We performed a comparison between Cisco Secure Firewall and Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Features: Cisco Secure Firewall is commended for its threat defense, dashboard visibility, seamless integration with other Cisco products, and ease of use. Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls are highly regarded for their embedded machine learning, robust security capabilities, and intuitive interface.
Both the Cisco Secure Firewall and Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls have numerous areas for improvement. The Cisco Secure Firewall needs enhancement in network performance, policy administration, advanced features, management interface, patching and bug fixing, integration with other tools, and centralized management. Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls can improve in terms of customization, next-generation capabilities, rule creation, monitoring interface, bug fixing, configuration simplicity, support processes, ACC tool, IPv6 support, VPN functionality, GUI interface, training materials, SSL inspection, and external dynamic list feature.
Service and Support: Customer opinions on the customer service of Cisco Secure Firewall vary, as some customers appreciate the technical support they receive, while others encounter delays and challenges. Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls also receive mixed reviews for their customer service. While some customers commend the expertise of their support team, others express frustration with contacting the team and enduring lengthy wait times.
Ease of Deployment: The setup process for Cisco Secure Firewall can be more or less complex depending on the user's familiarity and environment. The initial setup for Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is described as simple, uncomplicated, and effortless. Users appreciate its user-friendly and efficient design, with readily available training materials for easy comprehension.
Pricing: Reviewers have differing opinions on the setup cost of Cisco Secure Firewall. Some consider it expensive due to additional expenses for licensing, support, and hardware. Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls are generally acknowledged to have higher pricing. Reviewers note that Palo Alto Networks offers competitive hardware prices and discounts for multi-year licenses.
Comparison Results: Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is the preferred choice when compared to Cisco Secure Firewall. Users find the initial setup of Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls to be straightforward and easy. Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls stands out for its embedded machine learning capabilities, strong security features, and user-friendly interface.
"We use a southern institution that's audited for IT security and the reporting that automatically comes off the unit makes it much easier to meet compliance standards and makes it easier as far as the amount of time that has to be spent to compile that information. If you get your reporting set up correctly when you initially set it up, you just select the one you want and hit print. The auditing trail on it is the best feature."
"It's great for capturing the traffic and troubleshooting it."
"The FortiGate controls the user's activities and maximizes my bandwidth use overall."
"Unified Threat Management (UTM) features."
"The user interface (UI) is very, very good."
"The main reason why I purchased the particular unit was that it had good reviews and what other people were saying as far as its completeness and its leading capabilities in terms of endpoint security was very good."
"FortiGate's web and URL filtering are unlike any other firewall I've used. The functionality of URL filtering in those solutions is problematic because everything is encrypted, and firewalls can't break that encryption protocol. Fortinet has an SSL proxy, so the encryption is done before the packet ever leaves the FortiGate. The URL filter is definitely one of the most helpful features."
"The solution is very user-friendly."
"A powerful enterprise security solution that is dependible."
"Cisco Secure Firewall has improved our customers' security posture because it offers Next-Gen features, granularity, and reporting on the back of it. You can see the amount of users accessing Office 365, for example, and whether they're having a good or bad experience. You can see the threats that are coming into your network. You can see anyone who is compromised from within your network."
"Cisco ASA Firewall is a well known product. They're always updating it, and you know what they're doing and that it works."
"It's got the capabilities of amassing a lot of throughput with remote access and VPNs."
"This solution made our organization more secure and gave us better control."
"It is very stable."
"Its ability to work with the traffic."
"Cisco's technical support is the best and that's why everybody implements their products."
"The application IDs, application controls, URL filtering, visibility, monitoring, and reporting are the most valuable features."
"I love the Policy Optimizer feature. I am also completely happy with its stability."
"The application awareness feature that recognizes application IDs and vulnerability protection are Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls' most valuable features."
"It helps the organization function better by virtue of cleaner and more predictive Internet access and usage being conducted by the employees and constituents of the company. It helps ensure that they have a stronger security posture. It is preventive medicine If you have DNS Security in place. You will be happy you had it. If you don't have it, you may never need it. However, if you did need it, and didn't have it, you will wish that you did. It is one of those things, like insurance."
"Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls enable efficient application search, viewing, and configuration access across various services for different user groups within our company."
"The solution does a great job of identifying malicious items and vulnerabilities with URL filtering."
"I typically get involved with it when it comes to audit and compliance and having to gather evidence of those firewalls, routers, and rule sets. The evidence that I typically need is there."
"It's very important that Palo Alto NG Firewalls embed machine learning into the core of the firewall to provide inline, real-time attack prevention. That increases our security posture... The firewall is able to capture it and flag it and it is easy to mitigate as soon as we see something like that happening, to secure the environment more, in real time."
"In the balance between links feature normally you can just choose one option to balance. It would be better for the solution to have more than one option, preferably three."
"The feedback that I have received is that the performance could be better, and the user experience is not as good compared to a previous solution we used. It could be more user-friendly. Of course, it still works fine for our operations."
"Its price could be better."
"The license renewal process, annual renewal price, and the web application firewall features should be improved."
"Difficult to add or define, and not that easy to configure and manage."
"The routing capability on the FortiGate devices has room for improvement."
"The support system could be improved."
"I don't like that anything more than very basic reporting is not included."
"Cisco should improve its user interface design. There is a deep learning curve to the product if you are a newcomer."
"There is no support here in Georgia. If something goes wrong, support is not always very helpful with the other firewalls or other products."
"In the past though, colleagues have had issues during the upgrade process. The failover didn't work and production was down."
"Its user interface is good, but it could be better. Currently, you have to know what to do before you can manage a device. If you don't know what to do, you can mess things up. There are some devices that are easier, such as FortiGate. The user interface of FortiGate is more intuitive. It is very easy to log in and configure things."
"The ability to integrate (as options) all-in-one features -- like anti-spam, anti-virus, etc."
"The solution has not had any layer upgrades. It does not have layer five and upwards, it only has up to layer four. This has caused some problems for us."
"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."
"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 solution has normal authentication, but does not have two-factor or multi-factor authentication. There is room for development there."
"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 solution doesn't support routing in virtual firewall creation, and we want that to be enabled."
"The price is high and has room for improvement."
"Sometimes some of the applications the customer has do not respond as they normally should."
"I would like the option to be able to block the traffic from a specific country in a few clicks."
"The user interface can be significantly simplified."
"The scalability compared to other products is not good. You need to change the box whenever you want your number of connection sessions to increase."
More Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls Pricing and Cost Advice →
Cisco Secure Firewall is ranked 4th in Firewalls with 404 reviews while Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is ranked 6th in Firewalls with 161 reviews. Cisco Secure Firewall is rated 8.2, while Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is rated 8.6. 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 NG Firewalls writes "We get reports back from WildFire on a minute-by-minute basis". Cisco Secure Firewall is most compared with Palo Alto Networks WildFire, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX, Sophos XG and Juniper SRX Series Firewall, whereas Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is most compared with Check Point NGFW, Azure Firewall, Meraki MX, Sophos XG and OPNsense. See our Cisco Secure Firewall vs. Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls report.
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Pricewise Cisco. But PA has better rating.
Palo Alto is better.
In my Oppinion, Palo Alto is better than Cisco. You can refer in NSS Lab 2018 & 2019 DCSG-SVM, NSS-labs-NGIPS-Comparative-Report, and some report from Forester about Zero Trust Architecture, and Gartner SASE report to discus more advantages of Palo Alto in the future