Palo Alto Networks Panorama Reviews

My clients use Palo Alto Networks Panorama for centralized management of multiple firewalls across various locations. It allows them to easily oversee and configure all their firewalls through a single interface, streamlining security management across their network infrastructure.

The most valuable aspect of Palo Alto Networks Panorama for me is the centralized management of multiple firewalls. It saves time, provides consolidated visibility into my network, and allows me to configure all firewalls from one web interface, eliminating the need to access each firewall separately.

In the future, it would be beneficial if Panorama could include a firewall assurance feature similar to Skybox. While each firewall has its policy optimizer, a consolidated policy optimizer in Panorama could further enhance firewall management and optimization.

I have been working with Palo Alto Networks Panorama for over ten years.

Panorama is stable.

Palo Alto Networks Panorama is scalable and can support up to 1,000 devices, making it suitable for various network sizes. In terms of clients, it is mainly used by larger customers with more than ten firewalls. Some smaller customers with six or eight firewalls may not opt for Panorama, but those with ten or more find it beneficial for centralized management.

I find Palo Alto Networks' technical support to be good, especially with premium support. The initial support level is handled by us, and if we encounter issues beyond our scope, Palo Alto's support team is efficient in resolving them. I would rate the support as a nine out of ten.

Positive

Installing Palo Alto Networks Panorama is easy, and connecting firewalls is a straightforward process. Deployment typically requires just one person, usually the firewall administrator. Maintenance is also easy, especially for those familiar with managing individual firewalls, and Panorama serves additional functions like log collection and setting up SD-WAN functionality, making it highly useful for networks with multiple firewalls.

In terms of return on investment, Palo Alto Networks Panorama is worthwhile, especially for larger networks with more than ten firewalls. The time saved and the consolidated view it provides investment pay off quickly, often within a couple of months.

In terms of pricing, Palo Alto Networks Panorama is moderate. It is very affordable when compared to more expensive firewalls. The license is yearly, and the price typically includes the initial license and support, with subsequent years requiring only twenty percent of the initial license cost for support. It is negotiable, and the overall cost depends on your network setup and the type of firewalls you are using.

Overall, I would rate Palo Alto Networks Panorama as an eight out of ten.

This solution allows us to centrally manage all devices. It's deployed on-premises.

There are 10,000 employees in my organization. We have two or three data centers across the globe.

It's easy to deploy any software or policies. Even if you have multiple devices across the globe, if you have urgent searching or maybe policy enforcement, you can do it easily.

The interface is easy to understand and manage. It's an intelligent device and can capture any spyware or vulnerabilities.

It's a leader in the market, and they observe the market requirement and upgrade the software accordingly.

The price could be lower. I would like to see remote VPN, like the Cisco client.

I've been working with Panorama for four years.

Panorama is stable.

It's scalable.

Setup isn't simple, but it's easy to migrate from another vendor.

Right now, we use 40 employees to manage the solution.

Cost-wise, it's very expensive. If you want to go with another vendor, Cisco and Fortinet are good for medium-size networks.

I would rate the cost 4 out of 5.

I would rate this solution 8 out of 10.

This is a solution that we implement for our customers.

It allows our customers to manage several firewalls from a central location. Some examples are securing the internet edge, data centers, micro-segmentation within the data centers, and securing their campuses.

The majority of the deployments are on-premises, however, we have more and more customers that are moving to the cloud. This solution is helping them to secure their cloud, as well.

Using this solution means that you can store logs for longer periods, up to perhaps two years, depending on your attached storage.

The most valuable feature is the ease of use that comes from the GUI. I have found that you can do almost everything from the GUI. You rarely have to log into the CLI, at perhaps once in six months or a year.

This solution offers a lot of advanced functionality that is easy to deploy and not available from other vendors. An example of this is credential theft. Credentials are sometimes collected through phishing emails or websites, and this solution helps to reduce that type of attack. Every five minutes, Palo Alto updates the list of phishing websites. You can set up a profile to ensure that if anybody tries to access such a website, whether it be Http or https, then the attempt will be blocked.

Palo Alto will automatically monitor the contents of POST messages and check to see if they contain credentials such as a username and password. If they do then it may indicate an attempt to steal credentials by an external site. The traffic will be blocked, the incident will be reported, and the admin will be notified.

This solution makes the lives of security admins very easy in cases, as an example, for configuring IPS. If you want to secure traffic between any two zones, we need to make sure that the applications are identified, the users are identified, and all of the security profiles are applied. These including antivirus, anti-spyware, and IPS. This solution makes the configuration very easy.

Each firewall is treated as a security sensor where the firewall talks to the cloud and a machine running artificial intelligence helps to detect malware or other threats. This is an important step in the protection that this solution offers.

The dual WAN functionality is missing in this solution.

This solution is very stable. It is a mature solution with a mature operating system. I have one firewall that has been running since 2010, and it is still upgrading to the latest software and still working.

This solution scales well.

We have many more than forty customers who are using this solution. One is a university with twenty thousand students, and we have deployments in large banks, different branches of government, etc. There are many thousands and thousands of users who are being secured.

The demand is very high and the standards are improving. Data centers are booming, and customers are looking for more enhancement in their platforms.

Technical support for this solution is awesome. However, I rarely open a case because their platform is very stable. Most of the cases are related to basic support, such as an RMA. I have seen other vendors like Fortinet or Cisco, where the enabling of a function means that you have to deal with support, and there are issues that come from that.

The initial setup of this solution is very easy. The length of time for deployment depends on how many policies you have, but the basic configuration should not take more than one hour.

For policy tuning, you need to review and tune the devices. Palo Alto has several tools to help with migration from the legacy approach of port-based policies to application-based policies.

Initially, Palo Alto looks expensive, but if you dig deeper then you will find that it is very comparable, or even cheaper than other solutions. For example, if you are looking for a one-gig next-generation firewall then you will start looking at the Palo Alto 850. If you compare the price of this to Fortinet, Worksense, Forcepoint, or Sophos, then you will see that they offer three or four gig performance at half the price. However, it is not true.

The reason for this is that not all of the security features are enabled. When you enable them, the performance degrades by more than ninety percent, and I have seen this happen in many different scenarios. This means that for the Palo Alto 1GB, it actually means 1GB with all of the functionality enabled. For the other vendors, you will never see their datasheet with all of the functionality enabled for a real environment with real traffic. It is based on lab traffic. Because the reality is that the performance of Palo Alto is better, it means that the price is better. When you compare models using real performance, and you do the calculation, you will see that Palo Alto is very comparable.

We have worked with many, many vendors, and this is the most mature next-generation firewall in the market. The performance of Palo Alto is very predictable, unlike other vendors who are faking their datasheet in terms of high-performance numbers that are unrelated to a real network, or real traffic.

Palo Alto provides numbers that reflect what is happening when all of the security functions are enabled, whereas other vendors do not show their performance will all of the functionality enabled. In reality, they are better than others. At the end of the day you are buying a security device, and you don't want to turn off any of the functionality to enhance your performance. Palo Alto is designed from day zero for performance and security.

This is the most mature next-generation firewall in the market and a solution that I strongly recommend.

The biggest lesson that I have learned from this solution is not to trust internet users. Whether it is regular users or employees, they do not like to be detected. They keep trying to work around the policies using different applications and peer-to-peer functionality. I have learned this because Palo Alto has full visibility to all types of traffic, and we're able to catch these scenarios and put security policies int place.

Palo Alto has done a lot towards closing gaps in security. Cloud security is not their only focus. It is concerned with the flows between VMs, storage, and containers. They are concerned with PCI requirements and compliance. They have also launched Cortex Analytics to help close gaps further. They are in a very good position to lead the future.

At the end of the day, everything is relative, and I would rate this solution a ten out of ten compared to other products. However, there is room for improvement.

Overall, I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

We primarily use the product for security purposes. 

Security is the most valuable aspect of this solution. We find that the security level is very high.

The user interface is very good. it's easy to navigate and very user-friendly.

The installation process is very simple.  

The product is scalable. 

The stability has been good.

We have found the technical support to be very helpful.

The configuration could be a bit better. For us, it's a critical aspect. We've noticed Cisco may be better in this regard. 

We only recently upgraded the solution within the last six months.

The stability of Palo Alto is good. We don't have issues with bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

We have found the solution to be scalable. Users can expand it if they need to.

Technical support from Palo Alto has been very good. We are quite satisfied with the service we receive. 

The installation process is not overly complex or difficult. It's very easy and quite straightforward. A company shouldn't have any issues with it.

We've looked at Cisco and noted that configurations seem to be easier using that product as opposed to Palo Alto. That said, Palo Alto is okay and still manageable. 

We are just customers and end-users.

I would rate the solution at a ten out of ten. We have been quite pleased with its capabilities.

At this time, I would definitely recommend the solution to other companies and organizations. 

We have firewalls in different locations and we want to manage them centrally to see all the information available. The best way to do this is by using this solution, we are able to monitor, manage, and have visibility of the networks.

The most valuable aspect of this solution is the ability to manage our devices centrally. Additionally, we can monitor the workforce connections, receive reports, and use the backup feature.

There are times when we are backing up a device centrally, we do not get a full backup. We are able to do a full backup of all the devices but when we attempt to backup a single device, it only does the backup of a few presets and not the full configuration.

In the future, they could improve by providing better management of the devices, such as bandwidth. 

I have been using the solution within the last 12 months.

The stability is good.

The solution is scalable. You are able to go through this solution and download from the internet upgrades to push them to the certain devices that need it.

The technical support is good. I receive a resolution from the technical support whenever I have dealt with them.

We sometimes have difficulty with the deployment configuration.

The solution requires a license and the price is higher than competitors. It would be better for them to decrease the price or maximize the discount.

I would recommend this solution to others if you have multiple sites and you want to manage them centrally.

I rate Palo Alto Networks Panorama a nine out of ten.

Our primary use cases are for web security, antivirus, and remote browsing. I'm a senior security specialist and we are integrators. 

The product is very efficient. 

This is a relatively expensive solution and I wouldn't recommend it for a stand-alone deployment. 

I've used this solution for five years.  

The solution is generally stable. There can be issues but it's generally related to power supply issues a company might have.

The solution is scalable. 

The technical support is very good. They're very responsive and always have engineers available to help. 

Positive

The initial setup takes around one week and is complex. All other firewall configurations are easier than Check Point. If you face any configuration issue, the only solution is to contact the Check Point team. Deployment generally requires an engineer. 

Licensing costs are cheaper than Palo Alto but more than other solutions. It's quite expensive. 

I recommend this solution unless you're in a location with a lot of power cuts. If you work for a software company, I'll always recommend this solution. If you're looking for a stand-alone deployment, then I would recommend Fortinet. I rate this solution nine out of 10. 

We use Panorama in order to centrally manage our firewall.

Basically, in my firewalls, I usually create new signatures and deploy them for each endpoint firewall in each region. It's great for creating signatures and activating activities.

It's pretty user-friendly. The user interface is good. 

The product has been stable. 

It's not part of my role to connect other devices to Panorama, so I don't know how the integration works. I maybe need a better understanding of how the policies of the signature work. For example, what does it mean to exclude an IP, and what are the policy rules and priorities? I need more knowledge about the signature policy and priorities.

Instead of searching their knowledge base in their website, maybe they can interact with us in the user interface to explain things better. If they had pop-ups to help guide us, we might get fewer failures along the way. Small notifications would be quite helpful. 

I've been working with the solution for one year. 

It is very stable, from my experience, at least. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It is reliable. I'd rate it an eight or nine out of ten in terms of stability.

I don't deal with scaling the solution. I am not sure what is possible. 

We have about five to ten users on the solution right now. 

I had some interactions with the technical support of Palo Alto.

They have been pretty good overall. We are mostly satisfied. 

Positive

We are using Aqua Sec. 

I did not handle the initial setup process. I can't speak to how it went. 

Our technical team manages the initial implementation process. 

In my experience in general, Palo Alto is very expensive.

We tested Palo Alto solution for Kubernetes, and the Aqua Sec and Aqua Sec was much cheaper than Palo Alto. If Palo Alto were less expensive like them, maybe we would've chosen them over Aqua Sec.

I've never compared the solution to other options. The company uses it and therefore I do too. 

We are working with version ten or somewhere around that. I am not sure of the exact version. 

I'm an end-user and I am non-technical. 

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. 

Our firewall uses IPS and other features. We have some firewall rules using the IPS feature. For the VPN users using the MFA authentication protocol, we are using the SAML protocol.

The application ID or App-ID feature is a good feature for us. We are also using IPS and content inspection features. The firewall can inspect the packages that are passing through my network.

It should have more connection with Threat Intelligence Cloud. They can also include features related to SecOps and automation API.

I have been using Palo Alto Networks Panorama for two years. 

It is awesome in terms of stability.

In terms of scalability, it is complicated because you have to scale up. Its scalability could be better. It would be great if you could scale out by integrating another node, and you are good to go. 

Currently, you have to buy new hardware with more power in terms of CPU and memory. You cannot simply increase the nodes in a cluster. In the last five months, we had to acquire new hardware because we are facing some higher usage in the Palo Alto hardware. We have about 15,000 users.

They provide good support. I would rate them an eight out of ten. 

They can increase the SOA time. When dealing with your case, sometimes, they take time. In the queue, you need to pass through one analyst and then go to the next level, which takes some time.

It was quite straightforward. In terms of technology, it was okay. As our environment is quite complicated, we had to deal with several phases of the implementation because we don't have only one appliance installed. We have implemented four Palo Altos. That's why it took some time, but it was just because of the complexity of our environment, not because of the solution itself. The whole project took one year.

We did some POCs to understand this solution. We had a lot of discussions in terms of the best way to implement this solution in our environment. It took the effort that this kind of solution normally takes.

It is not a cheap solution.

I would advise studying and understanding the best factors for implementing Palo Alto Networks Panorama and creating a roadmap to use all the features because it is not a cheap solution. Understand the possible ways to implement Palo Alto Networks Panorama and create a roadmap that implements all the features.

Palo Alto is constantly improving its solutions. They have been doing a great job and putting a great effort into their products. I would rate Palo Alto Networks Panorama a nine out of ten. We are satisfied with the solution.