We performed a comparison between Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls and WatchGuard Firebox 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."From the firewall perspective, the rules and policies are very sufficient and easy to use."
"The performance is good."
"Fortinet FortiGate is a stable solution."
"The technical support in our region is excellent."
"The network security and cloud security are most valuable."
"The license management is very valuable. You can get a new license each year, or you can enroll every two to four years. You can get the logs, and you will get the information on the risk in your network and the entire organization. With this information, you can take action on your actives, computers, or devices. You can bring your own device as an SSE."
"It increases security posture and is helpful for firewall reporting, intrusion protection, web filtering, and SD-WAN implementation."
"The GUI is good."
"Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls have a Single Pass Parallel Processing (SP3) Architecture, which has a different kind of code doing the work. It increases the packet processing rate. Whereas, without the SP3 Architecture, you are waiting for each job to complete, even if you have 100 jobs assigned."
"It has a unique approach to packet processing. It has single-pass architecture. We can easily perform policy lookups, application decoding, and integration or merging. This can be all done with a single pass. It effectively reduces the amount of processing required to perform multiple actions. This is the main advantage of using Palo Alto."
"We have found the SSL decryption within this solution to be great; you can enable this feature and have the ability to see more of what is happening across your network."
"The fact that I can perform several security functions in one device at wire speed is a valuable feature. I don't have to slow down my business transactions, and I don't have to inconvenience my users with 16 different solutions. I can have it all in one box, and it protects my organization at wire speed."
"I'm using most of its features such as antivirus, anti-spam, and WAF. I'm also using its DNS Security and DNS sinkhole features, as well as the URL filtering and application security features."
"Compared to other firewalls from Check Point, Fortinet, and Cisco, for example, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls use the most advanced techniques. They have sandbox integration and others in the orchestrator. Palo Alto's security features are at a higher level than those of the competitors at the moment."
"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."
"I like the sandbox feature, and it's very good. It kills each malware deployment in the sense of signatures within five minutes. So, we can secure our network and infrastructure very well within the stipulated time. The WildFire functionality is very good because a few files are also getting blocked. It's critical as malware attacks are also getting ignored, and the logging is very well maintained in this firewall. The most valuable solutions in this field are application-based firewalls. That is the main criteria of the firewall and functionality. We can get all the logs related to this and each and every packet. I like that the firewall is working as an application. The application-based entity we have deployed is well maintained and working very well. We were able to find lots of vulnerabilities when we deployed it, but we could not disclose all. But there were vulnerabilities we could block by updating the firewall and taking actions on clientside machines. So, we got to know that we have lots of vulnerabilities inside the organization too, and we took lots of steps and resolved the number of vulnerabilities. Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is an all-in-one solution. It provides every entity log, which is a very good functionality of this firewall. It gives every packet and aspect that the firewall is performing through its logs, and it does it very well. This firewall's unified platform helped eliminate multiple network security tools. If anyone uses P2P sites, cryptocurrency websites, or any illegal sites, we can block it easily. It gives us a proper alert for these kinds of sites, and it properly secures our network. Monitoring is the best thing we are doing here, and we can block this kind of vulnerability as soon as it comes to us."
"WatchGuard Firebox's two-factor authentication feature is particularly useful and provides an added layer of protection."
"From my experience with their customer service team, I would say that they seem quite knowledgeable and fairly quick to respond."
"The most valuable feature of WatchGuard Firebox is the VPN. It's easy to connect to the VPN."
"It has everything we need in terms of functionality."
"The tool's most valuable feature is the dashboard."
"The most valuable feature of WatchGuard Firebox is its ease of use."
"Management and visibility are the most valuable features."
"The most valuables feature of WatchGuard Firebox are the VPNs, and web filtering where we can stop users from going to malicious sites."
"We sometimes have issues with FortiGate's routing table in the latest firmware update. We had to downgrade the device because our customers complained about bugs."
"My only complaint about FortiGate is a lack of QinQ VLAN tunneling. I haven't found this feature in any Fortinet product. You can do this on all Cisco routers, including the smaller models. However, QinQ isn't available on the biggest, most expensive Fortinet units. They still don't have that. I think now we're on software version 6.0, and they still haven't found a solution for QinQ. It isn't a dealbreaker, but that's my main complaint."
"I would like to see improvements in the product's application rules."
"With the addition of some features, it is possible that FortiGate can be used in all verticals."
"Their software support needs improvement. I would prefer to have better support for bug fixes. Sometimes, we open a ticket, and it is very difficult to get a solution. Specifically, we are not at all happy with their support for load balancing."
"It is quite new for us, and we need to go more in-depth into the monitoring tools. It provides different features that we need to do what we want. So far, it is okay for us. In terms of improvement, in the future, they can provide a faster implementation of features. Some of the features are first available in other solutions. Fortinet sometimes takes a little bit longer than other solutions, such as Check Point, to implement new features."
"Fortinet Fortigate could benefit by simplifying some of their processes."
"Fortinet FortiGate needs to improve the logging and reporting. Additionally, the next-generation application's policies should be improved. When they were released they had bugs."
"There is room for improvement in the area of customer service."
"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."
"There is a tradeoff between security and network performance, as security is always top-notch, but performance can sometimes lag and has room for improvement."
"The analytics could be improved."
"The only area I can see for improvement is that Palo Alto should do more marketing."
"Palo Alto needs to improve their training. They do not invest in their partners. I have been a partner for seven years, and it is very expensive for me to certify my engineers."
"The solution could be more cost-effective."
"The biggest thing that needs to be improved with them is their training. I took a training class for the 8.0 build, then I took it again for the 9.0 and 10 builds. They add new features every time that they do a new major release, but the training doesn't keep up. It is the same basic training that probably was with the 3.0 build, and they just change the screenshots. I would love to see them do some more work since they have all these bells and whistles, but we don't know how to use those features on a large scale."
"An area for improvement is that when we use a web administration link, there is no security."
"There could also be better reporting. For example, there should be more out-of-the-box management reports."
"Firebox would be improved with integration for endpoint protection solutions."
"Some of the configuration options are somewhat confusing."
"I would like to see more training become available for us."
"The solution needs to improve its accessibility."
"This is a great product and offers great protection but they don't hear the customers' needs. They don't make improvements as per the customers' requests."
"They are working on cloud-based options. However, they do not have the options fully functional in their solution at this time."
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Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is ranked 6th in Firewalls with 76 reviews while WatchGuard Firebox is ranked 2nd in Unified Threat Management (UTM) with 27 reviews. Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is rated 8.8, while WatchGuard Firebox 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 WatchGuard Firebox writes "Easy to deploy and it provides useful data on threats ". Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is most compared with Azure Firewall, Check Point NGFW, Meraki MX, Sophos XG and Palo Alto Networks VM-Series, whereas WatchGuard Firebox is most compared with Netgate pfSense, Sophos XG, Meraki MX, OPNsense and Check Point NGFW. See our Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls vs. WatchGuard Firebox report.
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