Firewalls are a vital component of protecting a small business network. When choosing the best firewall, consider cost, performance, and ease of use.
As a business grows, it will likely experience increased network traffic. Choosing a firewall to manage this growth is critical to safeguarding the network infrastructure, maintaining uninterrupted connectivity, and supporting future business expansion.
Cost
Fortinet offers a comprehensive solution that includes intrusion prevention, web filtering, anti-malware, and application control at an affordable cost. It also provides automated visibility into applications and users to help your organization adopt security best practices. Fortinet’s FortiGate Next-Generation Firewall offers performance and protection, including encrypted traffic, reducing complexity with purpose-built security processors and threat intelligence from the FortiGuard lab. It also prevents credential phishing by allowing access to only approved websites.
Fortinet and Palo Alto have impressive ratings by analysts, users, and independent tests. However, there are some significant differences in firewall comparison between Fortigate and PAN that you should consider before making a decision. For example, Fortinet has a more substantial edge in appliance-based distributed enterprise and branch office protection. In contrast, Palo Alto Networks has a more significant advantage for cloud, container, and FWaaS use cases.
Fortinet’s NGFW delivers complete network visibility and advanced threat protection across all networks, enabling organizations to detect unsanctioned applications, hidden threats, and lateral movement. Its granular control over SaaS apps and SSL decryption features are scalable for any network size. In addition, Fortinet NGFWs can be managed from a single dashboard using the PAN-OS operating system, eliminating the need for multiple-point products. It also protects against Zero Day attacks with various sandboxing options in the Fortinet Wildfire and FortiSandbox cloud.
Scalability
Palo Alto Networks and Fortinet are top-rated next-generation firewalls (NGFW) with a complete feature set and impressive security capabilities. They offer unified threat management and have high performance, scalability, and ease of use. Both also have cloud-based sandboxing solutions, which allow them to identify new threats and prevent their spread across the network.
Users and independent testing organizations highly rate both firewalls. They offer a range of features to protect large networks from cyber threats, including advanced malware protection, granular threat analysis, and centralized management. They also support a variety of deployment modes and provide scalable security for any business.
Fortinet offers a variety of physical, virtual, and cloud-based firewalls to protect any size network. Their NGFWs feature AI/ML-powered FortiGuard services, complete visibility, and centralized management. They can prioritize alerts and detect and stop successful breaches within seconds. Their scalability ensures they can handle increasing amounts of data without sacrificing performance.
Fortinet’s security platform uses a single-pass parallel processing engine to scan traffic without slowing firewall performance. The platform provides a comprehensive suite of protections, including anti-virus, anti-spyware, and data filtering. It also includes a sandboxing solution for unknown threats, designed to catch sophisticated attacks that bypass traditional signature-based detection methods. In addition, the system integrates with a secure VPN solution to protect sensitive data.
Performance
Both Fortinet and Palo Alto Networks offer next-generation firewalls (NGFW). Users and independent testers highly rate their NGFWs. They have complete feature sets designed to protect networks of all sizes from threats.
Fortinet offers a wide range of models. The PA-440 is also a good choice. Both offer a lot of capability for the price. Both offer a complete security fabric, which provides total visibility and protection for all devices on your network. This includes detection of unsanctioned applications and hidden threats. Both also manage external risks by segmenting and isolating them. They also prevent lateral threat propagation by detecting and blocking devices that are infected with malware.
Both companies offer complete security features, including URL filtering, intrusion prevention, and advanced application control. They also provide granular threat intelligence, which enables them to identify and stop even the most sophisticated attacks.
However, there are a few differences between the two vendors. Fortinet’s security features are a bit more advanced than Palo Alto’s. For example, Fortinet’s IPS has superior threat intelligence, which helps it detect malware that other firewalls miss. In addition, Fortinet’s EDR solution identifies infected hosts and stops them from spreading. Palo Alto, on the other hand, has a more comprehensive product portfolio, including virtual, container, and cloud firewalls.
Availability
Fortinet and Palo Alto Networks are leaders in the next-generation firewall (NGFW) space. Their NGFWs provide total network visibility, advanced threat protection, and edge protection for networks of all sizes. Both vendors have strong performance ratings from users, analysts, and independent tests. They also offer centralized management and automation. They leverage artificial intelligence and machine learning to detect unsanctioned applications, hidden threats, and lateral threat propagation. They also have a cloud-delivered EDR solution, FortiEDR, to protect endpoints from malware infestation and stop data leaks.
Both firewalls offer excellent anti-evasion capabilities that are especially effective against zero-day and evasive attacks. Fortinet’s anti-evasion features include AV, IPS, and PAN-DB, which analyze live web content to disrupt attackers and identify their techniques. The company’s IPS is renowned for its anti-evasion and anti-malware capabilities, while its URL Filtering with PAN-DB is one of the best in the industry.
Fortinet NGFWs perform better than their competitors, with low latency and high throughput. They are ideal for businesses needing fast and secure cloud apps and services connectivity. Fortinet’s NGFWs are built on custom SPU hardware, which provides superior security without sacrificing performance. They are also less expensive than comparable competing products from other vendors. In addition, they have various hardware options to meet the needs of any size network.
