Menlo Secure vs Palo Alto Networks K2-Series comparison

Menlo Security and Palo Alto Networks are both solutions in the Firewalls category. Menlo Security is ranked #52, while Palo Alto Networks is ranked #22 with an average rating of 8.8. Menlo Security holds a 0.1% mindshare in Firewalls, compared to Palo Alto Networks’s 0.2% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Menlo Security users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 96% of Palo Alto Networks users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 16, 2024

Menlo Secure and Palo Alto Networks K2-Series compete in the robust security solutions category. Palo Alto Networks K2-Series appears to have the upper hand due to its advanced features and higher user satisfaction, which justify its price.

Features: Menlo Secure offers reliable threat detection, seamless integration, and lightweight deployment. Palo Alto Networks K2-Series provides advanced security features, comprehensive protection, and an extensive feature set, making it richer in capabilities.

Room for Improvement: Menlo Secure could improve its reporting functionalities, customization options, and scalability. Palo Alto Networks K2-Series needs enhancements in performance speed, better scalability, and improved user interface.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Menlo Secure is known for its straightforward deployment and responsive customer service. Palo Alto Networks K2-Series has a more complex deployment but offers extensive customer support. Menlo Secure leads in deployment ease, while both have strong customer service.

Pricing and ROI: Menlo Secure is appreciated for its favorable pricing and solid ROI, making it cost-efficient. Palo Alto Networks K2-Series has higher setup costs but offers a significant ROI, justified by its advanced features and comprehensive protection, making the investment worthwhile despite higher upfront costs.

To learn more, read our detailed Menlo Secure vs. Palo Alto Networks K2-Series Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Menlo Secure vs. Palo Alto Networks K2-Series

December 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 881,114 peers since 2012

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Fortinet FortiGate

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Firewalls category, the mindshare of Fortinet FortiGate is 18.8%, down from 20.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Menlo Secure is 0.1%, up from 0.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Palo Alto Networks K2-Series is 0.2%, up from 0.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Firewalls Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Fortinet FortiGate	18.8%
Palo Alto Networks K2-Series	0.2%
Menlo Secure	0.1%
Other	80.9%

Firewalls

Featured Reviews

Vasu Gala

Manager, Information Technology Operation/Presales at TechMonarch

A stable solution with an intuitive interface and quick customer service

I have been working with Fortinet FortiGate, WatchGuard, Sophos, and SonicWall. I'm not as comfortable with SonicWall because of their UI and limitations. I prefer Fortinet above all other options. When it comes to configuration, I am confident in my ability to handle various tasks, including creating policies such as firewall rules, web policies, and application policies. Additionally, I can configure VPNs and implement load balancing, among other tasks. Overall, I feel much more comfortable working with Fortinet. Fortinet has made significant improvements by integrating AI with firewalls for threat analysis and prevention. In the past 2-3 years, they have launched FortiSASE and SIEM, and they also provide SOC services. Both Palo Alto and Fortinet FortiGate are excellent. While Fortinet FortiGate comes at higher prices, the functionality and support justify the cost. They promptly resolve firmware issues and inform all support providers about configuration changes.

Read full review

reviewer2701794

Head Of Bluechip Enterprise at a manufacturing company with 51-200 employees

Provides strong protection and multiple use cases but struggles with market recognition

There aren't specific areas for improvement; however, they're not as well known as the big vendors such as Palo Alto. Menlo Secure is a smaller company with limited resources and funding, which makes it challenging to compete with larger companies such as Palo and Cisco. What can be improved is market awareness and adoption of the technology. When selling it in the channel, regardless of how good the technology might be, success depends more on market adoption and awareness.

Read full review

reviewer9216065

Sr. Cloud Security Architect at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

Has provided strong traffic visibility and efficient policy management for advanced network environments

Palo Alto Networks K2-Series could be improved, though I don't think of much. I'm unsure how widespread the adoption for K2-Series alone is. Looking at the base Palo Alto capabilities, they are going in the right direction. K2 specifically about its efficacy with all these 5G protocols, the GPRS tunneling protocol performed without many hiccups during testing. With AI, if there is a Precision AI bundle that you're planning on exploring, then that definitely needs a significant uplift because currently it doesn't work for all the known models. There are many false positives that need to be addressed. While it's still ahead of its competitors, on the AI security side, there is quite a room for improvement.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"Fortinet FortiGate appears to be scalable."

"I think that the UTM features are the most value, as it truly protects my infrastructure."

"The product is scalable."

"It's very good and very stable for businesses. It works very well."

"The benefits Fortinet FortiGate provides include easy connectivity, user-friendliness, scalability, and easy configuration management."

"The pipe filter application is an outstanding feature."

"The initial setup is very straightforward and easy, with wizards helping to configure the device efficiently."

"Secure, user-friendly, stable, and scalable network security solution. Installation is straightforward."

More Fortinet FortiGate pros

"The fact that it is a cloud proxy solution is another feature we like. For example, if you acquire a new company, you can use it to protect that new company without the need to install anything physically on their networks."

"Accessing the internet with a proxy from anywhere is the most valuable feature. It ensures that users are only able to browse legitimate websites. If they happen to go to a legitimate website with a malicious payload, the isolation feature will take care of that."

"This security technology addresses risk and enables people to conduct business without that risk, which is where the ROI is realized."

"It has reduced security events to follow up on. While it is not 100%, there has been probably a 90% or more reduction. We were getting hit left, right, and center constantly from people browsing the Internet and hitting bad websites. It was not just bad websites that were stood up to be malicious, but good sites that were compromised."

"For us, the primary goal is protection on the web, and that's extremely important. We're not using any of the other services at this time. The web part is key to the success of the organization. It gives us the ability to protect. It can isolate. It opens the session in an isolated format so that the code isn't running locally. It is running over in the Menlo environment, not in ours. It is not running on the local computer, whereas if you were to go to a normal website, it would run Java or something else on the local machine and potentially execute the malicious code locally. So, it does give us that level of protection."

"I have found the threat profile feature valuable."

"K2-Series' best features include its scalability, which is the best on the market."

"It is a stable solution."

"The most valuable feature is availability."

"The solution offers effective security features such as HIDS (Host-based Intrusion Detection System) in global products."

"The scalability of the product is quite high."

"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."

"Everything I could possibly want has already been implanted in the new version."

More Palo Alto Networks K2-Series pros

Cons

"Their support's response time can be better. In the past six months, they took quite a long time to respond to the support tickets."

"Fortinet should improve its software, as we are seeing lots of firmware versions generated for each vulnerability issue. It becomes difficult for us to keep updating the firmware frequently due to bugs."

"The solution’s pricing is high."

"We had some issues in the beginning while setting it up, but after doing the firmware update, it is working fine."

"Fortinet FortiGate SWG's costs need improvement."

"Fortinet FortiGate is not a scalable solution, as they give you a number and each box comes with concurrent connections; if you need to expand, you have to change the box."

"There is a need for enhancement with the signature management, improving the datasheet numbers, and scalability issues."

"Fortinet technical support is lacking, as OEM support is slightly better."

More Fortinet FortiGate cons

"The user monitoring could still be improved."

"In the best of all worlds, we wouldn't have to make any exceptions. However, that is a big ask because a lot of that depends on how websites are constructed. For example, there are some very complex, application-oriented sites that we end up making exceptions for. It is really not that big an issue for us to make the exceptions. We feel like we are doing that without a huge impact on our security posture, but we do have to make some exceptions for complex sites, e.g., mostly SaaS-type sites and applications."

"Currently, I don't have a good way to see which of my rules are being used in the access control lists. I have numerous entries, but are they all still needed? A report that would show me my list of who is allowed and whether we're actually using it would be useful because I can then go clean up my list. It would be easier to manage. We would eliminate the vulnerability of unused services."

"We are now transitioning to another solution. The main reason for that is that managing all of the exceptions and troubleshooting all of the issues our users have had connecting to the internet has become too significant in terms of workload, compared to what we hope we will have with another solution."

"Menlo Secure is a smaller company with limited resources and funding, which makes it challenging to compete with larger companies such as Palo and Cisco."

"With AI, if there is a Precision AI bundle that you're planning on exploring, then that definitely needs a significant uplift because currently it doesn't work for all the known models."

"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."

"The solution's commitment time could be reduced as it often takes a lot of time to execute."

"The URL Filtering module needs to have more categories added to it."

"The password function of the solution could be improved. Additionally, some of the processes take too long to complete."

"Threat prevention could use improvement."

"They could improve by providing more features in the solution."

"Sometimes there are interactions with support or the provider that are not ideal."

More Palo Alto Networks K2-Series cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Its licenses cost the same for different subscription plans."

"The cost has increased since the update so I would rate it eight out of ten."

"The solution's price is average."

"I think that the pricing is fair."

"Its pricing is good. It's average or normal as compared to Palo Alto and Check Point firewalls."

"If the customer is looking for SD-WAN, it comes free with FortiGate."

"The solution is very expensive so pricing is rated a one out of ten."

"If the price of the license in Fortinet FortiGate was less expensive it would be better."

More Fortinet FortiGate pricing and cost advice

"The solution is expensive. It's more expensive than the solution I previously used. Compared with the other cloud-based solutions, it's very competitive."

"It is appropriately priced for what they're doing for us. Considering the protection provided, I feel their pricing is spot-on."

"We save a ton of money and time. Previously, the numerous hits that we were receiving from our security tools, prior to implementing them, had to all be chased down, dispositioned, and endpoints had to be reimaged. It was just a ton of effort to do all that. That is where the savings from time and money come in."

"It would be nice if they lowered their prices for small businesses."

"The price of the solution is expensive."

"The price of this solution is too high."

"This product is designed for large companies. The price would not be suitable for a small or medium size company."

"This solution is expensive compared to other, similar products."

"This is an expensive solution, although you will get value for the price."

"If you compare K2-Series' quality with its price, I think it is reasonable."

"We are on an annual license to use Palo Alto Networks K2-Series."

More Palo Alto Networks K2-Series pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Firewalls solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

881,114 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

12%

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

14%

Retailer

12%

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

Performing Arts

23%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	357
Midsize Enterprise	133
Large Enterprise	188

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	14
Midsize Enterprise	8
Large Enterprise	13

Questions from the Community

Which is the better NGFW: Fortinet Fortigate or Cisco Firepower?

When you compare these firewalls you can identify them with different features, advantages, practices and usage a...

See all answers

What is the biggest difference between Sophos XG and FortiGate?

From my experience regarding both the Sophos and FortiGate firewalls, I personally would rather use FortiGate. I know...

See all answers

What are the biggest technical differences between Sophos UTM and Fortinet FortiGate?

As a solution, Sophos UTM offers a lot of functionality, it scales well, and the stability and performance are quite ...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Menlo Security Secure Web Gateway?

There aren't specific areas for improvement; however, they're not as well known as the big vendors such as Palo Alto....

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Menlo Security Secure Web Gateway?

People are mainly using it for zero trust web access. Menlo Secure is built from the ground up to provide zero basic ...

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering Menlo Security Secure Web Gateway?

Secure file sharing and data protection is not exactly what Menlo Secure is designed to do. While it can handle some ...

See all answers

Features comparison between Palo Alto and Fortinet firewalls

In the best tradition of these questions, Feature-wise both are quite similar, but each has things it's better at, it...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Palo Alto Networks K2-Series?

The pricing for the Palo Alto Networks K2-Series solution is affordable and there are no complaints about the licensing.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Palo Alto Networks K2-Series?

Palo Alto Networks K2-Series could be improved, though I don't think of much. I'm unsure how widespread the adoption ...

See all answers

Comparisons

Sophos Firewall vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 20% of the time

Cisco Secure Firewall vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 13% of the time

Netgate pfSense vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 6% of the time

OPNsense vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 3% of the time

Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 3% of the time

More Fortinet FortiGate Competitors

Prisma Access Browser vs Menlo Secure

Compared 32% of the time

Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks vs Menlo Secure

Compared 11% of the time

Cisco Umbrella vs Menlo Secure

Compared 10% of the time

Check Point Harmony SASE (formerly Perimeter 81) vs Menlo Secure

Compared 9% of the time

Cloudflare One vs Menlo Secure

Compared 6% of the time

More Menlo Secure Competitors

Juniper SRX Series Firewall vs Palo Alto Networks K2-Series

Compared 32% of the time

Sophos Firewall vs Palo Alto Networks K2-Series

Compared 25% of the time

Cisco Secure Firewall vs Palo Alto Networks K2-Series

Compared 22% of the time

More Palo Alto Networks K2-Series Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Fortinet FortiGate

January 2026

Download Fortinet FortiGate product report

Buyer's Guide

Menlo Secure

January 2026

Download Menlo Secure product report

Buyer's Guide

Palo Alto Networks K2-Series

January 2026

Download Palo Alto Networks K2-Series product report

Also Known As

Fortinet FortiGate Next-Generation Firewall

Menlo Security Web Security, Menlo Web Security

No data available

Overview

Fortinet FortiGate is a versatile network security tool offering features like VPN, firewall, web filtering, intrusion prevention, and scalability. It is known for its performance and integration with other Fortinet products, making it a preferred choice for robust cybersecurity.

Fortinet FortiGate stands out as a comprehensive cybersecurity solution with strong performance and ease of configuration. It delivers unified threat management, integrating features such as dynamic routing, SD-WAN support, and centralized management. Despite its strengths, improvements in the web interface's stability, pricing structures, and reporting capabilities are needed. Users seek better integration with third-party tools and automation advancements to enhance the experience further. These enhancements, alongside improvements in bandwidth management and the reduction of licensing costs, are points of interest for users looking to capitalize on FortiGate's extensive capabilities.

What are Fortinet FortiGate's key features?

VPN: Ensures secure remote connections.
Firewall: Protects against unauthorized access.
Web Filtering: Blocks malicious sites and content.
Application Control: Manages and controls applications.
Intrusion Prevention: Detects and prevents vulnerabilities.
SSL Inspection: Enhances security by inspecting encrypted traffic.

What benefits should be considered when evaluating Fortinet FortiGate?

Affordability: Offers cost-effective security solutions.
Reliability: Known for consistent and stable performance.
Integration: Seamlessly integrates with other Fortinet products.
Comprehensive Protection: Provides broad threat protection capabilities.

Fortinet FortiGate is widely implemented across industries as a primary firewall system for securing internet gateways and safeguarding data centers. It supports businesses in achieving SD-WAN integration and enhances cybersecurity by providing essential features like antivirus, web filtering, and application control. Enterprises utilize FortiGate for securing remote connections and ensuring compliance with security standards, making it adaptable for different network sizes and industries.

Fortinet

Menlo Security Secure Application Access

Menlo Security Secure Application Access makes zero trust access easy, giving users secure connectivity to private applications, including web and legacy applications. At the core of Secure Application Access is the Menlo Secure Cloud Browser, which fetches, secures and delivers the content for users.

In addition to providing simple-to-deploy, clientless ZTA, Secure Application Access and the Menlo Secure Cloud Browser protect applications from attacks such as session hijacking, cookie manipulation, and other tactics that employ protocol manipulation.

Secure Application Access protects applications from Internet threats and provides granular controls for added protection of the application and associated data. These security controls include Read-only/Read-write, Upload/download, Copy/paste, AV scanning, Sandboxing, and Data Loss Prevention.

Last Mile Data Protection

Menlo Last-Mile Data Protection identifies and prevents sensitive data from leaving your company by meticulously inspecting all file uploads and user input across browsing sessions. Leveraging the Secure Cloud Browser, users are protected from the internet and you can protect your organization from data loss with comprehensive traffic monitoring and controls. This approach addresses the growing concerns surrounding data leakage in the age of AI tools like ChatGPT.

By identifying sensitive data through file types, regular expressions, or predefined libraries, Menlo Last-Mile Data Protection empowers security teams to regulate data input into AI platforms and prevent unauthorized uploads. This capability provides crucial protection for intellectual property, PII, and other confidential information.

The solution leverages the Menlo Cloud Security Platform's visibility and control over traffic to reliably detect and prevent data leaks originating from both browser submission forms and non-browser traffic. With the ability to inspect encrypted web traffic, Menlo Last-Mile Data Protection enforces DLP policies consistently across all users and devices, ensuring comprehensive data protection.

Menlo Security

Designed to handle growing throughput needs due to increasing amounts of application-, user-, and device-generated data, the K2-Series offers amazing performance and threat prevention capabilities to stop advanced cyberattacks and secure mobile network infrastructure, subscribers, and services.

Palo Alto Networks

Sample Customers

Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, IBM, Cisco, Dell, HP, Oracle, Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, Vodafone, Orange, BT Group, Telstra, Deutsche Telekom, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, CenturyLink, NTT Communications, Tata Communications, SoftBank, China Mobile, Singtel, Telus, Rogers Communications, Bell Canada, Telkom Indonesia, Telkom South Africa, Telmex, Telia Company, Telkom Kenya

Information Not Available

State of North Dakota, SEGA, Alameda County Office of Education, Temple University, VERGE, CAME

Buyer's Guide

Menlo Secure vs. Palo Alto Networks K2-Series

December 2025

Free Report: Menlo Secure vs. Palo Alto Networks K2-Series

Find out what your peers are saying about Menlo Secure vs. Palo Alto Networks K2-Series and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

881,114 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our Menlo Secure vs. Palo Alto Networks K2-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.