What are the Firewall options?
RBC Technology Group researched the strengths and of leading security software providers
Below we have listed the leading firewall and threat prevention providers on the current market. RBC has found that the quality of coverage, threat detection and overall performance to be ahead of other industry-related software providers, however, we have also included the strengths of each company along with cautions that should not be ignored.
Palo Alto Networks
Based in Santa Clara, Palo Alto Networks is one of the larger companies with more than 5,800 global employees and have been developing and selling firewall programs for over a decade. Prioritising; endpoint detection and response software (EDR), threat intelligence, Software as a service security (SaaS), cloud compliance and integration, cloud management tools, and SOAR (Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response). Showing strong revenue growth, the already leading company are set to be ahead for the foreseeable future with their constant desire for improvement and management.
Fortinet
Headquartered in Sunnyvale California, Fortinet is a favourable firewall provider for customers as the pricing is seen as more reasonable compared to other leading competitors. Furthermore, the vendor offers a range of firewall models to meet multiple foreseeable scenarios. It also offers support for bare metal and virtual firewalls for Alibaba Cloud, AWS, Azure, Google Cloud Platform, IBM Cloud and Oracle OCI IaaS platforms.
Cisco
One of the larger networks, infrastructure and security vendors, based out of San Jose in California, Cisco offers to offer multiple firewall models for different cases, despite many models under the different firewall product lines overlap with each other. Their goal of cloud integration and automation is designed to be forward-thinking and flexible for future technological developments and therefore ideal for long-term visions.
Strengths and Cautions
With every example we produce, we aim to provide a clear justification to give an informed opinion so that we do not mislead. Below are the strengths and cautions we advise from each of our top 3 providers.
Palo Alto Networks
Strengths: Palo Alto offers an incredibly professional evaluation process with all staff being highly informed and adapt to each product on offer. Furthermore, Gartner, a leading research and technology advisory company, found that there was an increase in performance in decryption and large-scale data centre deployments.
Cautions: Majority of customers have found that although the quality of protection is outstanding, the pricing is considered by clients to be too expensive compared to other leading companies. Furthermore, customer support post-installation is sub-par and surveyed clients have indicated a decline in online support over recent years.
Fortinet
Strengths: Opposed to Palo Alto, Fortinet offers a large range of firewall packages at reasonable prices according to surveyed customers. Furthermore, the integration process for Fortinet offers a smooth and seamless approach when moving to security automation relieving stress from the installation process through to operating.
Cautions: Although Fortinet has a safe and secure firewall software program, it struggles to work with other threat detection programs and does not integrate well. Moreover, some customers have expressed concern over the level of complexity when new features are added and have been known to create administration complexity with every new addition.
Cisco
Strengths: Customers and resellers are continuing to give positive reviews to their threat research and advanced malware protection (AMP). Additionally, Cisco enthusiastically promotes the integration and automation roadmap within their products as a strong marketing and sales strategy, which is also resonating with users.
Cautions: From examining client enquiries, it was found that customer experience with support was low quality and has been allegedly degrading over time. Furthermore, being a younger company, there are noticeable consequences, such as delays in support from network security policy management tools (NSPM), and the absence of integration, notably with any third-party endpoint detection and response (EDR) tools.
When investigating your own firewall providers, it is important to examine all aspects, especially testimonies from other users.
