I am the team manager responsible for various security products. My customers use Palo Alto Networks products, and I am working with Palo Alto partners. We support a variety of solutions including Strata firewalls, Prisma SD-WAN, and Wildfire for advanced threat protection.
VM-Series Next-Gen Virtual Firewall w/Advanced Threat Prevention (PAYG)
Palo Alto NetworksExternal reviews
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NSE review of Palto Alto
What do you like best about the product?
I feel like the Palo Alto Networks VM-Series Virtual Firewall stands out for its advanced threat prevention and seamless integration with cloud platforms like AWS, Azure, and GCP. Its centralized management via Panorama and scalability make it ideal for securing dynamic virtualized and hybrid environments while ensuring operational efficiency.
What do you dislike about the product?
licensing costs, limited session failover capabilities, and resource-intensive requirements for optimal performance, such as increased memory and vCPUs for higher throughput and session scaling
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
The Palo Alto Networks VM-Series Virtual Firewall makes securing cloud and virtual environments way easier by blocking threats, simplifying policy management, and enabling Zero Trust segmentation. Plus, it’s super flexible for scaling in the cloud and saves time and effort with centralized management—basically a lifesaver for keeping things secure and efficient!
Reliable Firewall at a high cost
What do you like best about the product?
The VM-Series Virtual Firewall stands out for its robust, next-generation security features that deliver deep packet inspection, advanced threat prevention, and granular control over applications and users. Its seamless integration into both cloud and on-premises environments enables consistent security policies across hybrid infrastructures, which is critical for modern networks. Additionally, its detailed logging and analytics capabilities offer excellent visibility into network traffic, helping administrators quickly detect and respond to threats. Overall, its strong performance and comprehensive protection make it a compelling choice for enterprises seeking to secure virtualized environments.
What do you dislike about the product?
While the VM-Series offers a powerful security suite, its complexity can be a double-edged sword. The initial configuration and ongoing management often come with a steep learning curve, which might be challenging for organizations with limited security expertise or smaller teams. Moreover, the cost associated with licensing, subscriptions, and maintenance can be relatively high compared to some alternative solutions. This combination of complexity and expense may deter smaller businesses or those with tighter budgets, despite the firewall's robust capabilities.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Palo Alto’s VM-Series makes securing your cloud and on-prem setups a breeze by blocking advanced threats and streamlining management—so you can focus on your business without sweating over cyberattacks.
New user experience for threat prevention and Logging
What do you like best about the product?
The WildFire analysis for detecting zero-day malware is impressive. It quickly flagged a test malware file I uploaded, and I could see real-time analysis.
What do you dislike about the product?
The syntax isn’t intuitive for a new user. The logs are detailed but lack context for beginners. I had to refer to external documentation to understand why a session was blocked
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Other firewalls struggle to detect unknown or zero-day threats that don’t have existing signatures. WildFire analyzes suspicious files in a cloud-based sandbox and generates new security signatures in real-time
In most cloud environments, security teams lack clear insights into blocked threats, making incident response slow. After enabling Threat Prevention, I saw multiple intrusion attempts targeting exposed SSH ports.
The logs showed attack patterns (e.g., brute-force attempts from suspicious IPs in Russia & China).
In most cloud environments, security teams lack clear insights into blocked threats, making incident response slow. After enabling Threat Prevention, I saw multiple intrusion attempts targeting exposed SSH ports.
The logs showed attack patterns (e.g., brute-force attempts from suspicious IPs in Russia & China).
Overall a good experience.
What do you like best about the product?
Scalability:
Designed to scale from small to very large environments with flexible throughput options.
Designed to scale from small to very large environments with flexible throughput options.
What do you dislike about the product?
Cost:
For smaller environments or those with tight budgets, this might be a significant barrier.
For smaller environments or those with tight budgets, this might be a significant barrier.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Security:
Threat protection, application control, URL filtering, VPN support, and much more.
Threat protection, application control, URL filtering, VPN support, and much more.
Quick and easy to use
What do you like best about the product?
Helps me get to work quicker and easier to connect.
What do you dislike about the product?
Not often downtimes so that's not a problem.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Keeping enteprise safe from attackers.
Pros and cons of Palo Alto VM-Series
What do you like best about the product?
Helps to have smooth communication with clouds like AWS, AZURE, Google cloud.
To maximize efficiency at more traffic situations, you can use technologies like Intelligent Traffic offload.
To maximize efficiency at more traffic situations, you can use technologies like Intelligent Traffic offload.
What do you dislike about the product?
The initial steps of setting up a VM series are difficult.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
It helped to prevent data loss and data treats for different clouds.
Experience
What do you like best about the product?
Learning more things from her had helped me
What do you dislike about the product?
I dont like anything here i am able to satify about this
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
It is helping solving firewall
Robust and scalable virtual firewall solution is the key for Enterprise-wide cloud security
What do you like best about the product?
Palo Alto Networks VM-Series has evolved into a powerful security tool which is flexible when deployed in a virtual environment or in the cloud. Following are some of high level features and benefits as per my experience:
Cloud-Native.
Multi-Cloud Feature.
Scalability and Flexibility
Comes with High Performance Networking
Cloud-Native.
Multi-Cloud Feature.
Scalability and Flexibility
Comes with High Performance Networking
What do you dislike about the product?
Overall this is one of the perfect and scalable solution, however everything comes with improvements, instead of dislike I wanted to call few improvements as of Setup should be easy, Lack of Support and Cost need to be optimised
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Palo Alto VM helps to solve few of the key challenges as of securing hybrid and multi-cloud environments, preventing advanced threats which is one of the biggest challenge in this evolving CyberSecurity world, and microsegmentation really helps for availability and redundancy. For users it really helps with automated security policies across diverse platforms, ensuring compliance, and reducing attack surfaces in dynamic cloud infrastructures.
My Experience using Palo Alto VM-Series
What do you like best about the product?
Good for for DNS security and accessing remote VPNs. Easy to set up and deploy. Nice user interface.
What do you dislike about the product?
Above average license cost. Needs more documentation and user guides. Shaky performance in Azure
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Palo Alto VM-Series is great for protecting and securing projects that use Amazon Web Services.
Can overcome complex threat landscapes with robust threat intelligence and great reliability
What is our primary use case?
What is most valuable?
Wildfire, a sandboxing product, allows for analyzing malware in virtual machines. Its strength lies in threat intelligence, which is significant for proactive defense. Palo Alto's robust threat intelligence supports new updates, and I can open cases directly with their Threat Intelligence team. Customers appreciate the throughput and reliability of VM-Series Firewalls, as they can be managed efficiently through Panorama.
What needs improvement?
I find it difficult to reach technical support at Palo Alto Networks. Most customers go for partner-enabled support, which involves multiple layers, leading to delays. Additionally, the technical maturity level of support is not always high, resulting in dissatisfaction. The pricing of Palo Alto is relatively high, particularly for smaller companies.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been familiar with Wildfire for nearly five years. I have been working with the VM-Series for nearly two years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Palo Alto products are stable compared to others. Stability issues may arise when exceeding throughput limits, but hardware is generally very stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Scalability is a strength of Palo Alto VM-Series. They are easy to upgrade, and with credit licensing, they scale effectively according to demand.
How are customer service and support?
I can give Palo Alto Networks technical support a six out of ten. It is very hard to reach, and the process can be lengthy and frustrating because support involves several layers.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Neutral
How was the initial setup?
Initial setup is easy, especially in public cloud environments where VM-Series can be obtained from the marketplace.
What was our ROI?
Our ROI is measured in terms of catch rate, however, customers often focus on the total price of the product rather than detailed ROI calculations.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Palo Alto is expensive in terms of pricing, particularly when comparing features to cost. Their Premier Support is also very expensive and not widely chosen by customers.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I would recommend Check Point and Fortinet as alternatives for companies where the budget is a concern.
What other advice do I have?
I would recommend Palo Alto VM-Series to others and rate it an eight out of ten. However, for companies below midsize, it may not be a fit due to cost. For those companies, I suggest considering products like Check Point or Fortinet.
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