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Palo Alto Networks VM-Series vs Symantec Advanced Threat Protection comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 1, 2024

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 VM-Series
Ranking in Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
16th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
66
Ranking in other categories
Firewalls (15th)
Symantec Advanced Threat Pr...
Ranking in Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
24th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) category, the mindshare of Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is 2.6%, up from 2.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Symantec Advanced Threat Protection is 2.2%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Palo Alto Networks VM-Series2.6%
Symantec Advanced Threat Protection2.2%
Other95.2%
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
 

Featured Reviews

MuhammadNadeem - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr. Network Engineer at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
Has supported urgent deployments and enabled inline threat protection but pricing and features could be more flexible
I am not using Palo Alto Networks VM-Series mostly, but based on my experience, there are some deficiencies in Palo Alto Networks VM-Series. Having those features missing, we are not proposing Palo Alto Networks VM-Series to all customers. However, for urgency and for some solutions that customers need for some of their other sites and subdivisions, we are providing the same.
Dennis O'Reilly - PeerSpot reviewer
Cyber SecOps Principal at Dotcom Security
Provides end-to-end antivirus protection and has good stability
Symantec Endpoint Protection provides end-to-end protection. Along with antivirus protection, it has a lot of key areas, including intrusive prevention, firewall features, and application and device control. It can integrate with other Broadcom solutions, such as Symantec Messaging Gateway and Symantec DLP. If you want to send an email, it gets scanned through endpoint protection and DLP. We get all Symantec functionality in a single pane.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Palo Alto can handle a lot more and give us more insight into our network."
"The most valuable feature is the Posture Assessment."
"It has excellent scalability."
"With the improved visibility we now have, the traffic is being properly monitored, which means that we are better able to manage it. These are improvements that we saw very quickly."
"It offers a single pane of glass for all the different types of installations."
"AWS has improved our agility to apply firewall rules."
"It gives us the ease that we are secure. We have set up the proper things that help make our data safe."
"It is nice to have a rock solid security platform that we can count on."
"This is a good solution, and whatever our requirement is, all of the features are there."
"The most valuable feature is NetFlow threat protection."
"The product integrates well with our systems, and we have not encountered any problems."
"Technical support is very responsive. You just have to open a ticket. They respond in a timely manner. Their response is good. I'm satisfied."
"Endpoint to network is a good feature, it can protect the line."
"They manage to solve detection quite nicely, with rather elaborate detection compared to other providers, and Symantec also provides a useful set of information linked to each of the attacked computers."
"They have a very simple and easy implementation; they have been around for a long time, and they have been very easy to deploy, support, and manage."
"Overall, the product supports everything already feature-wise, because it has email protection, monitoring detection, network intrusion detection, and advanced threat protection."
 

Cons

"On the cloud side, they need to come up with more HA solutions to support the multi-region."
"An improvement could be the integration of security intelligence with Palo Alto cloud via APIs."
"Just sometimes it can be a bit sluggish navigating through pages. That is just purely because of Java.​"
"The disadvantage with Palo Alto is that they don't have a cloud-based solution that includes a secure web gateway."
"In the next release, I would like to see better integration between the endpoints and the firewalls."
"The user-friendliness of the UI could be improved."
"There's room for improvement in terms of integration with the load balancer. It isn't like Fortinet, which has a load balancer built into its firewall. It is effortless to integrate within the load balancer-plus-firewall solution."
"The implementation should be simplified."
"An improvement could be made on the reporting because then it would be easier to collect information and submit it for compliance."
"The product's support services need improvement."
"Entire threat protection is not available for the advanced features."
"It should be able to collect information if the agent is disabled."
"The support has dropped down to a five out of ten."
"Solutions like CrowdStrike, ESET, and SentinelOne have really jumped ahead on behavioral and algorithm-based detection capabilities. Symantec is trying to catch up, but they still have some limitations of being an old-school AV protection program and adding AI and behavioral learning and detection algorithm."
"There are limits with respect to blocking files by hash value or blocking IP addresses, and these limits should be removed."
"One area for improvement could be the pricing model."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The VM series is licensed annually."
"The license fee is slightly high."
"We found purchasing process the product on the AWS Marketplace to be very good."
"The price of this solution is very high for some parts of Africa, which makes it a challenge."
"When you have a client compare box against box, a lot of times Palo Alto is a bit more expensive, but its network firewalls have a very rich ratio."
"Because the solution was getting deployed on AWS, it was the best place to go and it was available there."
"Purchasing on the AWS Marketplace was simple, effective, and easy."
"The product is cheaper than the on-premise version."
"The price is quite expensive."
"Pricing is good. It is nice to have a great product at a fair price."
"Symantec Advanced Threat Protection's pricing is comparable."
"The pricing of this solution is inexpensive and affordable."
"Symantec Endpoint Protection has an average price."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Outsourcing Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Marketing Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business31
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise24
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise13
 

Questions from the Community

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 kind of depends what you value most. PA is good at app control, web filtering a...
How does Azure Firewall compare with Palo Alto Networks VM Series?
Both products are very stable and easily scalable. The setup of Azure Firewall is easy and very user-friendly and the overall cost is reasonable. Azure Firewall offers a solid threat awareness, can...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Palo Alto Networks VM-Series?
The pricing is more on the expensive side, but it is justified due to its functionality, reliability, and throughput, even with all features enabled. In comparison to FortiGate ( /products/fortinet...
Ask a question
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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Warren Rogers Associates
ECI
Find out what your peers are saying about Palo Alto Networks VM-Series vs. Symantec Advanced Threat Protection and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
915,341 professionals have used our research since 2012.