Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls vs Palo Alto Networks VM-Series comparison

Fortinet FortiGate is an innovative line of firewalls that aim to protect organizations from all types of web-based network threats. They come in a wide variety of product types. Fortinet FortiGate’s solutions are available in a large range of sizes and form factors and are key components of the Fortinet Security Fabric, which enables immediate, intelligent defense against known and new threats throughout the entire network.

Fortinet FortiGate provides users with next-generation firewall solutions that provide proven protection with unmatched performance across the network, from internal segments to data centers to cloud environments. You can protect every part of your network without exception. Additionally, your protections can be managed from a single central location. This ensures that the task of protecting your network is infinitely easier to accomplish.

Benefits of Fortinet FortiGate

Some of the benefits of using Fortinet FortiGate include:

• The ability to manage your firewalls from a centralized automated control console. Fortinet FortiGate’s FortiManager enables administrators to exercise control of their firewalls in a streamlined manner. Administrators have full visibility and control over their system from a single location. It utilizes automation that collects information in real time, which greatly simplifies and reduces the cost of running various types of workflows. Administrators can free up resources by automating the most basic tasks.
• The ability to produce uniform, appropriate, and coordinated responses to threats across networks. Fortinet FortiGate’s FortiGuard feature generates system protections in near real time. This allows administrators to address threats to the system with custom-made solutions that can be uniformly enforced.
• The ability to scale up your security to fit your changing security needs. Fortinet FortiGate’s design allows users to accelerate the transfer of data between users and escalate the number of users that are covered without compromising security of performance. This means that users can grow their networks and continue to collaborate without worrying about the system slowing down or coming under attack.

Reviews from Real Users

Fortinet FortiGate’s firewall solutions are cutting edge. They stand out from competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are the robustness and power of their firewalls. Fortinet FortiGate’s firewall provides users with many valuable features that allow them to maximize what they can do with the solution. These firewalls enable users to use a single piece of software to accomplish tasks that often require the use of multiple pieces of software.

PeerSpot user Eric S., a Solutions Engineer and Consultant at a tech-services company, notes the robustness of this solution when he writes, "One of the nice things about FortiGate is that it can be deployed on the cloud or on-premises. You can actually do both. That's the biggest reason why I stick with this solution as opposed to something like Cisco Meraki. Another nice thing is that I can log directly into a FortiGate or get to it through their FortiCloud access products. They're pretty reliable and consistent. One of the reasons why I started using the product was their single pane of management. I can deploy their line of firewalls in conjunction with their switching and access points, and I can manage the entire network from one interface.”

PeerSpot user Jim M., a network admin at Penobscot Valley Hospital, notes the power of Fortinet FortiGate’s security software when he writes, "It does a lot for you for intrusion protection and as an antivirus. The threat management bundle is worth the money. You don't need another company to monitor your web traffic for you. You can do everything yourself on the firewall. You restrict your own black list for people on the firewall.”

Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls are next-generation firewalls used for security to protect networks from threats and attacks. It is used for perimeter security, data center protection, and managing secure access to environments. Users highlight the NGFW's effectiveness in providing comprehensive security without impacting network performance. Users appreciate its ease of use, particularly in setup and ongoing management, making it a favored choice for businesses looking to secure their cloud environments.

The firewall provides application control, malware protection, scalability, stability, user-friendly interface, threat hunt capabilities, application visibility and awareness, URL filtering, traffic monitoring, machine learning for attack prevention, a unified platform for all security capabilities, DNS security, VPN, and embedded machine learning. Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is easy to manage, reliable, and balances security and network performance well. It also provides complete visibility through logs and alerting.

Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls Features

Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

• Secure Application Enablement (App-ID, User-ID, Content-ID)
• Malware Detection and Prevention (threat prevention service, buffer overflows and port scans, anti-malware capabilities, command-and-control protection, and WildFire)
• DNS Security (URL filtering, predict and block malicious domains, signature-based protection, extensible cloud-based architecture)
• Panorama Security Management (including graphical views and analytics, manage rules and dynamic updates, customizable application command center (ACC), log collection mode, physical or virtual appliance)
• Threat Intelligence (high-fidelity threat intelligence, priority alerts, automatic extraction and sharing of prevention indicators, native integration with Palo Alto Networks products)

Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls Benefits

There are several benefits to implementing Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

• Dedicated management interface for managing and initial configuration of the device
• Regular threat signatures and updates
• Import addresses and URL objects from the external server
• Configure and manage with REST API integration
• Great throughput and connection speed is fair even in high traffic load
• Deep visibility into the network activity through Application and Command Control
• Easy to manage and very user friendly

Reviews from Real Users

Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls users.

A Solutions Architect at a communications service provider says, “The product stability and level of security are second to none in the industry. We value the security of our client's infrastructure so these features are valuable to us. An example of a very valuable feature behind Palo Alto is the application-aware identifiers that help the firewall know what its users are trying to do. It can block specific activities instead of just blocking categories. For example, you can block an application, or all unknown applications.”

PeerSpot user Gerry H., CyberSecurity Network Engineer at a university, mentions that the solution has a “Nice user interface, good support, is stable, and has extensive logging capabilities.” He also adds, “Wildfire has been a very good feature. This solution provides a unified platform that natively integrates all security capabilities, which is 100% important to us. This is a great feature.”

Eric S., Network Analyst at a recreational facilities/services company, states, "With its single pane of glass, it makes monitoring and troubleshooting a bit more homogeneous. We are not looking at multiple platforms and monitoring management tools. It is more efficient from that perspective. It is more of a common monitoring and control system for multiple aspects of what used to be different systems. It provides efficiency and time savings."

Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is a highly effective advanced threat protection (ATP) solution and firewall that can be hosted on cloud computing technologies designed by many different companies. It decreases the amount of time that it will take administrators to respond to threats. Users that deploy VM-series have 70% less downtime than those who use similar firewalls. Neither protection nor efficiency are concerns when this next-generation firewall is in play.

VM-Series is being deployed to protect both public and private cloud environments. This level of flexibility empowers organizations to run the environment or environments that best meet their needs without worrying that they are going to be exposed to digital threats due to the environment that they choose.

In the public cloud, users of Palo Alto Networks VM-Series can automate their deployment and dynamically scale up their environment while experiencing a consistent level of protection. This dynamic scalability means that they also integrate their security into their DevOps workflows so that their security can keep up with their activities and requirements. Users of private cloud environments can set up security policies that can be automated to be provisioned as the need arises. Organizations don’t need to slow down when they deploy VM-Series because it makes the task of defending them so simple that they can set their defenses and forget that they are even there.

Users gain a deep level of visibility when they deploy Palo Alto Networks VM-Series. App-ID technology enables organizations to see their network traffic on the application level and spot threats that might be trying to sneak in through vulnerable points in their defenses. It also leverages Palo Alto Networks WildFire and advanced threat protection to block the threats before they can escalate.

Palo Alto Networks VM-Series Features:

• Central management system - It has a central management system that enables users to set up and control their security operations from one location. Users don’t need to search for the tools that they need. This system allows for security consistency and complete control without requiring businesses to spend large periods of time to do so.
• Blacklisting and whitelisting - Organizations can utilize blacklisting and whitelisting tools to ensure that their network traffic only contains the type of traffic that they want to be present. These tools make it possible for them to set specific web traffic sources as being either undesirable and thus blocked from entering their network or desirable and thus allowed to enter. 
• Automation feature - The product’s automation feature can automate many critical functions that users would otherwise have to handle manually. Security policy updates are an example of a function that users can automate.

Reviews from Real Users:

Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is a solution that stands out when compared to other similar solutions. Two major advantages that it offers are its ability to protect users without degrading the efficiency with which their networks perform and its centralized management system. 

Jason H., the director of information technology at Tavoca Inc, writes, “There is no noticeable trade-off between security and network performance. In fact, so far, we've not seen any negative network performance with it. We're very impressed in that regard.”

An information technology manager at a tech services company says, “We use Palo Alto’s Panorama centralized management system. We have an on-prem firewall where Panorama is very good for pulling logs in from the cloud so we can see what is going on. It gives us visibility into that as well as shows us what attacks are coming in. Palo Alto’s Panorama centralized management system simplifies our security posture based on our requirements. Instead of manually pulling logs, then generating them into readable formats, it gives us the console in a readable format to view.”