Palo Alto Networks PA-Series Reviews

Firewall implementation and firewall rule edition are the primary use cases.

It's very secure. It inspects the application. Compared to script-based or CLI-based firewalls, it's easier to use the GUI (graphical user interface) to implement the firewall. 

It has its own logging system. You can go to monitoring and check the logs to see if a connection is getting blocked. You can use multiple types of logs to check if a file or a port is getting blocked or if there are any TCP resets from the source or destination. It's easy to troubleshoot with the monitoring and logging it provides.

There seem to be some issues with TAC (Technical Assistance Center) or Palo Alto support. Anytime you open a case, a level one engineer joins, and then you have to escalate it to level two or three. The support system has changed in the past few years, and that's something they need to look into.

In future releases, I would add one feature where we can take a subnet or take an IP and create a list of rules that are for that IP. There is an option, but it's not as expansive as I would like. When you run a report, you have to run it for a hostname. And when you look at the report, you see the hostnames, but you don't see the IPs. Like, there is no additional column for seeing the IP of the hostname or the subnet of the hostname. So that creates an issue. You have to go into the file and take the export list of firewall rules, and then you have the hostname got have the IP, then you have to note down the IP addresses.

I have been working with this solution for more than eight years. 

It is a very stable product.

The solution scales easily. For example, when we did a migration, we brought in more than 14,000 firewall rules from Juniper into our Palo Alto. After importing, obviously, that's a huge number. But, after doing that, the CPU went really up because we have so many rules. And after having to talk with Palo Alto, they told us to get a better model. We have the 5500 model. So, we were asked to replace the Palo Alto with a bigger or better model. That's what we're gonna be doing.

We can absolutely update the firewalls with a better GPU and CPU. With a better CPU, it can handle more connections. Especially when the environment grows, adding new data centers and more applications. So, after a year or two, there is a need to either bring in more firewalls or upgrade the existing ones you have.

Currently, there are around 12 end users using this solution in our organization.

There are certain issues when we open a ticket with TAC (Technical Assistance Center), the issue goes to engineering, and then they inform us that the fix for the issue we're having will be included in the next software update. 

So, there are some issues in the backend or with new features that don't work correctly. We usually open tickets for that, and then usually, they assure us that this issue will be fixed in the next update.

Juniper environment we had was reaching the end of life. That's why, rather than bringing in new Juniper devices, the enterprise architecture team decided to go with Palo Alto.

The initial setup was easy. I was migrating from the Juniper SLX firewall to Palo Alto, so I had to move a lot of firewall groups and create a script on the engine tool to facilitate the move. There were some hurdles. But, personally, it was pretty smooth. The transition was pretty smooth.

So we have physical on-premises, and also instances on the cloud, AWS Cloud.

I would recommend using this product , but it's important to have whiteboard sessions with the network and another team to give them information on exactly how to check the BGP settings. You need to go over with the team the things they need to do on the GUI and on the CLI. So, you definitely need to educate the team before using it.

Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten. It's very stable. There are some tools for pushing the rules to Panorama, pushing the rules to the device, especially if you're working with a team, if you're working on a rule and someone pushes to Panorama, or if they want to push your firewall rules. Someone could push you if you have set up something for a change and you need to the changes at a certain time, if another member comes in and puts a change, you definitely need to have your changes or your pushes to the device or to Panorama, you need to have good communication between the team. So there are some good and bad things with Panorama. As you work on it, you adjust.

Most of our clients in Pakistan deploy Palo Alto Networks PA-Series for a variety of use cases. They primarily use it to target VLANs within their networks, including different types of networks like DMZ. These clients integrate the PA-Series with their applications, servers, and often utilize SSL VPNs for secure remote access. These scenarios are typical in the IT sector and align with the types of deployments we see commonly in our region.

We mostly utilize the Spireware profile within Palo Alto Networks PA-Series for threat prevention, which includes basic subscriptions like URL filtering. Many customers are highly satisfied with the threat prevention and firewall capabilities provided. While some customers use team applications like IBM SIM software, we primarily focus on mini CRMs for releases. Through integration and utilizing firewall data, we maintain a strong network security posture, addressing threats effectively. We also conduct security life cycle reviews and leverage tech support files from customers to continually improve our security measures.

The reporting feature and application ID functionality within Palo Alto Networks PA-Series are incredibly valuable to us. With the firewall, we can precisely control and block applications like WhatsApp, log activities, and prevent certain types of uploads. Utilizing the application IDs provided by Palo Alto Networks helps us secure our network effectively. Integration with other tools and systems further enhances our overall security posture. Some of our customers have integrated the Palo Alto Networks PA-Series with Forescout, and the integration is working exceptionally well. We've created policies using Post Guard to detect and block malicious traffic or duplications. When such threats are detected, both the firewall and Postgres work together to promptly block them within the network.

I don't have any specific suggestions for improving the Palo Alto Networks PA-Series at the moment. I find it to be a very effective solution, and I don't have any major complaints or areas for improvement in mind. However, pricing flexibility could be an aspect worth considering, as it has been a concern for some of our clients.

I have been using Palo Alto Networks PA-Series for 5 years.

Similarly, I find the product's stability to be top-notch, also rating it a 10.

In terms of scalability, I would rate it a solid 10 out of 10, indicating excellent scalability capabilities.

Regarding technical support, Palo Alto Networks has been very responsive and helpful whenever I've reached out for assistance or submitted a ticket, earning a positive recommendation from me for their support services.

Setting up Palo Alto Networks PA-Series for the first time is straightforward and easy, especially if you're familiar with firewalling and network configurations.

When it comes to handling large volumes of encryption traffic, PA-Series is effective when encryption detection is focused on sensitive data, although it may reduce speed for overall traffic. I rate PA-Series a 10 out of 10 and highly recommend it to other users due to its reliability and performance compared to competitors like Fortinet.

I use the solution in my company to cater to the needs of our clients, so based on the requirements of the clients, we configure the firewall.

Palo Alto's advantage is that it offers very secure products. Unit 42 in Palo Alto and sandboxing are advantages offered by the product, along with the fact that it provides users with updates every minute, so users keep getting updates. App-ID is the name of a feature in the product that is very good. None of the other firewall products offer the aforementioned features. With the product, the area around NAT is very secure, and users get a lot of options for NAT.

The technical support offered by Palo Alto is an area of concern where improvements are required. It is very difficult to get technical support, which is a very pathetic area. If you try to figure out a solution to your issues with the help of a web browser, it is very difficult to find a proper solution. Other firewall products have proper portals where everything gets published with all the details on how to resolve an issue. There is a need to have a dedicated person or specialist to manage Palo Alto, but getting one is a problem. Overall, the area of technical support is not user-friendly.

I have been using Palo Alto Networks PA-Series for eight years.

Some issues are there with the stability part of the solution, but based on the feedback from clients, Palo Alto sends updates like all other solutions. One can say that the tool is mostly stable.

Stability-wise, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

It is a scalable solution.

Our company has a strength of 250 employees.

My clients deal with two or three enterprise-sized clients who use Cisco. Small and medium-sized businesses use Palo Alto. Some of our big clients who operate at an enterprise level use Palo Alto.

It is very difficult to get to the product support team, and it takes at least half an hour to get connected with the technical team. I rate the technical support a four out of ten.

Neutral

For deployment, Palo Alto provides a tool that doesn't work properly on many of the systems from Windows, and only the product's previous versions work properly, but the latest versions don't work. Palo Alto offers Limited options to users and allows for easy migration when it comes to products like Cisco, Fortinet, or IBM, but for low-end servers, there are no options to migrate from the tool.

If a large part of a client's workforce operates with cloud services in place, then the solution can be deployed on the cloud. Nowadays, most people are moving to the cloud.

The time required to deploy the solution depends on the firewall size and configuration, but I know that it requires at least a month.

Our company has around 14 members from the network security side involved in the deployment process.

Price-wise, Palo Alto offers high-price products. It is mostly the enterprise-sized customers who prefer to use Palo Alto products. Recently, Palo Alto launched Palo Alto Networks PA-400, which is much cheaper than the other products on the market. My company has to make yearly payments or opt for a three-year payment when it comes to the charges associated with the licensing model of the product. The clients of the tool need to procure the license for the premium support. Almost all the vendors of firewall products follow the aforementioned steps nowadays when it comes to the licensing model.

Considering the presence scenario, I can suggest Fortinet since I found its products doing well in business. Support and configuration-wise, Fortinet is better than Palo Alto, but technology-wise, Palo Alto is the number one product in the market. Fortinet is much more user-friendly than Palo Alto.

The tool is not very easy to maintain, but people go for it since it is a secure product. Only those who know about Firewall products can maintain the solution.

Some of our company's clients have migrated from Palo Alto Networks PA-Series to FortiGate or Fortinet since it is very easy to manage with a very user-friendly UI.

Palo Alto Networks PA-Series is a good solution, but someone in the organization should manage it since it is not a very user-friendly tool. If you want to configure something, you need to know how Palo Alto Networks PA-Series works and also know about what architecture is and all. Other firewall products can be easily configured since very user-friendly GUIs are made available to users. Checking logs in Palo Alto Networks PA-Series is very difficult. If someone knows how to check logs, then it's fine because otherwise, it's very difficult.

I rate the overall product an eight out of ten.

My company operates at multiple sites. My company has multiple work-related departments, and for each department, we have multiple servers along with multiple printers and other devices. My organization has to restrict certain accesses based on company policies. Generally, my company has to look after what accesses are to be allowed and which are not to be allowed, based on source and destination. If some business cases require some access, then our company allows access for those on the firewall.

Palo Alto Networks generally offers some very good features, like antivirus, DLP, URL filtering, and dynamic blocking. All the attributes offered by Palo Alto Networks are quite good and fall under the next-generation firewall features.

With Palo Alto Networks, every two or three months, there are some updates or bug fixes that happen. Everything is good with Palo Alto Networks.

With Palo Alto Networks PA-Series, I find that the support team takes a long time to resolve the issues that a user may face during the use of the product. You need to keep describing your issues to the support team since Palo Alto Networks usually provides you with a few engineers who then connect you with another set of engineers, making it a long process. When it comes to the support offered by Palo Alto Networks, our company has seen that we need to escalate an issue to senior management, which takes a lot of time. The support part of the product can improve a little bit.

I have experience with Palo Alto Networks PA-Series. My company has a partnership with Palo Alto Networks. I use the solution's recent version, which is PAN-OS 10.0.

It is a stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

Scalability-wise, I rate the solution an eight and a half out of ten.

More than 5,000 people in our company use Palo Alto Networks PA-Series.

I rate the technical support an eight out of ten.

Positive

Earlier, my company was involved with Cisco ASA Firewall and Check Point Software.

The product's initial setup was easy.

The solution is deployed on an on-premises model.

If you are involved in the initial configuration part, then the deployment process related to the product may take around two or three hours.

I rate the overall tool a nine out of ten.

The tool's most valuable feature is WildFire. 

Palo Alto Networks PA-Series is expensive. We would like to see additional threat hunting features. 

I have been working with the product for more than five years. 

The product is stable. 

My company has 1000 users for Palo Alto Networks PA-Series. 

Palo Alto Networks PA-Series' support is very quick. 

Positive

We used Cisco before the Palo Alto Networks PA-Series. We chose the product because of its community. 

Palo Alto Networks PA-Series' deployment was easy and took one to two days to complete. My company has two to three administrators to manage the product. 

The tool's pricing was reasonable when we bought the product. We pay around 60,000 dollars per year. 

We evaluated Check Point, McAfee, and Fortinet. We chose Palo Alto Networks PA-Series because of its performance, pricing, and technical support. 

You need to do a POC before choosing the product. I rate it ten out of ten.  

Almost all firewalls and OEMs provide the same features. Palo Alto blocks the new threats better than other tools. It provides better Wi-Fi analysis.

Palo Alto has too many features. The interface is complex. It could be better.

We are providing the solution to our customers.

We have sold the solution to eight to ten customers.

The support is good.

Positive

If the product doesn’t fit the budget of the customer, we sell solutions like Fortinet. Fortinet’s support is better than Palo Alto's. Fortinet is partner-friendly. Fortinet is cheaper in India. If a customer requires a product listed in Gartner, we suggest Palo Alto and Fortinet. Otherwise, we suggest Sophos.

Fortinet is better at maintaining partner relationships. Palo Alto also understands the partner’s needs and helps them out. Even the distributors’ technical teams help us. Fortinet’s interface is good. It is easier to deploy than Palo Alto.

It is easy to implement the solution.

The product is expensive. The product is suitable for customers who are not cost-sensitive. The new series for the SMB sector has a very good price.

My recommendation depends on the budget of the customer. The 400 series might be different, but we haven’t started pitching it to our customers. The tool is suitable for the customers who know what they are doing. Overall, I rate the tool a nine and a half out of ten.

We use the solution for security purposes, like restricting traffic for which traffic you want to allow. You can control your network.

Palo Alto Networks firewalls offer single-mode panel processing with live scanning. While other firewalls only scan for malware in the first-stage store.

The SD-WAN feature of Palo Alto Networks is not good compared to FortiGate. It is also more complicated to configure, while FortiGate is much easier.

I have been using Palo Alto Networks PA-Series for three years.

The product is stable.

The solution is scalable. Our organization has more than 300 units in Europe and the USA. In the Asia region, they are using FortiGate.

We recently opened a ticket with the technical team, and they should be able to fix the issue. We have opened multiple tickets, and the technical support has been good.

Neutral

We have used FortiGate before. You can easily configure Palo Alto products compared to other firewalls. Palo Alto firewalls have many features, including live scanning, filtering, and use policies to control traffic. Compared to other firewalls, Palo Alto firewalls offer more security.

The initial setup is simple with no complexity. All firewalls are the same; we have implemented four to five sites. HA configuration is complex but easy because they are configuring FortiGuardian. We need to assign the bot’ IP address in Palo Alto, whereas FortiGate assigns only one IP. There’s no need to assign an IP from the active directory.

Palo Alto is more expensive than FortiGate.

Palo Alto is easily accessible, manageable, and offers more features and security. I recommend this solution.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

Our customers use the solution for multiple purposes. Some users use it as a core firewall to protect their servers. Some users use it as a parameter edge to terminate the VPN connection and to connect with their remote site.

The way Palo Alto Networks PA-Series works is completely different compared to other firewalls. The solution is very efficient when it comes to resource usage. We can use multiple processes at a single time. The solution is easy to manage. The most important feature of the solution I like is the reporting. If you want to check your data or traffic usage, you can export it in multiple formats.

Compared to other vendors, the solution's community should be strong enough to solve the problems engineers face. If I face any issue, I should be able to Google it and find the solution to rectify it. If one customer has no premium support, he cannot open a case with the portal. He should at least find some help or support from the community.

I work as a system integrator and have provided Palo Alto Networks PA-Series to customers for three to four years.

I rate the solution a nine out of ten for stability.

Multiple customers from the banking and corporate sectors use Palo Alto Networks PA-Series.

I rate the solution ten out of ten for scalability.

If you have a proper plan to start the solution's implementation, it's very easy. Since Palo Alto has a free-of-cost converter tool, for which you don't have to buy a license or subscription, it's easy to convert the configuration from other vendors to Palo Alto.

The solution's deployment time depends on the customer's environment, infrastructure, and requirements. A migration takes approximately one month.

Licenses for the malware and the URLs are not free, but converting the configuration is free. You have to purchase the licenses for Palo Alto Networks PA-Series. Compared to other vendors, Palo Alto Networks PA-Series is expensive.

If budget is not a concern, I would highly recommend users use Palo Alto Networks PA-Series.

Overall, I rate Palo Alto Networks PA-Series a seven to eight out of ten.

In our AWS deployments, we are utilizing Palo Alto firewalls to establish secure transit connections between two distinct AWS regions or locations. Within our AWS environment, we also host several critical services. Our primary objective is to enhance the security of these services.

The most valuable aspects are the App ID feature and its policy configuration capabilities, along with two other important features, specific feature management and CPU planning. These features have proven incredibly beneficial for our organization. They help us maintain stability in the network when issues arise, such as network congestion. Also, the data transfer between Virtual Service Providers has been seamless, and the standard S3 upgrade process has been impressive.

I encountered a slight issue with the application portal, which was not functioning correctly. Enhancing its performance would be highly beneficial.

I have been working with it for three years now.

It provides good stability capabilities.

It offers robust scalability features, suitable for accommodating over a thousand users in my company.

When comparing Palo Alto with other firewall solutions I've worked with, Palo Alto stands out as a superior choice. It offers a seamless transition from one option to another, making it exceptionally versatile and user-friendly in an enterprise setting.

The initial setup is notably simpler compared to other firewall solutions. When comparing it to other firewalls like FCD, ASA, or vendors like TechPoint, Palo Alto's setup process is much more straightforward.

While other firewalls may come with a higher cost, when you consider the cost in relation to the services and features that Palo Alto offers, it is clear that Palo Alto is delivering excellent value.

When considering an organization's needs, I strongly lean toward Palo Alto due to its flexibility. Its user interface is notably more user-friendly compared to other options and the way it handles data is impressive. The integration capabilities with products like XDR and Prisma for cloud deployments are excellent. Overall, I would rate it nine out of ten.

The product is used for perimeter defense when two networks are connected.

Our customer wanted to connect their network to a central location. So, they use the solution at the central location as an aggregation firewall.

The solution is robust. It is one of the best firewalls in the industry. It has a good track record. It is user-friendly.

The product must provide multiple threat detection features. Additional features must be embedded in the firewall to enhance it.

I have been using the solution for two years.

The tool is much more stable than any other firewall.

The tool is scalable. It is a pay-as-you-go solution.

We have our own engineers who provide our customers with technical support.

Palo Alto installs the tool. We sell only the on-premise version of the tool. We sell the critical infrastructure for it.

Palo Alto’s pricing is way higher than any other solution provider. It is expensive to buy and maintain the product. The renewal prices are higher than the competitors.

Palo Alto is the best firewall because of its features, robustness, and threat detection and prevention. Palo Alto is expensive compared to Fortinet. Considering the cost and performance, I recommend Fortinet to people. Fortinet is cheaper and provides similar features as Palo Alto.

I am selling firewalls. I heard that endpoint security and other additional security solutions can be added to the firewall. The services are expensive. If people have enough budget, they can choose Palo Alto. Overall, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.