(Federal) VM-Series Virtual NextGen Firewall Bundle3 with 24x7 Support

What do you like best about the product?

The most helpful aspect of the VM-Series is its flexibility in virtualized environments. It allows us to enforce consistent security policies across multiple cloud and on-premises instances, giving strong visibility into traffic and applications. Automated threat detection and AI-driven alerts help us respond to incidents faster, reducing the time spent on manual monitoring. The integration with our existing cloud infrastructure has also simplified management and improved overall efficiency.

What do you dislike about the product?

The initial deployment can be complex, especially when scaling across multiple virtual networks. Fine-tuning policies and integrating with other monitoring tools took longer than expected, requiring extra training for the team. Pricing can become significant as the number of virtual instances grows. While the firewall is powerful, the documentation could be more user-friendly for first-time administrators.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

The VM-Series Virtual Firewall has helped us centralize security across multiple virtualized environments, including cloud and on-premises workloads. Before using it, managing separate firewalls for each instance created inefficiencies and increased the risk of misconfigurations. Now we can enforce consistent policies, detect threats faster, and reduce manual monitoring. This has improved our incident response times and overall confidence in network security. However, setting up complex policies and integrating with existing monitoring tools still requires extra effort, and scaling the solution can increase costs.

What do you like best about the product?

Virtual system. Fast interface access. Multiple rule support. Easily accessible menus. Strict security rules. Configurable VPN modules and quick rule writing.

What do you dislike about the product?

Character issue when importing groups in active directory synchronization. iOS support issues. Update and VPN connection issues, especially on mobile operating systems.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

The filtering rules are excellent. Furthermore, effective management is based on MAC addresses. Simplified graphical representation. Menus are in the right places and don't require searching. Security is top-notch. Sometimes, even we can get caught up in security.

What do you like best about the product?

I like the fact that the firewall has a relatively low false-positive rates. Also, you can get all the PAN-OS features without waiting for the vendor to port them. This was kind of time-consuming part. The single-pass classification with the flow is also easy to use without much complication. I didn't need much support, which was also a good thing when using the product. The logging is incredible and very well organized with rich metadata.

What do you dislike about the product?

When we have people new to the product, they need kind of training because they don't know how to work with the PAN-OS. So onboarding these guys is quiete heavy in terms of training. Also, the frequency of PAN-OS upgrades is relatively high, which I need all the time to restart the service. We have also noticed more recently that when using a high traffic (e.g., PPS) or even large number of IPS signatures, the hypervisor is getting stressed. Some colleagues from different companies also noticed the same issue.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

The business problems I am working with are the detection of malicious traffic before they reach the infrastructure, as we need better visibility and high quality of logging and metadata. This is very important in our process.

We have a Firewall as well as a Synapse  solution, and we have EDR, XDR  as well. The Palo Alto Networks VM-Series  Firewall is what we are using.

From a Synapse  perspective, they have better visibility, better CV detection, better exposure detection, and it is in a single tool, so we are happy with it.

The integration of Palo Alto Networks VM-Series  within my existing network infrastructure and security tools is good; they are resilient, and we can integrate with anything easily.

There is one thing regarding Palo Alto Networks VM-Series that they need to look into, which is ISPM, Identity Security Posture Management, and other than that, I could see there are multiple things which they have already been doing well.

Technical support is good for Palo Alto Networks VM-Series, but sometimes for new feature requests, we are facing challenges. We are the conglomerate, so individual business has different requirements, which we are expecting some new requests for. Whenever any custom requirement exists in an existing tool, they are taking much time with the engineering team, which is the only thing I'm expecting them to improve. Other than that, this product is very good.

I think overall security is something they need to make into a single pane of glass to help the customer who is using only the single Palo Alto Networks vendor, so they will get end-to-end visibility in a single console.

I have been using them for around three years.

My experience with the scalability of Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is good; whenever we are facing any issues, they are helping, and it is a scalable environment.

Technical support is good for Palo Alto Networks VM-Series, but sometimes for new feature requests, we are facing challenges.

Positive

We are generally satisfied with Palo Alto Networks VM-Series.

I would rate Palo Alto Networks VM-Series technical support an eight out of ten.

I would recommend Palo Alto Networks VM-Series to others.

I am a customer of Palo Alto Networks.

Actually, we are trying to migrate to Cortex Cloud; currently, we are using Prisma, so we are in the phase to migrate to Cortex Cloud, but have not yet migrated, so I am not experienced with it and cannot give feedback about it.

We haven't used Prisma Access Browser .

Overall rating: 10/10

What do you like best about the product?

One of the best to provide security to cloud infrastructures. Posses the ability to inspect the traffic in-depth and analyze before actually processing to the next hop.

What do you dislike about the product?

It’s that it’s virtual. Completely dependent on the physical hardware if it’s hosting multiple vm firewalls. Failure to one physical hardware can lead to multiple vms failure

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

As said we use the firewall for in depth inspection of the incoming traffic coming to the corporate network and minimize the risks by providing security to the private and hybrid cloud infrastructures