Menlo Secure vs Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls comparison

Menlo Security and Palo Alto Networks are both solutions in the Firewalls category. Menlo Security is ranked #54, while Palo Alto Networks is ranked #6 with an average rating of 8.9. Menlo Security holds a 0.1% mindshare in Firewalls, compared to Palo Alto Networks’s 4.2% 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

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 13, 2025

Menlo Secure and Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls are both major players in the cybersecurity domain. Menlo is noted for its straightforward deployment and cost-effectiveness, whereas Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls are recognized for their extensive protection capabilities.

Features: Menlo Secure offers browser isolation technology, simple integration, and proactive threat prevention. Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls provide advanced threat prevention, precise data filtering, and vast security capabilities.

Room for Improvement: Menlo could benefit from enhanced logging features and improved isolation handling for certain sites. Palo Alto might improve by simplifying administration for complex environments and shortening the time to perfect feature settings.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Menlo Secure is praised for quick, seamless deployment. Palo Alto Networks requires more intricate setup but is bolstered by excellent customer service support.

Pricing and ROI: Menlo Secure's pricing offers lower upfront costs and rapid ROI. Conversely, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, while higher in initial setup cost, provide substantial long-term ROI through their comprehensive security features.

To learn more, read our detailed Menlo Secure vs. Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Menlo Secure vs. Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls

September 2025

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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 October 2025, in the Firewalls category, the mindshare of Fortinet FortiGate is 20.4%, up from 19.1% 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 NG Firewalls is 4.2%, up from 3.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Firewalls Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Fortinet FortiGate	20.4%
Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls	4.2%
Menlo Secure	0.1%
Other	75.3%

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.

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Olivier DALOY

Group Information Systems Security Director - CISO at Faurecia

Secures users wherever they are and enable us to inspect SSL traffic, but we encountered too many issues

The solution should have no impact but it does have a bit of impact on end-users. For example, we encountered some issues in the downloads that took longer than they did without using Menlo. That is clearly not transparent for users. We expected not to have any latency when downloading anything from the internet with Menlo compared to without Menlo. 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. In other words, we hope to get the same level of protection, while reducing the number of visible bugs, issues, latencies, impacts on performance, et cetera, that we have today with Menlo. We already solved most of them, but we still have too many such instances of issues with Menlo, even though it is protecting us for sure. The weak point of the solution is that it has consumed far too much of my team's time, taking them away from operations and projects and design. It took far too much time to implement it and get rid of all of the live issues that we encountered when our users started using the solution. The good point is that I'm sure it is protecting us and it's probably protecting us more than any other solution, which is something I appreciate a lot as a CISO. But on the other hand, the number of issues reported by the users, and the amount of time that has been necessary for either my team or the infrastructure team to spend diagnosing, troubleshooting, and fixing the issues that we had with the solution was too much. And that doesn't include the need to still use our previous solution, Blue Coat, that we have kept active so that whatever is not compatible or doesn't work with Menlo, can be handled by that other solution. It is far too demanding in terms of effort and workload and even cost, at the end of the day. That is why we decided to transition to another solution. If we had known in the beginning that we would not be able to get rid of Blue Coat, we probably would not have chosen Menlo because we were planning to replace Blue Coat with something that was at least able to do the same and more. We discovered that it was able to do more but it was not able to replace it, which is an issue. It is not only a matter of cost but is also a matter of not being able to reduce the number of partners that you have to deal with. In addition, they could enhance the ability to troubleshoot. Whenever a connection going through Menlo fails for any reason, being able to troubleshoot what the configuration of Menlo should be to allow it through would help, as would knowing what level of additional risk we would be taking with that configuration.

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AmjadKhan1

Head of data centers at a non-profit with 10,001+ employees

Provides inline protection with a unified view and anti-spyware capabilities

I would rate Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls ten out of ten because it is the best. Our disaster recovery site utilizes Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls. We are also in the process of upgrading the firewalls at our 365 sites in Pakistan to Palo Alto Networks firewalls. While budget firewalls may advertise comparable features, they often fall short of effectively detecting viruses, threats, and ransomware. In contrast, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, combined with Cortex XDR, provide comprehensive threat intelligence and detection capabilities, ensuring superior security coverage. I recommend conducting a proof of concept before selecting a firewall. This will allow you to evaluate different options and determine which best suits your needs. While Palo Alto offers robust firewall solutions, it's essential to compare them with other vendors to ensure you make an informed decision.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The best features of Fortinet FortiGate include its easy configuration and user interface."

"My company never had any complaints about the tool in terms of performance or stability."

"Fortinet FortiGate is a scalable solution."

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

"It blocks the vulnerabilities that can negatively impact us."

"It is a very user-friendly solution. Moreover, Foritgate offers good performance."

"FortiGate Next Generation Firewall has a simple configuration."

"The application control features, such as Facebook blocking and Spotify blocking, are the most valuable."

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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"Flexible and integrates well with apps and other security tools."

"The unified platform provided is very important to us as it allows us to manage all traffic and ensure security without using separate tools. It has AI and ML capabilities, which work well for real-time attack prevention."

"The application IDs, application controls, URL filtering, visibility, monitoring, and reporting are the most valuable features."

"URL filtering and WildFire features are most valuable. It is very user-friendly. It is a very solid product, and it definitely works."

"The most valuable features are web filtering and application filtering."

"The most valuable features are the power of the threat prevention and the WildFire service. Its strength comes from the huge number of sensors all over the world. The firewalls have a rich library of signatures."

"Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls saves us time."

"Overall, I rate Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls ten out of ten because they are unmatched in their function."

More Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls pros

Cons

"The main area needing improvement is the user-friendliness of FortiGate's integration with other Fortinet tools like FortiAuthenticator and VPN services."

"One drawback of Fortinet FortiGate is that they provide two types of models: one with a hard disk and another without. The model without a hard disk has very low ROM where you can store very few logs, after which you need to upload it to the cloud or purchase a firewall with SSD."

"They can probably improve the reporting feature. Reporting and report alerting are the main key features of this solution. They can always find ways to improve these."

"Due to its higher cost, Fortinet FortiGate can lead to increased operational expenses."

"In the next release, maybe the documentation on how to use this solution could be improved."

"I could not configure sFlow from the FortiGate graphical user interface. I realized that the sFlow configuration is available only from the CLI, and discovered that sFlow is not supported on virtual interfaces, such as VDOM links, IPsec, or GRE."

"In an incident, after a restart, Fortinet FortiGate did not connect to FortiGuard servers. Due to that reason, on the customer end, all websites got blocked. I don't know why this happened. The firewall of a bank in Sri Lanka rebooted yesterday, and after that, FortiGuard servers did not connect properly, blocking all customer environment websites."

"Fortinet FortiGate SWG's SSL offloading features need improvement."

More Fortinet FortiGate cons

"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."

"The user monitoring could still be improved."

"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."

"The scalability of the firewalls could be improved."

"From a documentation standpoint, there is room for improvement. Even Palo Alto says that their documentation is terrible."

"I would like to see more in terms of reporting tools and the threat analysis capabilities."

"The machine learning feature, with its continuous potential for improvement, directly enhances the security of Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls."

"The VPN has room for improvement."

"The solution's VPN, called GlobalProtect, could be improved as I've had a few issues with that."

"The VPN connectors should be better. We had some challenges in terms of the VPN with Palo Alto Networks NG Firewall, and that's one of the main reasons why we moved to Sophos. Its load handling can also be improved. There were challenges when traffic was high. During peak business hours, it did not function very well. There was a lot of slowness, and the users used to complain, especially when they were connecting from outside. We even reported this to the support team. Their support should also be improved. Technical support was a bit of a concern while using this solution. We didn't get very good support from the Palo Alto team."

"Scalability is not really the case. Since the NextGen Firewalls are hardware-based, if I want to scale up, I need new hardware. It is not really scalable."

More Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is around $50,000 per month."

"It is not the cheapest one, but its price is very competitive."

"I rate FortiGate's pricing a five out of ten."

"It is very cost-effective. You get features similar to other firewalls, such as Palo Alto, but at a lower price."

"There is only a standard license cost to use the solution."

"The price depends on the size of the company. From the beginning, you just want to know the internet bandwidths, speed, and the number of users to be able to offer the right product and model. They have a lot of products in FortiGate according to the size of the company, like 200D and 300D."

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

"I rate the product's pricing a seven out of ten. Its one-year license cost is competitive with three and five-year licenses offered by other products."

More Fortinet FortiGate pricing and cost advice

"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."

"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."

"Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls' price is expensive."

"It has a yearly subscription."

"If someone doesn't have a security platform in their network, then the following licenses will be required: antivirus, anti-spyware, vulnerability, and Wildfire analysis. There are also licenses for GlobalProtect and support."

"It is very expensive. You pay for a year."

"We haven't had a problem with pricing or licensing because we consolidated other software to make Palo Alto more affordable."

"Its price can be better. Licensing is on a yearly basis."

"Compared to other solutions, it's very expensive to set up and maintain."

"Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls are expensive."

More Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

16%

Manufacturing Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Retailer

Computer Software Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	350
Midsize Enterprise	130
Large Enterprise	187

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	74
Midsize Enterprise	56
Large Enterprise	84

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...

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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...

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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 ...

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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....

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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 ...

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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 ...

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What is a better choice, Azure Firewall or Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls?

Azure Firewall Vs. Palo Alto Network NG Firewalls Both solutions provide stellar stability and security. Azure Firew...

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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...

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Which is better - Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls or Sophos XG?

Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls have both great features and performance. I like that Palo Alto has regular threat si...

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Comparisons

Sophos XG vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 17% of the time

Cisco Secure Firewall vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 11% of the time

Netgate pfSense vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 9% of the time

OPNsense vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 4% of the time

Check Point Quantum Force (NGFW) vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 2% of the time

More Fortinet FortiGate Competitors

Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks vs Menlo Secure

Compared 17% of the time

Prisma Access Browser vs Menlo Secure

Compared 17% of the time

Cisco Umbrella vs Menlo Secure

Compared 17% of the time

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

Compared 12% of the time

Silo by Authentic8 vs Menlo Secure

Compared 6% of the time

More Menlo Secure Competitors

Cisco Secure Firewall vs Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls

Compared 14% of the time

Cisco Meraki MX vs Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls

Compared 11% of the time

Azure Firewall vs Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls

Compared 10% of the time

Sophos XG vs Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls

Compared 9% of the time

Check Point Quantum Force (NGFW) vs Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls

Compared 7% of the time

More Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Fortinet FortiGate

October 2025

Download Fortinet FortiGate product report

Buyer's Guide

Menlo Secure

September 2025

Download Menlo Secure product report

Buyer's Guide

Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls

September 2025

Download Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls product report

Also Known As

No data available

Menlo Security Web Security, Menlo Web Security

Palo Alto NGFW, Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewall

Overview

Fortinet FortiGate excels in providing integrated VPN, firewalling, and Unified Threat Management (UTM) with centralized management and high availability. It supports remote access and comprehensive threat protection, making it a preferred choice for securing networks.

Fortinet FortiGate offers a robust security platform with features such as strong intrusion prevention, application control, and web filtering. Its integration with Active Directory and SD-WAN functionality provides scalable solutions for large networks. Users appreciate its ease of use through centralized management interfaces, ensuring robust security with flexible configurations. However, FortiGate could enhance its graphical interface and technical support responsiveness, address firmware bugs and costly licensing, improve logging, integrate better with third-party tools, and strengthen scalability and memory for log storage. Complexity in configuration and the need for intuitive features are noted challenges, and there's a demand for advanced security, zero-trust capabilities, and AI integration.

What are the key features of Fortinet FortiGate?

VPN: Secure remote access and connectivity.
Firewalling: Protects networks from unauthorized access and attacks.
UTM: Offers a comprehensive approach to threat management.
SD-WAN: Optimizes traffic routing for efficient network performance.
Web Filtering: Controls and monitors web access and ensures Internet security.

What benefits or ROI should be considered?

Centralized Management: Simplifies administration and monitoring.
High Availability: Ensures consistent security and network availability.
Scalability: Adapts to the needs of growing networks.
Comprehensive Threat Protection: Provides robust security measures.
Ease of Use: Minimizes the complexity of security management.

Fortinet FortiGate is widely implemented across industries like education, finance, and government. Companies use it for firewall protection, VPN, and SD-WAN capabilities, ensuring secure perimeter and data center security. It facilitates remote access management and traffic routing optimization, offering reliable security and connectivity solutions.

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

Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls deliver advanced threat protection with machine learning, enhancing security through real-time attack prevention. Known for application visibility and a user-friendly interface, they offer robust network protection and flexibility in rule creation.

Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls are designed to secure environments with features like GlobalProtect VPN, WildFire malware detection, and unified platform integration. Their strong firewall capabilities and high-performance throughput make them suitable for perimeter and data center protection, VPN configurations, application control, and network segmentation. Users consistently highlight the ease of managing network security policies and integrating third-party tools, ensuring a comprehensive protection strategy. While enhancements in support, training resources, and configuration simplicity are needed, these firewalls are integral for securing both on-prem and cloud environments, aligning with platforms like Azure and AWS.

What are the key features of Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls?

Application Visibility: Provides insight into network traffic for better control.
Threat Prevention: Uses machine learning for real-time attack prevention.
GlobalProtect VPN: Secures remote access efficiently.
WildFire Malware Detection: Detects and prevents advanced threats.
Unified Platform Integration: Enhances network security through seamless integration with other tools.

What benefits should be evaluated when considering Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls?

Flexibility in Rule Creation: Allows customized security policies to meet specific needs.
High-Performance Throughput: Ensures efficient network operations under high load.
Comprehensive Policy Management: Simplifies overseeing and adjusting security policies.
Robust Endpoint Security: Protects endpoints against sophisticated threats.
Seamless Integration: Works well with third-party tools for a comprehensive solution.

Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls are commonly implemented across industries for securing LAN environments, URL filtering, and ensuring Zero Trust security. They secure both on-premises and cloud infrastructures, often becoming integral parts of security frameworks within enterprises. Leveraging these firewalls in conjunction with Azure or AWS enhances the overall network protection strategies employed by organizations.

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

SkiStar AB, Ada County, Global IT Services PSF, Southern Cross Hospitals, Verge Health, University of Portsmouth, Austrian Airlines, The Heinz Endowments

Buyer's Guide

Menlo Secure vs. Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls

September 2025

Free Report: Menlo Secure vs. Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls

Find out what your peers are saying about Menlo Secure vs. Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.

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