We performed a comparison between Cisco IOS Security and Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls 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."The usage in general is pretty good."
"The solution is highly scalable because they have devices that can handle a large amount of traffic."
"FortiGate Secure SD-WAN includes best-of-breed next-generation firewall (NGFW) security, SD-WAN, advanced routing, and WAN optimization capabilities, delivering a security-driven networking WAN edge transformation in a unified offering."
"It is useful for protecting and segregating the internal networks from the internet. Most of our customers also use the FortiGate client to connect to their offices by using the VPN client, and of course, they usually activate the antivirus, deep inspection, and intrusion prevention services. They are also using it for web filtering and implementing various policies dealing with forwardings, NAT, etc."
"The technical support in our region is excellent."
"It's an easy solution to set up."
"The pipe filter application is an outstanding feature."
"It's very easy to configure."
"Cisco is head-and-shoulders above all of the competition when it comes to technical support."
"We are able to filter a lot of traffic especially when a lot of the traffic is in layer 7."
"We use Cisco IOS Security mostly for routers to route off the firewall. It's a next-generation device."
"Completely integrates branch offices with perimeter security."
"Cisco IOS Security is very robust and works very well."
"Cisco products are very secure and integrate easily with other devices."
"The technical is excellent."
"It covers everything we need it to without looking to secondary solutions."
"In general, its performance and ease of use are the most valuable. Its performance is good, stable, and reliable. The user interface is friendly and easy to use. Customers find it easy to work with and easy to learn."
"Their Prisma log collection is pretty great. Our product collects the logs, and it definitely makes the configuration of log collection easier."
"Operationally, it is easier, and the manageability and their security features are good."
"It is very scalable."
"DNS Security is a good feature because, in the real world with web threats, you can block all web threats and bad sites. DNS Security helps to prevent those threats. It's also very helpful with Zero-day attacks because DNS Security blocks all DNS requests before any antivirus would know that such requests contain a virus or a threat to your PC or your network."
"Protection from a single packet and ease of making security rules."
"Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls enable efficient application search, viewing, and configuration access across various services for different user groups within our company."
"The technology's very good. We have had a lot of good experience with this solution."
"I need user-behavior analytics, to find threat scenarios from inside the organization, insider attacks. That would be very helpful for us. In addition, I would like next-generation features for small and medium businesses. These businesses require UTM, all in one product. Fortinet must include it."
"While FortiGate is cheaper than most other solutions, we're seeing increased license renewal costs. Most of our clients are asking for more significant discounts because the price is going up."
"FortiGate is really good. We have been using it for quite some time. Initially, when we started off, we had around 70 plus devices of FortiGate, but then Check Point and Palo Alto took over the place. From the product perspective, there are no issues, but from the account perspective, we have had issues. Fortinet's presence in our company is very less. I don't see any Fortinet account managers talking to us, and that presence has diluted in the last two and a half or three years. We have close to 1,500 firewalls. Out of these, 60% of firewalls are from Palo Alto, and a few firewalls are from Check Point. FortiGate firewalls are very less now. It is not because of the product; it is because of the relationship. I don't think they had a good relationship with us, and there was some kind of disconnect for a very long time. The relationship between their accounts team and my leadership team seems to be the reason for phasing out FortiGate."
"Fortinet should focus on enhancing the capabilities of FortiGate by consolidating its various products, such as FortiGate Cloud, FortiManager, and FortiAnalyzer."
"Some of the features in the graphical user interface do not work, which requires that we used the command-line-interface."
"Lacks sufficient security options."
"It could use more templates for third-party site-to-site VPN setups other than FortiGate and Cisco."
"There were quite a few problems with the stability of the system."
"The product's technical support services need improvement."
"There could be a bit more functions on offer that could make it easier to use."
"Cisco IOS Security could improve its security features. There are competitors that have some additional security features, such as Fortinet FortiGate. Additionally, there should be better synchronization with Cisco IOS Security and other vendors, and improved AI features would be beneficial."
"Cisco very slowly introduces and implements the products, unlike other brands."
"There's a technology called SD-WAN that we would like to see. We are unable to handle multiple connections or to automatically load balance. I would like to have a feature that enables us to automatically prepare for load balancing."
"While Cisco IOS Security is stable and scalable, I would like to see it improved to be even better."
"With respect to user-friendliness, it is a command-line interface and those with such experience will get along just fine, whereas others may struggle."
"The configuration should be easier in the solution."
"The initial configuration is complicated to set up."
"I would like them to bring in some features that would encourage traffic shaping or bandwidth routing, like other UTM firewalls, because the solution should be capable of limiting the bandwidth for rules."
"I would like to see some Machine Learning because I have observed new types of attacks that are able to bypass existing security rules."
"The solution could be more cost-effective."
"The only area I can see for improvement is that Palo Alto should do more marketing."
"It is a complete product, but the SSL inspection feature requires some improvements. We need to deploy certificates at each end point to completely work out the UTM solutions. If you enable SSL encryption, it is a tedious process. It takes a lot of time to deploy the certificates to all endpoints. Without SSL inspection, UTM features will not work properly. So, we are forced to enable this SSL inspection feature."
"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."
"We would like to see improvement in the web interface for this solution, so that it can handle updates without manual intervention to put the data in order."
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Cisco IOS Security is ranked 23rd in Firewalls with 46 reviews while Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is ranked 6th in Firewalls with 161 reviews. Cisco IOS Security is rated 8.0, while Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Cisco IOS Security writes "A mature product with good integration capabilities, however, it needs to be more affordable". 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". Cisco IOS Security is most compared with Cisco Secure Firewall, Meraki MX, Fortinet FortiOS, Netgate pfSense and Palo Alto Networks URL Filtering with PAN-DB, whereas Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is most compared with Check Point NGFW, Azure Firewall, Meraki MX, Sophos XG and Netgate pfSense. See our Cisco IOS Security vs. Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls report.
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