We performed a comparison between Fortinet FortiGate and Palo Alto Networks VM-Series based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Firewalls solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."Using this product makes the VPN seamless and almost invisible to me in the sense that I don't have to think about it."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are the APIs. They are the most widely known."
"The most valuable feature is the web filter."
"The most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiGate is load balancing. It can provide central management and VPNA. Additionally, it has enhanced our security environment."
"I appreciate FortiGate's flexibility, which allows for centralized management through FortiManager."
"Valuable features include the Web Application Firewall, and it even has DLP (data leak prevention)."
"It's very easy to set up, it's very easy to make policies and, for an organization, that means you don't need IT expert in firewalls. You just need to have somebody who knows a little bit of IT, and that's it. With other products, you need someone with a "Masters" degree in firewalls."
"The most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiGate is security. They are known for efficiency and are on the top of Gartner Quadrant reviews. Fortinet FortiGate has an easy-to-use platform with a good graphical interface. The configuration is simple and the solution provides an overall good layer of security."
"It provides complete security posture from end-to-end. This has given us better visibility into what our security aspects are."
"Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is easy to maintain...From a security point of view, I find Palo Alto Networks VM-Series to be a better product compared to the other solutions in the market."
"It scales linearly with load and no issues."
"The tool's cloud version makes application migration easy."
"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."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is the zero-trust security architecture."
"You already can scale it if you put it in Auto Scaling groups. If you put it in a load balancer, it should already be able to scale."
"We use the product on our Azure network firewalls."
"Sometimes you do need to know some CLI commands, so it's a bit harder for technicians or new people that don't know it."
"A sandbox would be good in order to be able to inspect the emails containing spam and be able to validate the emails that contain malware, prior to delivering to the customer."
"I think they need to improve more in order to be a competitor with the leaders of the field."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve by having more capabilities for troubleshooting VPN connections. For example, I do get some feedback about the current status, but I could use some history and logging of important events. The information is logged in our Syslog server, but I could use that information from the device. If they could provide a GUI to have some more insight on what's going with my VPN would be useful."
"They need faster serviceability and more security features."
"It would be a benefit if Fortinet would release a one-stop solution that is better integrated with other products and an automated emergency response system."
"There is room for improvement related to the logging and reporting aspect."
"It claims it does DLP, but the degree and level of controls are very basic."
"There are some delays that I have observed when my company communicates with Palo Alto's support engineers."
"AWS doesn't integrate well with third-party firewalls."
"We don't know how it will scale once we start putting more load on it."
"The product could be better in terms of performance than one of its competitors."
"The one issue that I didn't like is that the SNMP integration with interfaces didn't record the interface counters."
"In the next release, I would like to see better integration between the endpoints and the firewalls."
"They made only a halfhearted attempt to put in DLP (Data Loss Prevention)."
"It'll help if Palo Alto Networks provided better documentation."
Fortinet FortiGate is ranked 2nd in Firewalls with 306 reviews while Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is ranked 10th in Firewalls with 53 reviews. Fortinet FortiGate is rated 8.4, while Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Fortinet FortiGate writes "It's a reliable solution that's easy to install and cheaper than competitors ". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Palo Alto Networks VM-Series writes "Many features are optimized for troubleshooting real-time scenarios, saving a lot of time". Fortinet FortiGate is most compared with Sophos XG, Cisco Secure Firewall, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX and WatchGuard Firebox, whereas Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is most compared with Azure Firewall, Fortinet FortiGate-VM, Cisco Secure Firewall, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls and Juniper SRX Series Firewall. See our Fortinet FortiGate vs. Palo Alto Networks VM-Series report.
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Hello Tarun, we have been designing solutions with Palo Alto Networks NGFW for 6 years now and we have 95%+ customer retention.
I would suggest looking into customer requirement on the basis of the following things, and priority is given by the customer:
1. Internet Bandwidth
2. No. Of users - In-house and users connecting from home/outside organization network.
3. Security features required - Sandoxing, DNS Security, etc.
4. Port density required on the firewall.
5. SSL decryption.
6. Deployment - On-prem or virtual DC or on Cloud.
7. HA requirement
8. MFA requirement
9. Local presence of Palo Alto/Fortinet expert team.
10. Integration for other (operational) solutions like SD-WAN, Load balancer, etc
11. Integration with other security solution like EDR/XDR or XSOAR
12. Customer's current solution (firewall/UTM and engineers/IT team working on it).
13. Customer's current IT Team strategy
14. Customer future IT strategy (to move on the cloud, etc)
15. Customer's growth and scalability in 5 years.
16. Reporting and logging requirement.
17. Customer's budget for IT Security.
Well, I guess with these parameters, and customer's priority you can recommend them a suitable solution.
Palo Alto NGFW will be best recommended for the following:
1. Deployment on the cloud - It has a very stable PANOS for VM-Series
2. Security Innovations - Considering security, in terms of today and future, Palo Alto is disruptive and groundbreaking.
3. Predictive Bandwidth - Palo Alto NGFW gives us Predictive bandwidth, and hence, once sized, it will last longer than defined. The throughput numbers are test cases of real-world scenarios, and after enabling all the features. It operates on its patented SP3 architecture and defines device throughput after enabling all security features and operational functionalities.
4. Integration with EDR/XDR and SOAR/XSOAR platforms.
5. User/SSL VPN - When you are planning for SSL VPN on Palo Alto NGFW, it will not charge you additionally for users connecting their Windows or MAC systems on NGFW over SSL VPN. For users that are Android/IOS/Linux/etc, and required additional HIP checks and Clientless VPN, there is a single subscription you will need to purchase.
6. Sandboxing - Palo Alto came up with Wildfire which is a threat intel cloud, which can be termed as Palo Alto Network's Sandboxing solution, but it does much more than that. it has a response SLA of 5 mins, where it can convert any unknown to known in 5 minutes or less. Also, after it identifies the file, it auto-updates other engines like URL filtering, DNS Security, Anti-Spyware, Bad IP and Domain list, CNC tunnel signatures.
7. Reporting and alerting - Foremost reason why users started implementing Palo Alto firewalls inside their network was to get the visibility - in terms of User-level visibility, Network traffic (depth to application layer), and Content (files and threats) level visibility. Also, logging and reporting is provisioned on the appliance itself and no additional subscription or any appliance is required, unless the customer requires the storage of logs for more time frame. The NGFW also co-relates all the events and alerts to give critical visibility like Botnets and hosts and users accessing malicious websites, or resolving malicious domains.
8. EDL - again external dynamic lists(EDL) helps you reduce the attack surface by minimizing the traffic to and from Malicious and Bad - IPs and Domains. This list is automatically updated by Palo Alto Networks by default by its threat research teams (Unit 42), Threat Intel (Wildfire), DNS Security module, and other sources. It has also a provision for you and/or the customer to integrate other third-party URL lists to be blocked.
9. Security features:
-- DNS filtering - by intercepting DNS traffic, you will not need any additional solution and/or modification in your current network for protection against threats related to DNS traffic. Its DNS module is cloud-based and tightly integrated with other modules and features of NGFW.
-- Credential phishing - This feature will avoid users sharing/uploading their credentials which are the same to access internal resources and external websites. This will prevent the leak of user credentials.
-- ML Powered NGFW - Currently, PA NGFW is the only firewall powered by ML to prevent unknown threats in real-time.
10. Application layer firewall - complete identification of all and any traffic based on application rather than port and protocol. Not only the known but also if the application is not identified it will classify that traffic as unknown. Also, you can create a custom application as required.
and many more...
Benefits in Fortigate firewall will be:
1. More port density.
2. Better SD-WAN configuration
3. Easy User interface and hence lacks granular controls.
4. Provides seamless integration with FortiToken for MFA(additional cost).
5. Seamless integration with Forti Load balancer.
6. Low cost (than Palo Alto least).
Thanks
Darshil Sanghvi
Palo Alto, Fortinet, and Checkpoint are the best NGFW. You can choose one of them.
The Fortinet advantage is the Security Fabric. Many other Fortinet's products (switches, AP, EDS, XDR, DDoS, FortiClient, etc) are integrated and a Fortigate can communicate with another product to block an attack.
Because PA has FPGA based architecture, which no other firewall has, due to this firewall processes the traffic from all the engines simultaneously. it increase efficiency of the product and provides way better throughput as compare to other vendors. The performance of security engines of PA are better then other vendors. PA provides on-box reporting, you have to purchase forti-analyzer separately for reporting in fortinet. PA provides granular view of policies, providing insight to you which policies are used in and which are not. it also provides you the feature, that tells you which of the firewall's features are not being utilized, this way you can plan your renewal to only purchase the feature you need.
I have FortiGates and the last upgrade of firmware cut internet traffic if you use Inspection Mode Proxy-Based, recommended and more secure, you have to use Flow-based, less secure. I don't work with Palo Alto
I strongly recommend Sophos XG Firewall.
Take a look
Sophos Firewall: Synchronized Next-Gen Firewall
I think you can go with Palo Alto...
Palo Alto
I would recommend Palo Alto