We performed a comparison between Cisco Secure Firewall and Palo Alto Networks K2-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."This product is definitely scalable."
"Customers are more inclined towards FortiGate because of application control, web filtering, and anti-spam features. The support from the FortiGate team is good, and price-wise, it is affordable."
"The IPsec tunnels are very easily created, and quite interoperable with devices from other vendors."
"FortiGate has a strong security topic which allows all of the Fortinet devices to communicate and share information which makes their security more powerful."
"It is easy to use. We chose this product for the possibility to have virtual domains (VDOMs). We are building another company in the group, and we would like to split the firewalling rules and policies between these two companies. Each company would be able to manage its own policies and security rules, which is an advantage of Fortinet FortiGate. We can define VDOMs, and every company can manage its own VDOM as if it has its own physical firewall, but in fact, we would be using the same physical appliance because we are also using the same internet lines. So, it allows us to reuse the existing resources without the disadvantage of having to compromise on policies and security. Each company can choose its own way of working."
"Valuable features include the Web Application Firewall, and it even has DLP (data leak prevention)."
"I really like the captive portal feature for our guest network. It has nice VLAN features in terms of separating our network. The anti-virus is also good."
"The scalability is good in Fortinet FortiGate."
"Beats sophisticated cyber attacks with a superior security appliance."
"One of the most valuable features of Firepower 7.0 is the "live log" type feature called Unified Event Viewer. That view has been really good in helping me get to data faster, decreasing the amount of time it takes to find information, and allowing me to fix problems faster. I've found that to be incredibly valuable because it's a lot easier to get to some points of data now."
"The Firepower IPS, based on Snort technology, has an amazing detection engine and historical analysis capability of files that eases threat investigations a lot."
"Logging is great. It will show when it reaches its capacity before it is too late, unless you have bursts of traffic."
"It's the VPN side of things that has been most useful for us. It allows us to secure our users even when they're working from home. They are able to access all of our resources, no matter where they are in the world."
"The initial setup was completely straightforward."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is AMP (Advanced Malware Protection), as this is really needed to protect against cyber threats."
"The ASA has seen significant improvement due to the IPS."
"The most valuable feature of Palo Alto Networks K2-Series is the performance which is above their competitors. The throughput they have delivered is good. When we used other solutions they failed the deployment when we were using different rules. They have a theory perform performance light and performance degradation. However, Palo Alto Networks K2-Series never fails in that scenario."
"I like the tool's WildFire feature."
"The most valuable feature of Palo Alto Networks K2-Series is its management abilities. Additionally, the updates are very good."
"It is a stable solution."
"The most valuable feature of Palo Alto Networks K2-Series is the configuration, it is very clear."
"As long as the solution is kept updated, it's pretty stable."
"Palo Alto has an approach that makes the configuration easier not only for the customers but also for the IT help for the customers."
"I have found the threat profile feature valuable."
"MTBF: Hardware failure is more common when compared to SonicWall or Cisco ASA."
"They sometimes hide some features and if you want to enable them, you have to go in the CLI, enable the feature and configure it through the CLI. Customers, typically, like everything to be done by the GUI."
"The main aspect of FortiGate that could be improved is load balancing. Our management team does not want to buy another appliance for only load balancing."
"The solution could be more user friendly."
"Fortinet FortiGate can improve by integrating the web application firewall and the DDoS protection part of the solution. Having a WAF feature, web application firewall, and proxy together would be a good benefit."
"I would like to see improvements made to the dashboard and UI, as well as to the reporting."
"My only complaint about FortiGate is a lack of QinQ VLAN tunneling. I haven't found this feature in any Fortinet product. You can do this on all Cisco routers, including the smaller models. However, QinQ isn't available on the biggest, most expensive Fortinet units. They still don't have that. I think now we're on software version 6.0, and they still haven't found a solution for QinQ. It isn't a dealbreaker, but that's my main complaint."
"The renewal price and the availability could be improved."
"We have to rely on Cisco ASDM to access the firewall interface. This needs improvement. Because we have a web-based interface, and it is a lot more user-friendly."
"One of the challenges we've had with the Cisco ASA is the lack of a strong controller or central management console that is dependable and reliable all the time."
"They should allow customers to talk to them directly instead of having to go through the reseller."
"Cisco missed the mark with all the configuration steps. They are a pain and, when doing them, it looks as if we're using a very old technology — yet the technology itself is not old, it's very good. But the front-end configuration is very tough."
"We wanted to integrate Firepower with our solution, but it didn't have the capability to accommodate our bandwidth since they only had two 10 gig interfaces on the box. We run way more than that through our network because we are a service provider, providing Internet to our customers."
"Report generation is an area that should be improved."
"We were also not too thrilled when Cisco announced that in the upcoming new-gen ASA, iOS was not going to be supported, or if you install them, they will not be able to be managed through the Sourcefire. However, it seems like Cisco is moving away from the ASA iOS to the Sourcefire FireSIGHT firmware for the ASA. We haven't had a chance to test it out."
"The license system is also good but it's not very impressive. It's a very regular licensing system. They call it a smart license which means that your device will connect to the internet. This is a little bit of a headache for some customers. It doesn't make the customer happy because most of the customers prefer not to connect their firewall or system to the internet."
"The product should get frequent updates allowing us to add new signatures."
"Higher levels of support are excellent but new users may need additional options."
"Palo Alto doesn't have extended visibility to the end point in their firewalls."
"If we have issues, they take anywhere from two days to a week to respond. I even wrote to their CEO because there was no response. When it comes to support, this is the worst company."
"The technical support, and how they provide it to the client, needs to be improved."
"It would be really helpful to have dashboards that provide information on IOC blockings such as where and how many. It will also be good to know how many hashing files have been reported. It would also be nice to have easy access to this information. Otherwise, it's a painful, manual task."
"The URL Filtering module needs to have more categories added to it."
"Its networking features could be better."
Cisco Secure Firewall is ranked 4th in Firewalls with 404 reviews while Palo Alto Networks K2-Series is ranked 28th in Firewalls with 29 reviews. Cisco Secure Firewall is rated 8.2, while Palo Alto Networks K2-Series is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Cisco Secure Firewall writes "Highlights and helps us catch Zero-day vulnerabilities traveling across our network". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Palo Alto Networks K2-Series writes "Easy to implement and manage, and the documentation is good". Cisco Secure Firewall is most compared with Palo Alto Networks WildFire, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX, Sophos XG and Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, whereas Palo Alto Networks K2-Series is most compared with Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls. See our Cisco Secure Firewall vs. Palo Alto Networks K2-Series report.
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