We performed a comparison between Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls and SonicWall NSa 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."Provides good firewall security and has great VPN features."
"It is easy to manage, and it doesn't need much knowledge from the team. It is a stable device, and there are many features that are included out of the box."
"The stability and scalability of this solution are satisfactory. Its SD-WAN, VPN, and URL filtering features are very useful."
"The inspection and web security features are most valuable."
"The Fortinet FortiGate local partners were good. I did not have direct contact with Fortinet support."
"The security fabric is excellent."
"The network security and cloud security are most valuable."
"Fortinet FortiGate's reliability is valuable."
"The WildFire reporting and Cortex XDR platform have huge infrastructures in the cloud that secures the network against threats. So, we have the potential on the system, specifically for users, where we take care of this since the user is the most dangerous. We get reports back from WildFire on a minute-by-minute basis, rather than a daily or weekly update like I used to with different AV vendors. These features can detect viruses and malware more quickly, which is super important."
"A feature introduced by Palo Alto with the version 10-OS is embedded machine learning in the core of the firewall to provide inline, real-time attack prevention. Machine learning analyzes the network traffic and detects if there is any usual traffic coming from outside to inside. Because of Palo Alto, organizations detect around 91% of malicious attacks using machine learning. The machine learning helps customers by implementing firewalls in critical and air gap areas so there is no need to integrate with the cloud sandbox."
"It is an extremely powerful solution as it provides visibility into all the network traffic, and offers a range of actions such as blocking websites or graphics, as well as load balancing. It's a great tool."
"Security is the biggest thing nowadays, including threat response, incident response, and root cause. We found that a lot of the logging and dashboard capabilities offered by Palo Alto fill the missing skill gap that you run up against. It makes it easier for our tier-two staff to get involved in some of the deeper root cause analysis. The dashboards, logs, and reports make it easier for our staff to dive right in and not get lost in what tools they should use. It's easy because they're all right there."
"The key aspect of this solution that provides the most value is its next-gen capabilities, which represented a significant change for us."
"Palo Alto offers better Layer 7 protection than competing solutions by Cisco and Fortinet. I also like the VPN client more. The interface is simple, so administrators can deploy and configure it much faster than other firewalls"
"One of the simple features I like about Palo Alto firewalls is that it's extremely easy to find out what's happening in the network. The reporting is phenomenal, and it's easy to find which threats have been detected and what traffic is going through the box. When a customer notices something is wrong, you can quickly check the amount of traffic going through the firewall around that time. If there is anything out of the ordinary, you can decide it needs to be investigated further."
"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."
"SonicWall has all the usual functions, like LAN configurations, security features, word filters, etc., but it also has the CFS agent, which isn't available in any other firewall. Reporting port support is also there."
"The product is working okay. The product is working feature-wise."
"Easy to scale solution that provides advanced threat protection. Their technical support is very good, very knowledgeable, and easy to reach."
"The features I found most valuable are email security and web filtering."
"Overall SonicWall NSa is a good solution for our use case."
"I like that SonicWall NSa is a stable product. It's also a scalable product."
"The prices are similar to other vendors and the support is good."
"What I like best about SonicWall NSa is the security it offers compared to other solutions in the market. Its reduction rate is also better than others."
"The cloud management and automation capability could be improved."
"Price, of course, can always be more competitive or better."
"The stability could be a bit better."
"Fortinet FortiGate can be integrated with different platforms. They have integrations in place, but I can't say they're 100%."
"I would like to see improvements in the product's application rules."
"In some cases, its initial setup could be hard for customers."
"A sandbox would be good in order to be able to inspect the emails containing spam and be able to validate the emails that contain malware, prior to delivering to the customer."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve by having more capabilities for troubleshooting VPN connections. For example, I do get some feedback about the current status, but I could use some history and logging of important events. The information is logged in our Syslog server, but I could use that information from the device. If they could provide a GUI to have some more insight on what's going with my VPN would be useful."
"In my opinion, the training provided is satisfactory, but there is certainly room for improvement. It would be great to have more comprehensive training at a lower cost, or even for free."
"We use ACC which is a tool for verifying the activity or traffic within your network. Currently, in ACC, the time of the samples that they offer is about five minutes. When you try to go down to a shorter duration, you can't. You only have five minutes. They can provide samples for shorter durations, such as one minute."
"The level of control and granularity in terms of rule customization could be enhanced. However, compared to our previous solution, Palo Alto provides much better drill-down capabilities."
"We have a lot of the older firewall models, i.e., the PA-220. It seems that with newer operating systems the PA-220 is becoming slower than when I first bought it. It is not really an issue for users who are passing traffic through the firewall, but more from the management access of it."
"Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls do not provide a unified platform that natively integrates all security capabilities."
"I would like to see some Machine Learning because I have observed new types of attacks that are able to bypass existing security rules."
"Palo Alto can do a little bit better when it comes to the User-ID part. I've been facing problems related to double authentication. You have a computer user, but you also have a VPN user, and when you do a single sign-on to another page, these logs can sometimes generate a problem notification. It doesn't happen a lot, but in some networks, it could be a problem. It would be very helpful to have the ability to restrict the connections that you can have in your VPN. For example, if you have the credentials, you can connect with the same user account from different computers or devices. If you have the domain information, you can connect from different devices. That's a problem that they need to address and resolve. They should ensure that at any moment, only one person is connected through a specific user account."
"Palo Alto has introduced new features in their next-generation firewall, such as SD-WAN. However, the technique of SD-WAN implementation is not easy to understand. It is not easy to deploy at this moment. Maybe, in the future, they can improve the process and how the administrators, partners, or support team can easily deploy this SD-WAN solution on their next-generation firewall. The SD-WAN solution from Fortinet is easy to do. It does not take more than five or 10 minutes. When we talk about Palo Alto, it takes extra effort to implement SD-WAN."
"Overall, Im satisfied with SonicWall NSa, but it would be better if they could add a small terminal to each device. This would help me deal with certain issues by running a small bot onto any PC."
"The security standards for space and point of view should be improved so that the solution deploys in critical areas."
"Competitors provide SSL encryption licenses for free, whereas SonicWall only provides two licenses by default, but you have to pay for the rest of the licenses."
"One issue with the solution is that no authorization or authentication features exist."
"I'd like to see integration with Microsoft 365 for authentication."
"SonicWall NSa has occasional bugs, particularly during upgrades, and that's an area for improvement."
"The cost could be lower. There could also be more flexibility for smaller companies."
"The stability is not there. The features are there, but they are not stable. They need to improve on this product because I feel that they have launched this product without much R&D."
More Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls Pricing and Cost Advice →
Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is ranked 6th in Firewalls with 76 reviews while SonicWall NSa is ranked 16th in Firewalls with 26 reviews. Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is rated 8.8, while SonicWall NSa is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls writes "Provides zero trust implementation, more visibility, and eliminated security holes". On the other hand, the top reviewer of SonicWall NSa writes "Easy to scale advanced threat protection solution with knowledgeable technical support, but has occasional bugs". Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is most compared with Azure Firewall, Check Point NGFW, Meraki MX, Sophos XG and WatchGuard Firebox, whereas SonicWall NSa is most compared with SonicWall TZ, Meraki MX, Sophos XG, Cisco Secure Firewall and OPNsense. See our Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls vs. SonicWall NSa report.
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