We performed a comparison between Cisco Secure Firewall and Palo Alto Networks PA-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."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."
"The SD-WAN is the most valuable feature."
"Valuable features include the Web Application Firewall, and it even has DLP (data leak prevention)."
"FortiGate improved our security. It's one of the best hardware firewalls."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are the ease of use and there are several operating systems that can include the hardware capacities. In the newer releases, the resources were more useful because they were included in the operating system."
"FortiGate firewalls are easy to manage through a user-friendly web interface. They also have advanced features like DDoS and DLP. However, I wouldn't recommend enabling all of these features on one device because it can cause performance issues."
"It is a one box solution, which covers most of the edge device’s requirements."
"Some of the valuable features are the firewall, IPS, web filter, and gateway capabilities. Additionally, it is easy to use and flexible."
"Valuable features include DMZ segmentation, and IDS and IPS."
"I like the ASDM for the firewall because it is visual. With the command line, it is harder to visualize what is going on. A picture is worth a thousand words."
"I am used to the ASA syntax, therefore it is quite easy to make up new rules. I have found that DNS doctoring rules are useful."
"Network segmentation is the most valuable feature."
"The most valuable features of Cisco firewalls are the IPS and IDS items. We find them very helpful. Those are the biggest things because we have some odd, custom-made products in our environment. What we've found through their IPS and IDS is that their vulnerability engines have caught things that are near-Zero-day items, inside of our network."
"The most valuable feature is the access control list (ACL)."
"The most stable firewall I’ve ever worked with. Once you get the ASA set up properly, it can run for a whole year without any major issues, apart from the normal daily administration."
"With Cisco, there are a lot of features such as the network map. Cisco builds the whole network map of the machines you have behind your firewall and gives you insight into the vulnerabilities and attributes that the host has. Checkpoint and Fortinet don't have that functionality directly on the firewall."
"It is stable when you set up something and put it into production. Once it works, you don't have other tasks or actions to perform."
"Comprehensive logging is essential for monitoring and analysis purposes. For remote users, the firewall can be configured as a VPN concentrator, with VPN policies defined within the firewall settings."
"It is a stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"Palo Alto blocks the new threats better than other tools."
"It offers a seamless transition from one option to another, making it exceptionally versatile and user-friendly in an enterprise setting."
"The product's initial setup process was simple."
"The most effective features for threat prevention in the PA-Series are its integration with Cortex and the use of machine learning AI for advanced threat detection."
"A valuable feature that we can consider is the deployment time, which is significantly reduced, almost 90% faster compared to other solutions. This leads to quicker deployment and less downtime."
"The pricing could be a bit better, especially when you consider how they have the most basic offering priced."
"Some of the web policy reports could be improved."
"We would like to have the ability to disable some of the security functionalities."
"Some of the software stability could improve."
"One of the features that I would like to have is to do with endpoint production, it should be integrated. For example, the firewall gets notified of any kind of forensic event that needs to be done, such as if there is a ransomware attack and how it originated, all those records have to be available from the firewall, which is not."
"Fortinet FortiGate should improve the VPN tokens."
"Currently, without the additional reporting module, we only have access to basic reporting."
"There were quite a few problems with the stability of the system."
"The service could use a little more web filtering. If I compare it to Cyberoam, Cyberoam has more the web filtering, so if you want to block a website, it's easier in other solutions than in Cisco."
"I would like to see the inclusion of a protocol that can be used to protect databases."
"I'm working on a slightly older version, but what it needs is a better alert management. It's pretty standard, but there's no real advanced features involved around it."
"Other products are becoming easier to access and configure. They are providing UI interfaces to configure, take backup, synchronize redundant machines, and so on. It is very easy to take backup and upgrade the images in those products. Cisco ASA should have such features. If one redundant machine is getting upgraded, the technology and support should be there to upgrade other redundant machines. In a single window, we should be able to do more in terms of backups, restores, and upgrades."
"When we talk about data centers, we are talking about 100 gig capacity or 400 gig capacity. When it comes to active-active solution clustering and resilience and performance, Cisco should look into these a little bit more."
"It seems very clunky and slow. I would like to be able to tune it to be a more efficient product."
"The artificial intelligence and machine learning (behavioral based threat detection), which I can this will be coming out in another year, these are what we need now."
"One feature I would like to see, that Firepower doesn't have, is email security. Perhaps in the future, Cisco will integrate Cisco Umbrella with Firepower. I don't see why we should have to pay for two separate products when both could be integrated in one box."
"Palo Alto Networks PA-Series is complicated to configure compared to one of its competitors."
"Palo Alto Networks PA-Series is expensive. We would like to see additional threat hunting features."
"The solution's licensing price could be improved."
"The pricing of the solution needs improvement."
"The product must provide multiple threat detection features."
"There are constant updates for the operating system. It is a nice thing also, but it has its own disadvantages. Continuous updates are there. The users face issues like, how often do I need to update that? Within a period of five months, I'm updating it two or three times. It gives them a feeling that they are not confident about their product and have to update it so frequently."
"Compared to other vendors, the solution's community should be strong enough to solve the problems engineers face."
"I have found that the tool works well for me, but there are areas where security testing and protection could be improved, especially in virtual or cloud environments. However, in this project, once we deployed it, we haven't encountered any issues. The cost is currently manageable, but as we migrate fully into the cloud, additional features like capacity upgrading and improvements to hardware resources will be necessary, especially since our equipment consists of older generation switches and routers. So, I'm looking for additional capabilities in these areas."
Cisco Secure Firewall is ranked 4th in Firewalls with 404 reviews while Palo Alto Networks PA-Series is ranked 16th in Firewalls with 28 reviews. Cisco Secure Firewall is rated 8.2, while Palo Alto Networks PA-Series is rated 8.6. 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 PA-Series writes "Offers trained customer support, stability and ease of use ". 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 PA-Series is most compared with OPNsense, SonicWall NSa, Juniper SRX Series Firewall, Sophos XG and Netgate pfSense. See our Cisco Secure Firewall vs. Palo Alto Networks PA-Series report.
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