We performed a comparison between Cisco Secure Firewall vs Palo Alto Network Wildfire based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Based on the parameters we compared, with all other factors being more or less equal, Cisco Secure Firewall comes in a bit ahead of Palo Alto simply because of their stronger support.
"It's a user-friendly firewall. Most of the tasks are very simple. It's simple to configure and troubleshoot this firewall."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are the ease of use and the UI. It has always provided me with what I needed. I have no need for additional costs that other solutions have, such as Sophos."
"The most valuable features are the possibility of having one fabric for switching on security."
"It is a good source for firewall protection."
"It is very flexible to use."
"Centralized monitoring, policy management, and virtualized appliances allow us to take control over our public and private infrastructure."
"Its user interface is good, and it is always working fine."
"The most valuable features of the solution are SD-WAN, filtering testing applications, web filtering, and the new VPN."
"We are using the Cisco AnyConnect for our end-user VPN with the ASA."
"Ease of configuration: It has gotten a lot easier to configure compared to the original Cisco Pix."
"VPN load balancing has been particularly essential for my connections to integrate via multiple time zones."
"An efficient, easy to deploy and dependable firewall solution."
"The most valuable feature is the access control list (ACL)."
"The interface is user-friendly."
"It helped us a lot with our VPNs for the home office during COVID. There has been more security and flexibility for VPNs and other applications."
"Valuable features include DMZ segmentation, and IDS and IPS."
"With this product, we receive the best monitoring and reports."
"They have many different options with Palo Alto WildFire and the set-up is quick. If you have all the details in hand, it does not take more than 15 minutes to deploy a firewall."
"The solution is easy to use and the Panorama feature is good. The software management or the malware blocking and some authentication management system are good."
"The most valuable feature is the cloud-based protection against zero-day malware attacks."
"The solution is completely integrated with all the other Palo Alto products. I think that it is the best part for endpoint protection. The firewall features include URL and DNS filtering, threat protection, and antivirus."
"It is a stable solution...It is a scalable solution."
"Installing this product as a datacenter firewall for segregation and segmentation, and also configuring policies between zones has improved my organization."
"For example, if a security Intel threat talks about an IOC. We can then go to our MSP and say, "Is there a signature for this particular type of malware that just came out?" And if they'll say yes, then we'll say, "Okay. Does it apply to these firewalls? And have we seen any hits on it?" There's absolutely value in it."
"The initial setup is complex."
"I haven't had a single issue since using Fortinet."
"As far as wanting more scalability or things in the network diagram, it's going to cost you."
"I would like some automated custom reporting."
"The web-cache feature which was previously on the FortiGate device, but was deleted with the recent upgrade should be returned. It was a very valuable feature for us."
"The inability to scale the FortiAnalyzer to match our growth necessitates the purchase of new hardware."
"It could use more templates for third-party site-to-site VPN setups other than FortiGate and Cisco."
"The cloud features and integration could be improved."
"An area for improvement is the graphical user interface. That is something that is coming up now. They could make the product more user-friendly. A better GUI is something that would make life much easier."
"Licensing is complex, and I'd like it to be simplified. This is an area for improvement."
"HTTPs inspection and higher throughput/spec would be good."
"Initial setup was fairly complex."
"It would be great if some of the load times were faster."
"Multiple WAN connections: Even though you can implement more than one interface to outside connections, it is lacking on load balances, etc."
"I would like to see an IE version of the solution where it is ruggedized."
"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."
"High availability features are lacking."
"The initial setup was complex."
"It's not really their problem, it's a problem across the board. There will always be problems with interrupted traffic. We have to set it up where we're playing a middle man game where we're stripping it out, looking at it, and then putting it back together and sending it on its way. That requires CPU cycles. And there's some overhead with that."
"The product fails to offer protection when dealing with high-severity vulnerabilities, making it an area of concern where improvements are required."
"The technical support response needs improvement."
"The cost of the solution is excessively high."
"There are certain changes that I was expecting in the previous version, and I hope that they are soon fixed. All of the problems that I have faced so far have been resolved."
"As a firewall and 360 degrees of security, there needs to be more maturity."
Cisco Secure Firewall is ranked 4th in Firewalls with 112 reviews while Palo Alto Networks WildFire is ranked 3rd in ATP (Advanced Threat Protection) with 21 reviews. Cisco Secure Firewall is rated 8.2, while Palo Alto Networks WildFire is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Cisco Secure Firewall writes "Includes multiple tools that help manage and troubleshoot, but needs SD-WAN for load balancing". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Palo Alto Networks WildFire writes "Intuitive, stable, and scalable zero-day threat prevention solution with a machine learning feature". Cisco Secure Firewall is most compared with Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX, Sophos XG, Juniper SRX Series Firewall and Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, whereas Palo Alto Networks WildFire is most compared with Proofpoint Email Protection, Juniper SRX Series Firewall, Fortinet FortiSandbox, Check Point SandBlast Network and Zscaler Internet Access.
We monitor all Firewalls reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.