We performed a comparison between Palo Alto Networks WildFire and WatchGuard Firebox based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Netgate, Fortinet, OPNsense and others in Firewalls."The UTM feature is quite good. FortiAP is easy to deploy because both Fortigate and FortiAP are under the same brand. Otherwise, you need to do more work on the configuration."
"There are lots of features and most of them are deployed for internet security. Users are protected if they accidentally go to some malicious sites."
"Fortinet FortiGate's reliability is valuable."
"Fortinet has a very good solution for Secure SD-WAN. One very good feature is that they have robust and simple FortiOS through which they provide all solutions. That's their strength. There's not much complexity involved with the Secure SD-WAN solution of Fortinet as compared to Cisco's solution, which has a lot of flexibility but complexity also comes with that flexibility."
"Good anti-malware and web filtering features."
"It increases security posture and is helpful for firewall reporting, intrusion protection, web filtering, and SD-WAN implementation."
"It's very easy to configure."
"It is very flexible to use."
"The most valuable feature for us is the VPN."
"We have found that Palo Alto Networks WildFire is scalable. We currently have six thousand users for the product."
"The way that the solution quickly updates to adjust to threats is the solution's most valuable aspect. When there's a security attack, within five minutes, all Wildfire subscribers have access to updates so that all systems will be safe. Its threat prevention is way better than other vendor products."
"The cloud-based services are a nice feature."
"The most effective feature of WildFire for threat analysis is its collaboration with other security profiles on our Palo Alto firewall."
"Remote access is excellent."
"Whole team can use the firewall and understand it."
"I love the idea of Palo Alto Networks WildFire. It's more geared toward preventing malware. If someone's laptop or phone is malware-infected, the tool prevents it from uploading valuable corporate data outside the corporate network. That's what I love about Palo Alto Networks WildFire. It stops malware in its tracks."
"WatchGuard Firebox is easy to configure and has a nice user interface."
"As a whole, it has a very low requirement for ongoing interaction. It's very self-sufficient. If properly patched, it has very high reliability. The total cost of ownership once deployed is very low."
"Intrusion Prevention is my primary focus so that's what I find most useful. The why is straightforward: It's to prevent intrusion."
"The security that is used for defending from the attacks is very good."
"The throughput is great. It's perfect. We have no issues whatsoever. The management features are very powerful..."
"The solution has increased productivity with our outside salespeople being able to connect into their computers and use those remotely."
"It's very easy to use, especially compared to similar products. A lot more users use the WatchGuard appliance now than use the SonicWall appliance because of the ease of usability."
"They've done a lot of work with their SD-WAN, which we do use, to have our old internet service with our new internet service. If anything goes down on a particular interface, I can have different rules applied. Most of my users don't even know when our primary internet goes down anymore... I don't have to be here to do anything to switch it to our backup internet or to switch it back."
"Fortinet FortiGate is a stable solution. However, my issue is the performance only. When I use all the profiles, this affects the performance. From the beginning, I should have had a better sizing of the box."
"With the addition of some features, it is possible that FortiGate can be used in all verticals."
"Its price could be better."
"The license renewal process, annual renewal price, and the web application firewall features should be improved."
"In the balance between links feature normally you can just choose one option to balance. It would be better for the solution to have more than one option, preferably three."
"I'm not sure if it's something that they already have or are developing something, however, we need some dedicated features for container security."
"They have to just improve its performance when we enable all UTM features. When you enable all the features, the performance of FortiGate, as well as of Sophos and SonicWall, goes down."
"There is a lot of improvement needed with SSL-VPN."
"The size of Palo Alto's cloud is big but it could be easier to use from a product management perspective."
"I think it would be nice for Palo Alto to work without the connection to the cloud. It is 100% powerful when connected to the cloud. But, if you disconnect from the cloud, you only get 40-50% power."
"The product's false positive logs could be more user-friendly to understand. They could provide examples of precious cases to learn."
"They can keep on doing more updates. As new malware and viruses are coming out, they can make sure that WildFire is up to date."
"They should make their user interface a little more user-friendly."
"Management and web filtering can be improved. There should also be better reporting, particularly around web filtering."
"The cost of the solution is excessively high."
"Our main concern is that everything has to be synced with the WildFire Cloud and has to be checked through the subscription."
"There's always room for improvement, especially if the threats are getting more sophisticated and the IT department cannot sufficiently meet this kind of sophistication with their own knowledge and experience. Knowing that this solution can get up to the level of addressing a lot of these threats is something that everybody wishes for. If we look at the dark web and the lawful web, they are two opposites, and if these two good and bad collide in the world of the internet, you want the best possible product—especially if you cannot get to that point of knowledge. I am just an individual and end user, with limited knowledge of usage. That's why I say there's always room for improvement, from their side and also from mine, because by knowing exactly what they can achieve and the knowledge that they can get on an everyday basis, and the portion that is understandable to me, it's an improvement for them as well."
"The level of support from WatchGuard is not as good."
"Firebox would be improved with integration for endpoint protection solutions."
"I would like to see more simplified management of the firewall... It's a complicated system to use."
"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."
"One other shortcoming is that there is no backup for it. We really haven't figured out how we might solve that problem. We may want to put a duplicate in... With WatchGuard, we just have the one box. If that were to fail, we'd probably be really hurting."
"It would be wonderful if the WatchGuard team develops nice products for threat intelligence."
"The reporting is a little on the weak side. I would like to see a better reporting set and easier drill-down options."
Palo Alto Networks WildFire is ranked 3rd in Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) with 58 reviews while WatchGuard Firebox is ranked 13th in Firewalls with 78 reviews. Palo Alto Networks WildFire is rated 8.4, while WatchGuard Firebox is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Palo Alto Networks WildFire writes "Good technical support and provides automatic analysis that saves us time in filtering email". On the other hand, the top reviewer of WatchGuard Firebox writes "Offers a streamlined deployment, intuitive interface and robust security features". Palo Alto Networks WildFire is most compared with Cisco Secure Firewall, Proofpoint Email Protection, Juniper SRX Series Firewall and Fortinet FortiSandbox, whereas WatchGuard Firebox is most compared with Netgate pfSense, Sophos XG, OPNsense, SonicWall TZ and Meraki MX.
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