

    Azure Firewall is a user-friendly, intuitive, cloud-native firewall security solution that provides top-of-the-industry threat protection for all your Azure Virtual Network resources. Azure Firewall is constantly and thoroughly analyzing all traffic and data packets, making it a very valuable and secure fully stateful firewall as a service with built-in high availability and unrestricted cloud scalability. Azure Firewall allows users to create virtual IP addresses and provides for secure DDoS protection for the virtual machines on your network. It also provides fast and efficient east-west and north-south traffic security.

    Azure Firewall is a managed, cloud-based network security service built to protect your Azure Virtual Network resources. It is a fully stateful firewall as a service with built-in high availability and unrestricted cloud scalability.

    Azure Firewall has two significant offerings, Standard and Premium.

    Azure Firewall Standard works directly with Microsoft Cyber Security and supplies excellent L3-L7 filtering and threat awareness. The proactive real-time threat awareness will quickly alert you and immediately deny all traffic to and from any known problematic or suspicious domains or IP addresses. Microsoft Cyber Security is updated continually to protect against all new and known potential threats at all times. To learn more about Azure Firewall Standard, click here.

    Azure Firewall Premium provides everything the standard version does, and additionally adds extra levels of data encryption, network intrusion detection, extended URL filtering, and Web category filters. To learn more about the added features of Azure Firewall Premium, click here.

    Key Benefits and Features of Azure Firewall:

    • High availability - You do not need load balancers with Azure Firewall; it's already built in and ready to go.
    • Self-scalability - Azure Firewall is intuitive and will auto-scale as needed based on traffic flow to be ready for peak traffic times.
    • Threat awareness - Using Microsoft Cyber Security to filter traffic, Azure Firewall will deny any known problematic threats to keep your network safe.
    • Additional IP addresses - You can securely add up to 250 public IP addresses with Azure Firewall
    • Improved web category filtering - You can set up specific protocols to allow or deny categories within websites that are deemed inappropriate for use within your network. You have the ability to organize categories based on a defined set of descriptions.

    What our real users have to say:

    Many PeerSpot users found Azure Firewall to be very user-friendly and easy to use. They liked that it offers seamless integration to the cloud and were especially pleased with the threat filtering options.

    Regarding integration and threat intelligence, our users wrote:

    “The most valuable feature is the integration into the overall cloud platform.”

    The most valuable feature is threat intelligence. It is based on filtering and can identify multiple threats.”

    I think that one of the best features is definitely the premium version, along with the IDPs in terms of the intrusion detection and prevention system.”



    Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is a highly effective advanced threat protection (ATP) solution and firewall that can be hosted on cloud computing technologies designed by many different companies. It decreases the amount of time that it will take administrators to respond to threats. Users that deploy VM-series have 70% less downtime than those who use similar firewalls. Neither protection nor efficiency are concerns when this next-generation firewall is in play.

    VM-Series is being deployed to protect both public and private cloud environments. This level of flexibility empowers organizations to run the environment or environments that best meet their needs without worrying that they are going to be exposed to digital threats due to the environment that they choose.

    In the public cloud, users of Palo Alto Networks VM-Series can automate their deployment and dynamically scale up their environment while experiencing a consistent level of protection. This dynamic scalability means that they also integrate their security into their DevOps workflows so that their security can keep up with their activities and requirements. Users of private cloud environments can set up security policies that can be automated to be provisioned as the need arises. Organizations don’t need to slow down when they deploy VM-Series because it makes the task of defending them so simple that they can set their defenses and forget that they are even there.

    Users gain a deep level of visibility when they deploy Palo Alto Networks VM-Series. App-ID technology enables organizations to see their network traffic on the application level and spot threats that might be trying to sneak in through vulnerable points in their defenses. It also leverages Palo Alto Networks WildFire and advanced threat protection to block the threats before they can escalate.

      Palo Alto Networks VM-Series Features:

      • Central management system - It has a central management system that enables users to set up and control their security operations from one location. Users don’t need to search for the tools that they need. This system allows for security consistency and complete control without requiring businesses to spend large periods of time to do so.
      • Blacklisting and whitelisting - Organizations can utilize blacklisting and whitelisting tools to ensure that their network traffic only contains the type of traffic that they want to be present. These tools make it possible for them to set specific web traffic sources as being either undesirable and thus blocked from entering their network or desirable and thus allowed to enter. 
      • Automation feature - The product’s automation feature can automate many critical functions that users would otherwise have to handle manually. Security policy updates are an example of a function that users can automate.

      Reviews from Real Users:

      Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is a solution that stands out when compared to other similar solutions. Two major advantages that it offers are its ability to protect users without degrading the efficiency with which their networks perform and its centralized management system. 

      Jason H., the director of information technology at Tavoca Inc, writes, “There is no noticeable trade-off between security and network performance. In fact, so far, we've not seen any negative network performance with it. We're very impressed in that regard.”

      An information technology manager at a tech services company says, “We use Palo Alto’s Panorama centralized management system. We have an on-prem firewall where Panorama is very good for pulling logs in from the cloud so we can see what is going on. It gives us visibility into that as well as shows us what attacks are coming in. Palo Alto’s Panorama centralized management system simplifies our security posture based on our requirements. Instead of manually pulling logs, then generating them into readable formats, it gives us the console in a readable format to view.”

      Sample Customers
      1. Amazon Web Services 2. Microsoft 3. IBM 4. Cisco 5. Dell 6. HP 7. Oracle 8. Verizon 9. AT&T 10. T-Mobile 11. Sprint 12. Vodafone 13. Orange 14. BT Group 15. Telstra 16. Deutsche Telekom 17. Comcast 18. Time Warner Cable 19. CenturyLink 20. NTT Communications 21. Tata Communications 22. SoftBank 23. China Mobile 24. Singtel 25. Telus 26. Rogers Communications 27. Bell Canada 28. Telkom Indonesia 29. Telkom South Africa 30. Telmex 31. Telia Company 32. Telkom Kenya
      Information Not Available
      Warren Rogers Associates
      Top Industries
      REVIEWERS
      Comms Service Provider16%
      Computer Software Company9%
      Financial Services Firm8%
      Manufacturing Company7%
      VISITORS READING REVIEWS
      Educational Organization20%
      Computer Software Company15%
      Comms Service Provider8%
      Manufacturing Company6%
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      Computer Software Company29%
      Financial Services Firm24%
      Government12%
      Manufacturing Company12%
      VISITORS READING REVIEWS
      Computer Software Company17%
      Financial Services Firm9%
      Government8%
      Manufacturing Company6%
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      Computer Software Company24%
      Manufacturing Company17%
      Financial Services Firm14%
      Government10%
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      Computer Software Company16%
      Financial Services Firm11%
      Manufacturing Company7%
      Government6%
      Company Size
      REVIEWERS
      Small Business48%
      Midsize Enterprise23%
      Large Enterprise30%
      VISITORS READING REVIEWS
      Small Business27%
      Midsize Enterprise32%
      Large Enterprise41%
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      Small Business26%
      Midsize Enterprise26%
      Large Enterprise49%
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      Small Business23%
      Midsize Enterprise17%
      Large Enterprise60%
      REVIEWERS
      Small Business41%
      Midsize Enterprise27%
      Large Enterprise32%
      VISITORS READING REVIEWS
      Small Business23%
      Midsize Enterprise16%
      Large Enterprise61%
      Buyer's Guide
      Azure Firewall vs. Palo Alto Networks VM-Series
      March 2024
      Find out what your peers are saying about Azure Firewall vs. Palo Alto Networks VM-Series and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
      765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.

      Azure Firewall is ranked 17th in Firewalls with 33 reviews while Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is ranked 10th in Firewalls with 50 reviews. Azure Firewall is rated 7.2, while Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Azure Firewall writes "Easy to use and configure but could be more robust". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Palo Alto Networks VM-Series writes "Many features are optimized for troubleshooting real-time scenarios, saving a lot of time". Azure Firewall is most compared with Fortinet FortiGate-VM, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Microsoft Defender for Cloud, Check Point NGFW and Cisco Secure Firewall, whereas Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is most compared with Fortinet FortiGate-VM, Cisco Secure Firewall, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Juniper SRX Series Firewall and Huawei NGFW. See our Azure Firewall vs. Palo Alto Networks VM-Series report.

      See our list of best Firewalls vendors.

      We monitor all Firewalls reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.