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.
"The most valuable features are that it is very simple to configure and to manage."
"Fortinet FortiGate's most valuable features are ease of use, flexibility, and most of the configuration we can be done using the GUI. When we compare Fortinet FortiGate with other solutions the firewall policy are very easy to understand."
"It's user-friendly and easy to operate."
"A strong point of FortiGate is that the graphical interface is complete and easy to use, especially if we think there is a list of operations that we are able to perform inside."
"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."
"I think that the UTM features are the most value, as it truly protects my infrastructure."
"One of the valuable features is a standardized OS."
"Fortinet FortiGate is stable. It's used across all the countries, this is the way most multinationals run their system."
"This solution made our organization more secure and gave us better control."
"I haven't had any major problems so I haven't had to open a ticket with technical support."
"The most valuable features of Cisco firewalls are the IPS and IDS items. We find them very helpful. Those are the biggest things because we have some odd, custom-made products in our environment. What we've found through their IPS and IDS is that their vulnerability engines have caught things that are near-Zero-day items, inside of our network."
"Network segmentation is the most valuable feature."
"Simple to deploy, stable."
"It is one of the fastest solutions, if not the fastest, in the security technology space. This gives us peace of mind knowing that as soon as a new attack comes online that we will be protected in short order. From that perspective, no one really comes close now to Firepower, which is hugely valuable to us from an upcoming new attack prevention perspective."
"The remote access, VPN, and ACL features are valuable. We are using role-based access for individuals."
"The setup was straightforward. I was happy with the configuration and deployment of the solution, as it was quick."
"Remote access is excellent."
"High availability with active-active and active-passive modes."
"The most valuable features of the solution are user-friendliness, price, good security, and cloud-related options."
"The scalability is acceptable."
"The most valuable features are all of the security features in terms of protection and SSL and VPN."
"The cloud-based services are a nice feature."
"The technical support is good."
"We get support in the free version."
"The security of Fortinet FortiGate could improve."
"The solution could be more evenly structured."
"One area for improvement is the performance on bandwidth demands for smaller devices, as well as better web filtering."
"Their software support needs improvement. I would prefer to have better support for bug fixes. Sometimes, we open a ticket, and it is very difficult to get a solution. Specifically, we are not at all happy with their support for load balancing."
"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."
"I would like some automated custom reporting."
"One of the features that I would like to have is to do with endpoint production, it should be integrated. For example, the firewall gets notified of any kind of forensic event that needs to be done, such as if there is a ransomware attack and how it originated, all those records have to be available from the firewall, which is not."
"The artificial intelligence and machine learning (behavioral based threat detection), which I can this will be coming out in another year, these are what we need now."
"Security must be increased when a new user connects over the LAN and an alarm must be generated."
"There was an error in the configuration, related to our uplink switches, that caused us to contact technical support, and it took a very long time to resolve the issue."
"We are still running the original ASAs. The software that you are running for the ASDM software and Java application has never been a lot of fun to operate. It would have been nice to see that change update be redesigned with modern systems, which don't play nicely with Java sometimes. Cybersecurity doesn't seem to love how that operates. For us, a fresher application, taking advantage of the hardware, would have been a better approach."
"I think that the solution can be improved with the integration of application-centric infrastructure. It could be used to have better solutions in one box."
"Nowadays, nobody is in the office, so I need to figure out how to put the firewall outside. If I could have a centralized firewall that also receives information from external locations, like peoples' home offices, that would help us consolidate everything into one appliance."
"Most users do not have awareness of this product's functionality and features. Cisco should do something to make them aware of them. That would be quite excellent and useful to organizations that are still using legacy data-center-security products."
"If I want to activate IPS features on it, I have to buy another license. If I want Cisco AnyConnect, I have to buy another license. That's where we have challenges."
"The product's false positive logs could be more user-friendly to understand. They could provide examples of precious cases to learn."
"The global product feature needs improvement, the VPN, and we need some enhanced features."
"When comparing this solution to others it is not as good overall."
"The only complaint that we receive from our customers is in regards to the price."
"The product fails to offer protection when dealing with high-severity vulnerabilities, making it an area of concern where improvements are required."
"The support is good but they could be faster."
"The only problem with this solution is the cost. It's expensive."
"They should make their user interface a little more user-friendly."
Cisco Secure Firewall is ranked 4th in Firewalls with 404 reviews while Palo Alto Networks WildFire is ranked 3rd in Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) with 58 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 "Highlights and helps us catch Zero-day vulnerabilities traveling across our network". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Palo Alto Networks WildFire writes "Good technical support and provides automatic analysis that saves us time in filtering email". Cisco Secure Firewall is most compared with Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX, Sophos XG, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls and Juniper SRX Series Firewall, whereas Palo Alto Networks WildFire is most compared with Juniper SRX Series Firewall, Proofpoint Email Protection, Fortinet FortiSandbox, Check Point SandBlast Network and Zscaler Internet Access.
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