Fortinet’s NGFW is highly rated by users, analysts and in independent tests. Their firewalls are available as physical appliances, virtual devices or cloud-delivered. Their NGFWs stop 40% more zero-day threats in real-time with inline machine learning. Fortinet also offers various managed services through its MSSP partners that reduce risk and simplify security tasks.
Scalability
Fortinet offers a scalable solution that can be expanded to meet the needs of your network. It provides comprehensive security for your entire network with features like web filtering, advanced threat prevention and more. Its NGFW also supports the latest security standards. In terms of the performance of FortiGate NGFW vs Palo Alto, Fortinet firewalls are some of the best in the industry. They offer high-speed processing with the ability to handle large amounts of data. In addition, they can easily identify and block threats. Fortinet NGFWs can even detect attacks from the edge of your network. The company’s NGFWs feature purpose-built ASIC technology, which offers significantly better performance than general-purpose CPUs. In recent testing, the FortiGate 500E earned a security efficiency rating of 99.3% and outperformed every other firewall tested by NSS Labs.
Additionally, users of Fortinet devices report faster times when compared to competing solutions. The company’s NGFWs are available in hardware devices from the PA series and as virtual appliances for cloud-based environments. They can also be paired with their cloud-based security solutions.
Performance
Both Palo Alto and Fortinet rank high in competitive firewall testing. We tested their NGFWs against each other and found that Fortinet FortiGate 200F outperformed Palo Alto Networks PA-460 in all competitive performance tests.
Both vendors offer a range of NGFW appliances in both hardware and virtual form factors. They provide a full suite of security capabilities, including antivirus, antispyware, intrusion prevention, application control and advanced threat prevention. They also support advanced Layer 7 security to prevent attacks that exploit vulnerabilities in applications and protocols. In addition to their NGFWs, both vendors offer cloud sandboxing solutions for unknown threats. However, the results of these tests show that WildFire offers better signature coverage while FortiSandbox Cloud needs to catch up in C2 analysis (which is necessary to detect new variants). Both vendors provide a central management platform called Panorama for managing physical and virtual devices. The platform automates device provisioning and best practices compliances to ensure consistent security posture across the network. In addition, it provides a user-friendly interface to reduce the effort required for large-scale operations.
Availability
Fortinet has a variety of options for network security. They have hardware devices that range from the PA series to the more advanced PA-7000 series. They also offer VM-based versions of their firewalls for use in a virtual environment. This allows them to provide best-in-class security to enterprises and businesses in a flexible manner. Their NGFWs are designed to protect against all threats using advanced techniques like content ID, patented application protocol decoding and heuristics. They can also detect vulnerabilities, block buffer overflows and prevent exploits with WildFire technology. In addition, they can prevent malware from entering a network with an encrypted connection or bypass protections.
Their NGFWs come with specialized acceleration hardware that offloads resource-intensive processing from CPUs, reducing overall system load. They can also be managed through their central management platform, Panorama. This gives consumers a centralized view of their security and can be deployed as an appliance, a VM or in the cloud. Fortinet offers technical support through its FortiCare service. This includes Return Merchandise Authorization, 24×7 call centers and online web chat.
Cost
Palo Alto and Fortinet offer next-generation firewalls that monitor traffic, detect unsanctioned applications and hidden threats. The NGFW also manages external risks through advanced Layer 7 security, micro-segmentation and isolation and prevents lateral spread of threats. Both vendors provide cloud sandboxing for unknown threats using WildFire and FortiSandbox. They are 9-time leaders in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant, and their ML-Powered NGFWs deliver unified visibility, automation, and integration. Their PA-series physical NGFWs and VM-Series virtual NGFWs support secure deployments in public and private clouds, SDN environments and BYOL. Most models include specialized acceleration hardware called security processors that offload resource-intensive processing from main CPU resources. These appliances can be deployed as a network edge, in the cloud, at branch or remote locations or at IoT devices. The firewalls are managed through the Panorama management console, and additional subscription-based features can be added, such as unified access, multi-cloud security, DNS security, email and endpoint security. In addition, a secure SD-WAN offering is available that integrates NGFW with advanced routing and provides scalable connectivity for branches, IoT and hybrid/multi-cloud environments.
Management
The Fortinet Security Fabric architecture offers unified management, which reduces the effort needed to manage the platform. This allows the security team to follow best practices and decrease human error more easily. It also simplifies monitoring, analytics and logging. Fortinet’s FortiManager is available on their hardware appliances and as a SaaS solution. Their NGFWs have been the top vendor in independent firewall tests for the past few years. They offer physical appliances with high threat prevention throughput and a range of hardware models and VM-based virtual NGFWs that flexibly scale to secure deployments in public and private clouds and SDN environments.
Their NGFWs feature advanced threat protection, which includes their patented ML-powered inline deep learning to stop patient zero threats and prevent evasion. This is augmented with their WildFire sandboxing option and Application Command Center to quickly understand the flows and risks of applications. Their centralized logging and management system, called FortiAnalyzer, provides automated responses to threats and events. They also have a CASB service called Prisma Access that integrates with their network access control to manage BYOD and IoT devices securely.
