Palo Alto Networks Firewalls and Management Servers are an excellent product. These devices are uniform in the way they provide protection from the largest model down to the smallest. Compared to Check Point where you have to buy a "soft blade" for each feature set you want, you buy 4 or 5 licenses with Palo Alto and everything the box has available you can use.
There is no doubt that other companies are playing catch up with PA. The problem is those companies are trying to recreate what Palo Alto did, and by the time the get there Palo Alto will most likely have moved on. They are an innovative company and Palo Alto created an environment in the security sector that forced other companies to re-evaluate how they firewall.
There are two areas where Palo Alto has it over the competition right now, aside from the Layer 7 firewalling aspect. They partnered with VMWare to provide a solution to firewall at the virtual server level. Before this traffic had to leave the VM Cluster to cross a firewall. Now you can implement and protect against threats within the VM Cluster. and number two, is Wildfire. Wildfire subscription scanning across all companies that subscribe and all other companies benefiting from as close to zero day attack as possible.
Bottom line these firewalls are the leader in the industry. They provide the most features for the best price.
Cybersecurity & IT Operations Professional (VirtualCxO) at BrainWave Consulting Company, LLC
Consultant
Top 20
Jun 17, 2014
Palo Alto Networks technology is very, very good. It is robust, enterprise grade stuff that has excellent performance and is essentially a big boy's UTM solution. That said, it can be very expensive, as compared to other solutions, and it is quite complex to configure until you get familiar with the methodology and approach that Palo Alto takes to firewalls.
In a few years, they will see more competition from Fortinet, especially as Fortinet customers grow into bigger hardware. I say this because their feature sets are very comparable, but Fortinet has an easier to manage interface, and better pricing.
The one advantage they (PA) have right now is that their lower end equipment has all the same features as the higher end equipment, whereas Fortinet has been skimming away some features from the low-end.
Juniper cannot effectively compete on price or performance, and the low-end Juniper products have a different OS from the higher end family.
Learn what your peers think about Palo Alto Networks WildFire. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: January 2026.
Palo Alto Networks WildFire is a highly effective cloud-based advanced threat protection (ATP) solution that organizations in a wide variety of fields trust to help them keep safe from digital threats. It is designed to enable businesses to confront even the most evasive threats and resolve them. It combines many techniques to maximize the level of threat protection available to users.
Palo Alto Networks WildFire Benefits
Some of the ways that organizations can benefit by choosing to deploy...
Palo Alto Networks Firewalls and Management Servers are an excellent product. These devices are uniform in the way they provide protection from the largest model down to the smallest. Compared to Check Point where you have to buy a "soft blade" for each feature set you want, you buy 4 or 5 licenses with Palo Alto and everything the box has available you can use.
There is no doubt that other companies are playing catch up with PA. The problem is those companies are trying to recreate what Palo Alto did, and by the time the get there Palo Alto will most likely have moved on. They are an innovative company and Palo Alto created an environment in the security sector that forced other companies to re-evaluate how they firewall.
There are two areas where Palo Alto has it over the competition right now, aside from the Layer 7 firewalling aspect. They partnered with VMWare to provide a solution to firewall at the virtual server level. Before this traffic had to leave the VM Cluster to cross a firewall. Now you can implement and protect against threats within the VM Cluster. and number two, is Wildfire. Wildfire subscription scanning across all companies that subscribe and all other companies benefiting from as close to zero day attack as possible.
Bottom line these firewalls are the leader in the industry. They provide the most features for the best price.
WRS
Palo Alto Networks technology is very, very good. It is robust, enterprise grade stuff that has excellent performance and is essentially a big boy's UTM solution. That said, it can be very expensive, as compared to other solutions, and it is quite complex to configure until you get familiar with the methodology and approach that Palo Alto takes to firewalls.
In a few years, they will see more competition from Fortinet, especially as Fortinet customers grow into bigger hardware. I say this because their feature sets are very comparable, but Fortinet has an easier to manage interface, and better pricing.
The one advantage they (PA) have right now is that their lower end equipment has all the same features as the higher end equipment, whereas Fortinet has been skimming away some features from the low-end.
Juniper cannot effectively compete on price or performance, and the low-end Juniper products have a different OS from the higher end family.
-ASB