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Palo Alto Networks Panorama vs Skybox Security Suite comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 25, 2025

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

Palo Alto Networks Panorama
Ranking in Firewall Security Management
3rd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
89
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Skybox Security Suite
Ranking in Firewall Security Management
7th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
37
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (41st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Firewall Security Management category, the mindshare of Palo Alto Networks Panorama is 7.9%, down from 10.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Skybox Security Suite is 10.8%, up from 10.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Firewall Security Management
 

Featured Reviews

Kim Ejby Lorentzen - PeerSpot reviewer
Unified firewall management streamlines operations across branches with prompt support services
The primary use case for this solution is the management of the entire firewall portfolio across various branches Palo Alto Networks Panorama has simplified management by providing a unified interface for firewall management and configuration. One of the key advantages of Palo Alto Networks…
NenadMijatovic - PeerSpot reviewer
Efficient in vulnerability management, stable and easy to use
Vulnerability management is the most valuable feature because it lets you focus on the most critical vulnerabilities. That's the important thing. Here in Serbia, there are not so many companies that have too many firewalls inside one company. So, they usually don't buy this model for Firewall Assurance unless there is some compliance. So you can prove that your firewalls are compliant. So, that model is not so important here in Serbia. It's for bigger companies. So, they usually buy network assurance to build the model of the network and vulnerability management to focus on the most important vulnerabilities. Moreover, Skybox can collect data for many vendors. From the endpoint protection vendors to the network equipment vendors to other security vendors. So, it supports more than one hundred vendors to collect data from them.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Especially for big, worldwide clients, one of the most valuable features is being able to create some rules to place on the security groups."
"I would improve the management. I need to view charts and traffic statistics, but the management console doesn't share that information with me."
"The solution is absolutely stable."
"It's easy to deploy any software or policies."
"It has shared profiles for all gateways. If I do not have Panorama, I need to create a separate profile for each and every gateway by logging into that particular gateway, but with Panorama, I can create a shared profile and just push it down to each and every gateway connected to it."
"These features are instrumental in achieving effective results."
"It's great for creating signatures and activating activities."
"The telemetry visibility is really good as well as the automated workflows for creating policies. The overall solution is quite intuitive to use."
"It's given us more visibility in terms of what are the kinds of configurations that are on these devices, and how many of these are stale rules. So it's helped greatly in terms of cleaning up of rules, for sure. And it has definitely given us a more secure way of backing up the configuration on these devices."
"It can be integrated with a vulnerability management solution. When a client comes, apart from pitching network and firewall change management, we are recommending having vulnerability management. So, rather than just having the audit of the firewall, they can integrate it with their vulnerability management solution, which could be Rapid7, Qualys, or any other solution. This provides them the most value out of the platform. That is the way we are approaching our customer base."
"Key features for us include the firewall change audit every week. Also, being able to track firewall ACL usage, so that we can produce semiannual reports on ACL usage and shadowed and redundant rules on the firewall."
"Skybox allows organizations to reprioritize the vulnerability they attempt to patch and mitigate, based on the contextual awareness of the network."
"It's very supportive and very user-friendly."
"Aside from Firewall Assurance, we are using Network Assurance and Change Manager for an overview of the whole network and for documenting requests and the recertification of the ruleset."
"The revalidation and policy recertifications are most valuable."
"Security review is the most important feature, because it offers a single pane of glass to analyze multiple firewalls."
 

Cons

"There could be more integrations with third parties."
"The central firewall management could be better."
"The licensing costs are quite high."
"The integration between Strata Cloud Manager and Panorama could be enhanced to allow customers to stay on Panorama for many years while still utilizing Strata Cloud Manager for deployment."
"The product does need a bit of configuration. It's not quite ready to go out of the box."
"It's difficult to implement."
"There were a few bugs a couple of years into it. There was a big bug where it had trouble communicating with the two main boxes."
"My pain point is the automation process is not well-documented. There are some things that they could improve on there."
"The only place where Skybox has room for improvement, and they're working on releasing this, it's just a slow-go, is the UI. The user interface has historically been via a locally installed thick client. They are moving to a web-based console and it's slowly coming out."
"The dashboard's UI is not interesting; it is quite normal. It would be better if something more attractive or similar useful information found in AlgoSec was available."
"The solution needs improvement in firewall configuration checks. I would also like to see more configuration checks for Forcepoint and for other non-supported firewalls."
"If anything could be improved it would be staying on top of the collector scripts, but I understand that's a very tough challenge."
"The setup documentation needs a lot of improvement."
"The solution was quite technical. It would be easier to manage if the solution was more specific about aspects of the solution and provided more advisory around how to use it effectively. It would help users a lot if they were more clear about everything."
"Skybox Security Suite can improve the change management module. It is the one part of the tool that is used with the firewall devices and you have a change management module that is used to record changes of all firewalls in the company. It's not compatible with all brands, this is where they can improve the solution."
"Reporting. A lot of the reports, out of the box, are limited to a certain number of either configuration violations or access rule violations. So when you first set up a new firewall to be monitored by Skybox, you don't get a real full report. You have to really tweak it to get everything."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is pretty average. On a scale of one to ten, I would rate it a five."
"We pay approximately $3,000 a year in order to use the product."
"The licensing is not cheap. There are always hidden costs. You have support costs, or maybe you need to buy more optics on how the solution fits into the rest of your environment. It is possible some of the rest of your environment will need to change too."
"Palo Alto is expensive and there are many cheaper firewalls, but they do not work as well."
"The price of Palo Alto Networks Panorama is expensive."
"Cost-wise, it's very expensive."
"It has freed up staff time, which is where we are seeing ROI."
"It is not a cheap solution."
"Fully understand the total cost of ownership. They have gone to a new model where you have to replace the hardware every X amount of years at a very substantial cost and fully understand your intended number of nodes. To operate a firewall, you have to pay two licenses, a firewall node and a network node. If you are a reasonable-sized organization, this gets expensive very quickly."
"The pricing has increased exorbitantly in the last few years, so now it is questionable. Now, it makes me want to review other products."
"With licensing, the number of network nodes becomes very expensive to the point where you have to rationalize if the tools are warranted anymore."
"It's expensive."
"I think the price is fair."
"Currently, the licensing costs me about $300 USD for the year. This is a huge amount for my environment."
"The price is not expensive."
"I've seen the pricing of every solution on the market. When you compare apples to apples, where Skybox becomes exceedingly expensive is if you look at it compared to something like FireMon that only does a fraction of what Skybox does. But if you include everything that Skybox does, it becomes way more expensive than the competition, but you're also not comparing apples to apples. If you look at FireMon, and you look at like just the firewall assurance piece, they are fairly comparable and, actually, Skybox comes in a little bit cheaper in some cases, depending on which product you're looking at."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
17%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Energy/Utilities Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Palo Alto Networks Panorama?
The most valuable aspect of Palo Alto Networks Panorama for me is the centralized management of multiple firewalls.
What needs improvement with Palo Alto Networks Panorama?
The solution requires more flexibility and quicker response times. High-speed replies are crucial. Additionally, the AI module should be on-premises, not in the cloud. It should support more flexib...
What do you like most about Skybox Security Suite?
Overall, the tool has helped us reduce risks. If any step is missing, it's easier for my team or engineers to identify it. The tool provides accurate recommendations based on the data. Its integrat...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Skybox Security Suite?
From a commercial perspective, AlgoSec is more expensive compared to Skybox Security Suite. Skybox Security Suite is cost-effective.
What needs improvement with Skybox Security Suite?
The dashboard's UI is not interesting; it is quite normal. It would be better if something more attractive or similar useful information found in AlgoSec was available.
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

University of Arkansas, JBG SMITH, Temple University, Telkom Indonesia
ADP, Blue Cross Blue Shield, BT, USAID, Delta Dental, EDF Energy, EMC, HSBC, Johnson & Johnson
Find out what your peers are saying about Palo Alto Networks Panorama vs. Skybox Security Suite and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.