We performed a comparison between Cisco Secure Firewall vs Palo Alto Network Wildfire based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Based on the parameters we compared, with all other factors being more or less equal, Cisco Secure Firewall comes in a bit ahead of Palo Alto simply because of their stronger support.
"FortiGate improved our security. It's one of the best hardware firewalls."
"The solution is very user-friendly."
"It is quite easy to handle."
"Initial setup is easy to configure."
"The SD-WAN feature is the most valuable. This feature evolved from link load balancing. It has helped us in terms of our uptime and privatizing applications whenever we experience an outage. The SD-WAN feature has been a plus for us. Two-factor authentication has allowed us to add more users in terms of remote working. We have two-factor authentication for remote workers to authenticate them before they get on the network."
"Its user interface is good, and it is always working fine."
"We use a southern institution that's audited for IT security and the reporting that automatically comes off the unit makes it much easier to meet compliance standards and makes it easier as far as the amount of time that has to be spent to compile that information. If you get your reporting set up correctly when you initially set it up, you just select the one you want and hit print. The auditing trail on it is the best feature."
"It's an easy solution to set up."
"The dashboard is the most important thing. It provides good visibility and makes management easy. Firepower also provides us with good application visibility and control."
"The most valuable feature is the anti-malware protection. It protects the endpoints on my network."
"I have found the most valuable feature to be the access control and IPsec VPN."
"The feature that I found most valuable is the overall stability of the product."
"You can also put everything into a nice, neat, little package, as far as configuration goes. I was formerly a command-line guy with the ASA, and I was a little nervous about dealing with a GUI interface versus a command line, but after I did my first deployment, I got a lot more comfortable with doing it GUI based."
"Collaboration with other Cisco products such as ISE and others is the most valuable feature."
"It's quite a capable box for UTM."
"VPN and firewall are good features."
"For example, if a security Intel threat talks about an IOC. We can then go to our MSP and say, "Is there a signature for this particular type of malware that just came out?" And if they'll say yes, then we'll say, "Okay. Does it apply to these firewalls? And have we seen any hits on it?" There's absolutely value in it."
"The most valuable feature for us is the VPN."
"The solution is scalable."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten since we never faced any issues."
"The technical support is good."
"Remote access is excellent."
"Their technical support is outstanding and top-notch."
"Intuitive threat prevention and analysis solution, with a machine learning feature. Scalable, stable, and protects against zero-day threats."
"I would like Fortinet to add more automation to FortiGate."
"The UTM filtering needs improvement."
"I think there could be more QoS features"
"There are problems with the custom reporting of the unique traffic. The data is there, but it is too difficult for us to extract."
"Application management can be improved."
"MTBF: Hardware failure is more common when compared to SonicWall or Cisco ASA."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve by having a frequent ask questions(FAQ) area for people to receive quick answers to popular questions. Additionally, it would be beneficial to have an SMS notification feature. For example, if you cannot access your email you could receive an SMS message."
"FortiGate should have a better way of detecting and managing the system memory because otherwise if the memory is too low, a system restart is required."
"I would like to see more configurable feature parity with Cisco ASA, which is the legacy product that Cisco is moving away from. When configuring remote access VPN, not all of the options are there. You have to download another tool, which means that the configuration takes a little bit longer with Cisco Secure Firewall. Though it's getting there, there are still some features lagging behind."
"In terms of what could be improved, I would say the UTM part should be more integrated for one price, because if you buy ASA from Cisco, you need to buy another contract service from Cisco as a filter for the dictionary of attacks. In Fortinet, you buy a firewall and you have it all."
"It should be easier for the IT management or the admin to configure products. For example, the firewall products are not very straightforward for many users. They should be easier to configure and should be more straightforward."
"A major area of improvement would be to have more functionality in public clouds, especially in terms of simplifying it. The high availability doesn't work right now because of the limitations in the cloud."
"HTTPs inspection and higher throughput/spec would be good."
"When we first got it, we were doing individual configuring. Now, there is a way to manage from one location."
"Lacks a good graphical user interface."
"10Gb interfaces should be available on more models."
"Palo Alto Networks WildFire could improve by adding support for manual submission of suspicious files and URLs. Additionally, it would be an advantage to add rule-based analysis. Currently, it uses only static and AI. We need to be able to analyze archive files."
"In terms of what I'd like to see in the next release of Palo Alto Networks WildFire, each release is based on malware that has been identified. The key problem is an average of six months from the time malware is written to the time it's discovered and a signature is created for it. The only advice that I can give is for them to shorten that timeframe. I don't know how they would do it, but if they shorten that, for example, cut it in half, they'll make themselves more famous."
"I would like to see them continue on their developmental roadmap for the product."
"Many years back an update caused an issue with the firewall. However, Palo Alto not only informed us of said issue, they also sent an update that fixed the issue before I even had time to log in to determine if the issue affected our services."
"The initial setup was a little bit complex, mainly due to the GUI console and management challenges."
"High availability features are lacking."
"I think it would be nice for Palo Alto to work without the connection to the cloud. It is 100% powerful when connected to the cloud. But, if you disconnect from the cloud, you only get 40-50% power."
"The threat intelligence that we receiving in the reporting was not as expected. We were expecting more. Additionally, we should be able to whitelist a specific file based on a variety of attributes."
Cisco Secure Firewall is ranked 4th in Firewalls with 404 reviews while Palo Alto Networks WildFire is ranked 3rd in Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) with 58 reviews. Cisco Secure Firewall is rated 8.2, while Palo Alto Networks WildFire 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 WildFire writes "Good technical support and provides automatic analysis that saves us time in filtering email". Cisco Secure Firewall is most compared with Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX, Sophos XG, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls and Juniper SRX Series Firewall, whereas Palo Alto Networks WildFire is most compared with Proofpoint Email Protection, Juniper SRX Series Firewall, Fortinet FortiSandbox, Check Point SandBlast Network and Zscaler Internet Access.
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.