We performed a comparison between Cisco Secure Firewall and Palo Alto Networks K2-Series based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Firewalls solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.
"This solution made it very easy to manage our bandwidth."
"We use the filtering feature the most. It has filtering and inbuilt securities. We can create customized rules to define which users can access a particular type of site. We can create policies inside the firewall."
"You can create multiple Virtual Domains (VDOMs), which are treated as separate firewall instances."
"It's great for capturing the traffic and troubleshooting it."
"From the firewall perspective, the rules and policies are very sufficient and easy to use."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are the ease of use and the UI. It has always provided me with what I needed. I have no need for additional costs that other solutions have, such as Sophos."
"This solution has helped our organization by having strong functions and a reliable firewall."
"Fortinet FortiGate appears to be scalable."
"The implementation is pretty straightforward."
"The initial setup is easy."
"One thing I like about the product is the logging features, the way it logs, the way it forwards the logs in Syslog."
"URL filtering is valuable."
"Cisco ASA works out-of-the-box. With the setup wizard, it was easy to get it deployed quickly, even by novice IT users."
"Unfortunately in Cisco, only the hardware was good."
"The stability of the solution is very good. We can see that it gets even better with every release."
"I like that it is easy to change the settings."
"Palo Alto has a unique solution for DNS security, which is very good."
"The most valuable feature of Palo Alto Networks K2-Series is the performance which is above their competitors. The throughput they have delivered is good. When we used other solutions they failed the deployment when we were using different rules. They have a theory perform performance light and performance degradation. However, Palo Alto Networks K2-Series never fails in that scenario."
"Simple integrations with the domain controllers and other inventories"
"It is a stable solution."
"I have found that Palo Alto Networks K2-Series has the best security. They are more user-friendly, older firewalls used to have to be configured using the command-line interface, but in this solution, it can be done in the GUI."
"This is a very reliable firewall and we have never had problems with it."
"Everything I could possibly want has already been implanted in the new version."
"As long as the solution is kept updated, it's pretty stable."
"The central management for the FortiGate Fortinet Firewall needs improvement. They have the manager to do the essential management for both SD-WAN and for the security policy. They should also improve the SD-WAN function."
"It needs to improve its ISP load balancing."
"Fortinet already improved FortiGate, but in the current market, many brands of security devices have improved together. Fortinet still needs to catch up with market standards. Fortinet is lacking in features in comparison to competitors."
"The biggest "gotcha" is that if the client purchases what they call the UTM shared bundle, which has unified threat management on both, it's not as easy to manage if you have more than one firewall."
"Maybe they could make some features more accessible, such as a way to translate directions between two networks that share the same subnets."
"Currently, FortiGate is providing SSL VPN. But they're missing some features that are available in Palo Alto's SSL VPN."
"They are doing good, but they can improve the distributor assignment. The availability of the product and the timeline of delivery are the main things. The distribution should be swift, and the distributor should not reach out to end customers directly. They should work as a distributor. There should also be one more local distributor. Currently, there is only one distributor in Pakistan, and the rest of them are in UAE. It is difficult to work with only one distributor. Sometimes, you don't get along with the same distributor, and that's why they should have one more distributor. Their licensing should also be improved. The activation or renewal of the product should be done from the date of renewal, not from the date on which the license expired."
"The support we receive when we need to upgrade is not satisfactory and has room for improvement."
"There is huge scope for improvement in URL filtering. The database that they have is not accurate. Their content awareness and categorization for URL filtering are not that great. We faced many challenges with their categorization and content awareness. They should improve these categorization issues."
"I would like for the user interface to be easier for the admin and network admin. I would also like to be able to access everything from the GUI interface. The way it is now, it needs somebody experience in iOS to be able to operate it. I would like to have a GUI interface."
"One area where the ASA could be improved is that it doesn't have AMP. When you get an ASA with the Firepower model, ASA with FTD, then you have advanced malware protection."
"The operation of the ASA is good but the problem is that whenever you require an upgrade, there are multiple pieces of software that you have to upgrade. Extensive planning is required, because if you upgrade one piece of the software it has to be compatible with the others as well. You always need to check the compatibility metrics."
"It will be nice if they had what you traditionally would use a web application scanner for. If the solution could take a deeper look into HTTP and HTTPS traffic, that would be nice."
"It doesn't have a proper GUI to do troubleshooting, so most people have to rely on the command line."
"This is an older product and has reached end-of-life."
"We have encountered problems when implementing new signatures and new versions on our firewall. Sometimes, there is a short outage of our services, and we have not been able to understand what's going on. This is an area for improvement, and it would be good to have a way to monitor and understand why there is an outage."
"The licensing cost is a typical complaint with many clients. The solution is expensive."
"We had some issues with upgrading in the past. They could make the process easier."
"Its networking features could be better."
"The product should get frequent updates allowing us to add new signatures."
"The tool needs to improve integration with more products from other vendors. I would like the product to add threat intelligence features as well."
"There are a lot of bugs in this solution."
"It is recommended that the Palo Alto Networks K2-Series be implemented step by step for the Panorama. Sometimes we can't overwrite the configurations because it fails."
"They should implement the features that the other firewalls have."
Cisco Secure Firewall is ranked 4th in Firewalls with 404 reviews while Palo Alto Networks K2-Series is ranked 27th in Firewalls with 29 reviews. Cisco Secure Firewall is rated 8.2, while Palo Alto Networks K2-Series is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Cisco Secure Firewall writes "Highlights and helps us catch Zero-day vulnerabilities traveling across our network". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Palo Alto Networks K2-Series writes "Easy to implement and manage, and the documentation is good". Cisco Secure Firewall is most compared with Palo Alto Networks WildFire, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX, Sophos XG and Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, whereas Palo Alto Networks K2-Series is most compared with Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls. See our Cisco Secure Firewall vs. Palo Alto Networks K2-Series report.
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