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.
"Feature-wise, we mostly use IPS because it is a security requirement to protect against attacks from outside and inside. This is where IPS helps us out a bunch."
"The deep packet inspection is useful, but the most useful feature is application awareness. You can filter on the app rather than on a static TCP port."
"It brings us the ability to work from anywhere and has allowed us to work remotely without having to incur a lot of other costs. If we didn't have this type of solution, since we have so many on-prem services that are required, we would have likely lost money and been unable to deliver. We have a video services team who helped build the content for our sporting events. When you are watching a Leaf game and those swipes come by as well as the clips and things, those are all generated in-house. Without the ability to access our on-premise resources, we would have been dead in the water. So, the return on that is pretty impressive."
"I like that it is easy to change the settings."
"I think that the firewall feature is the most valuable to me as it is one of the oldest features for this solution. We also appreciate how stable the VPN is."
"There are some hiccups here and there, but compared to the technical support from other vendors, I have had the best experience with Cisco's technical support. I would rate them at nine out of ten."
"Collaboration with other Cisco products such as ISE and others is the most valuable feature."
"Cisco Secure Firewall is a scalable 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."
"The scalability of the product is quite high."
"As long as the solution is kept updated, it's pretty stable."
"The most valuable feature of Palo Alto Networks K2-Series is the configuration, it is very clear."
"I have found the threat profile feature valuable."
"The most valuable feature of Palo Alto Networks K2-Series is its management abilities. Additionally, the updates are very good."
"K2-Series' best features include its scalability, which is the best on the market."
"The most valuable features are the intuitive user interface, ease of use, and reporting."
"Its user interface is good, but it could be better. Currently, you have to know what to do before you can manage a device. If you don't know what to do, you can mess things up. There are some devices that are easier, such as FortiGate. The user interface of FortiGate is more intuitive. It is very easy to log in and configure things."
"Sometimes my customers say that Cisco Firewalls are a bit more difficult compared to Fortigate or Palo Alto. There is complexity in the configuration and the GUI could be improved."
"While this applies to all vendors, pricing can be always lower. In my opinion, Cisco is the most expensive. The pricing can be reduced."
"One of the few things that are brought up is that for the overall management, it would be great to have a cloud instance of that. And not only just a cloud instance, but one of the areas that we've looked at is using an HA type of cloud. To have the ability to have a device file within a cloud. If we had an issue with one, the other one would pick up automatically."
"A feature that would allow me to load balance among multiple ISPs, especially since we have deployed it as a perimeter firewall, would be a great addition."
"There are some limitations with SSL. Regarding the security assessment for the ISO 27000 standard, there are certain features that Cisco needs to scale up. Not all products support it, so you need to be slightly careful, especially on the site track."
"I would like it if there was a centralized way to manage policies, then sticking with the network functions on the actual devices. That is probably the thing that frustrates me the most. I want a way that you can manage multiple policies at several different locations, all at one site. You then don't have to worry about the connectivity piece, in case you are troubleshooting because connectivity is down."
"We use the FTD management platform for the boxes. The GUI that manages multiple Firepower boxes could be improved so that the user experience is better."
"They could improve by providing more features in the solution."
"It would be really helpful to have dashboards that provide information on IOC blockings such as where and how many. It will also be good to know how many hashing files have been reported. It would also be nice to have easy access to this information. Otherwise, it's a painful, manual task."
"We had some issues with upgrading in the past. They could make the process easier."
"The licensing cost is a typical complaint with many clients. The solution is expensive."
"The scalability of Palo Alto Networks K2-Series is good. It is good for larger environments over smaller ones."
"The product should get frequent updates allowing us to add new signatures."
"Palo Alto releases a lot of bug fixes for their firewalls, which means it's necessary to do frequent upgrades. They should work on decreasing their bugs so that upgrades aren't needed so often."
"Palo Alto has many other products. It would be nice for these products to be centralized under one tool"
Cisco Secure Firewall is ranked 2nd in Firewalls with 111 reviews while Palo Alto Networks K2-Series is ranked 17th in Firewalls with 13 reviews. Cisco Secure Firewall is rated 8.2, while Palo Alto Networks K2-Series is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Cisco Secure Firewall writes "The ability to implement dynamic policies for dynamic environments is important, given the fluidity in the world of security". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Palo Alto Networks K2-Series writes "Stable with great deep inspection functionality and good scalability". Cisco Secure Firewall is most compared with Fortinet FortiGate, Meraki MX, Palo Alto Networks WildFire, pfSense and Juniper SRX Series Firewall, whereas Palo Alto Networks K2-Series is most compared with Juniper SRX Series Firewall. See our Cisco Secure Firewall vs. Palo Alto Networks K2-Series report.
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