We performed a comparison between Azure Firewall and Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Based on the parameters we compared, while Azure Firewall is certainly a solid option, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is equally good. Users of both products have been happy with the ROI results. What differentiates the two products is the stark difference in pricing, which may ultimately sway an organization’s purchasing decision.
"The inspection and web security features are most valuable."
"Overall security features and performance routing is good."
"The product is very stable, easy to troubleshoot, and configure, so it has reduced the time it takes for support."
"Advanced routing (RIP, OSPF, BGP, PBR). It gives you a seamless and simple integration into a large network."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are it is one of the most mature firewalls in the UTM bundle."
"We have been able to offer several services to customers in a single box."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are the ability to work in proxy mode, which other solutions, such as Palo Alto cannot. There are some features that are better that come at no extra license or subscriptions cost, such as basic SD-WAN. The DLT is useful, other solutions have the same feature too, such as Palo Alto."
"FortiGate has a very strong unified threat management system."
"It is easy for me to protect certain ports or even the IP addresses, as well as do whitelisting, blacklisting, and the FQDN when we want virtual machines connected and to protect certain websites."
"It provided ease of maintenance. If a new firewall was needed, we only had to run the pipelines for this. So, the maintenance was very easy."
"Azure Firewall's feature that I have found most valuable is its scalability."
"One of the best features is that it natively integrates with Azure Services and tools. When you have a third-party offering, that is not the case. But Azure Firewall provides a comprehensive and seamless security solution for your Azure resources."
"Azure Firewall is a cloud-native solution that removes the pain of load balancers."
"We secure the entry point to the virtual data center with the firewall."
"The most valuable feature is threat intelligence. It is based on filtering and can identify multiple threats."
"All its features are good. That's why we recommend it."
"The best features of this solution are URL filtering and traffic visibility."
"Its flexibility is the most valuable."
"The solution does a great job of identifying malicious items and vulnerabilities with URL filtering."
"Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls have a Single Pass Parallel Processing (SP3) Architecture, which has a different kind of code doing the work. It increases the packet processing rate. Whereas, without the SP3 Architecture, you are waiting for each job to complete, even if you have 100 jobs assigned."
"The application control portion of the solution is its most valuable aspect."
"Some of the valuable features in this solution are traffic monitoring, GUI functionality, and it very easy to troubleshoot if there is any problem that happens."
"Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls saves us time."
"Ability to log each and every application."
"They should make the rule sets more understandable for the end user. When you're trying to explain to somebody how a computer network is secured, sometimes it's difficult for an end user or customer to understand. If there was a way to make the terminology more accessible to the end user, the set up could be easier. They should translate the technical jargon to an easily relatable and understandable conversation for the end user, the customer, that would be brilliant. Particularly in an environment where the IT structure is audited regularly, there's always pressure from the auditor to up the standards and up the security and you get your USCERT's that come out and there's a warning about this and the customer will want to lock out so much and when you apply it they run into issue where they can't search the internet or print to their remote office. Of course they can't print to your remote office, they just locked it up. They should make the language more understandable for the customer. If there's a product out there that made the jargon understandable to John Q. Public, I would buy that."
"Fortigate's hardware capacities could be improved."
"It can be a little bit more user-friendly in terms of policy definition and implementation. It seems a little bit complicated, and it could be simplified."
"Its filtering is sometimes too precise or strict. We sometimes have to bypass and authorize some of the sites, but they get blocked. We know that they are trusted sites, but they are blocked, and we don't know why."
"There are just some services that aren't available. For example, the Ethernet or point-to-point protocols. They could add these services to their product offering - especially services for ISPs."
"Fortinet needs more memory to save the log files. We need it to save the logs on the hardware and not in the cloud. I know this feature is available in FortiCloud, but if we need this log locally, it is not available."
"The logging details need to be improved."
"There could be more integration between the logging and analytical platforms to make it more seamless and integrated."
"Azure Firewall definitely needs a broader feature base. It should be able to go all the way up to layer 7 when looking at applications and things like that."
"Azure Firewall has limited visibility for IDPS, no TLS inspection, no app ID, no user ID, no content ID, no device ID. There is no antivirus or anti-spyware. Azure Firewall doesn't scan traffic for malware unless it triggers an IDPS signature. There is no sandbox or machine learning functionality, meaning we are not protected from Zero-day threats. There is no DNS security and limited web categories."
"An Azure firewall is not a real firewall."
"The interface could be improved, it's not very user friendly."
"The solution doesn't offer the same capabilities of Fortinet. It should offer intrusion prevention and advance filtering. These are two very useful features offered on Fortinet that Azure lacks."
"The development area and QA area could be improved. With those improvements, we can improve projects and take even less time to implement them."
"This solution is not mature when it comes to handling perimeter traffic like internet browsing."
"The solution should incorporate features similar to competitors like split tunneling."
"Its price can be better. They should also provide some more examples of configurations online."
"It would be better to have more tools to control Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls. We don't have too many tools to access Palo Alto. For example, the IT team doesn't have access to it. We can see it physically and see if it's running or not. We need to contact a special team to receive that information. I would also like to see more reporting in the next release."
"Personally, I feel that their dashboards for reporting and things like that need some improvement."
"I would like the option to be able to block the traffic from a specific country in a few clicks."
"The reporting and visibility are phenomenal, but you don't get that information out of the box. They can email reports regularly, and the functionality is all there. However, a lot of it is based on an older model for email, where customers have in-house email servers. The small and medium-sized business customers I deal with are moving toward Office 365 or some other cloud-based mail and not maintaining their own internal mail servers."
"The price could be more friendly, which would be good for Palo Alto and us. If the price were a little lower, then it would be a viable option for mid-level businesses, who may not be able to deploy at the current price point."
"Lacks mobility between on-prem and cloud based."
"In the future, I would like to see more OTP features."
More Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls Pricing and Cost Advice →
Azure Firewall is ranked 21st in Firewalls with 33 reviews while Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is ranked 6th in Firewalls with 163 reviews. Azure Firewall is rated 7.2, while Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Azure Firewall writes "Easy to use and configure but could be more robust". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls writes "We get reports back from WildFire on a minute-by-minute basis". Azure Firewall is most compared with Fortinet FortiGate-VM, Microsoft Defender for Cloud, Palo Alto Networks VM-Series, Check Point NGFW and Cisco Secure Firewall, whereas Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is most compared with Check Point NGFW, Meraki MX, Sophos XG, Netgate pfSense and Cisco Secure Firewall. See our Azure Firewall vs. Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls report.
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