Palo Alto Networks Panorama

I use Palo Alto Networks Panorama  for the management of all the firewalls. Apart from that, I use Cloud Prisma for VPN management, as well as connectivity to the production, non-production environment. I use three flavors of Palo Alto Networks: Panorama, Cloud Prisma, and the on-prem, physical Palo Alto firewalls in the data centers.

I use Palo Alto Networks Panorama  for all our production, non-production firewalls, which are onboarded on Panorama. Whatever changes I make in the individual firewall, I push that to the Panorama, and Panorama pushes to the individual devices.

The granular control of Palo Alto Networks Panorama stands out for me, as you have centralized management or a centralized view for all the firewalls. It's easy to create security policy, easy to create NAT policy, and easy to do any configuration. Second is easy troubleshooting, so rather than going to all the firewalls, I can centrally troubleshoot. If any issue occurs, I have a centralized monitor tab, and centralized logs are there, so I can easily troubleshoot any issues from the Panorama itself.

In terms of logging and reporting capabilities, there is centralized logging with Palo Alto Networks Panorama. In terms of ease of configuration and ease of troubleshooting, all individual firewalls forward logs to the Panorama, and Panorama forwards logs to the Syslog server. That is ease of configuration. The second thing is ease of troubleshooting, as all the centralized logs are present in the Panorama itself. Based on any issue occurred, I can troubleshoot it on the Panorama itself rather than going to the individual firewalls.

It's very easy to integrate with infrastructure and other systems.

I do see some disadvantages with Panorama. If your staff is not technical enough, you have to be very careful if you have production devices on Panorama because once you push any changes, those get pushed on the individual firewalls. In terms of operation, it is quite important that the staff managing the Panorama should be technically sound enough, and they should know exactly what they are doing. If you break anything in terms of config push, that could lead to an outage. That is one of the most important things I would say. Apart from that, I don't see any disadvantages as such.

I have been using it for more than five years.

Earlier we were using bare-metal hardware devices in the data center. Now we migrated to the AWS  cloud, so we deployed the Palo Alto Networks Panorama firewall in the AWS  cloud, and we manage it from there.

I'm not at that position to comment on ROI since I started using Panorama.

If you go with the cloud-based deployment, it is pretty much affordable. If you go with the physical bare-metal hardware, then it is quite expensive.

This solution receives a rating of 10 out of 10.

Public Cloud

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

What do you like best about the product?

- Unified Control Plane: Panorama lets you manage thousands of Palo Alto NGFWs—up to 5,000 in Management Only mode—from a single interface.
- Consistent Policy Enforcement: You can push security policies, device configurations, and updates across all managed firewalls, ensuring uniform protection and compliance.
- Panorama collects logs from all managed devices, enabling centralized analysis of traffic, threats, and user behavior

What do you dislike about the product?

- Panorama must run a base PAN-OS version equal to or higher than the managed firewalls. This can complicate upgrades and mixed-version environments.
- While the VM version of Panorama is flexible, hardware appliances strictly enforce device limits. Exceeding the licensed number of managed devices can cause commit failures.

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

Decentralized Firewall Management
- Problem: Managing configurations, policies, and updates across dozens or hundreds of firewalls is time-consuming and error-prone.
- Solution: Panorama provides a centralized platform to push consistent policies, monitor traffic, and manage updates across all firewalls

Inconsistent Security Policies
- Problem: Different teams or sites may apply varying rules, leading to gaps in security posture.
- Solution: Panorama enforces uniform policy templates and device groups, ensuring consistent security across the organization.

Limited Visibility into Network Activity
- Problem: Without centralized logging, threat detection and incident response are fragmented.
- Solution: Panorama aggregates logs from all managed devices, enabling unified threat analysis, application monitoring, and forensic investigation.

Our primary use case for Palo Alto Networks Panorama  is as a firewall for internal and external traffic.

The most valuable feature of Palo Alto Networks Panorama , in my case, is the reporting. It provides all the necessary information. However, when extracting reports to a CSV file, the lack of correlation to the actual report generated is an issue. You get a CSV file with a vague name, which is inconvenient when sorting through multiple reports. Naming the reports properly for easier identification would be helpful. Despite this, the tool allows for extensive customization of reports, which is a significant advantage.

From the reporting side, naming the reports properly so that they can be easily identified would be an improvement. Other than that, it works well. There was a bug causing us to not get the latest information, but it was resolved with an upgrade.

I have been working with Palo Alto Networks Panorama for at least three years.

Palo Alto Networks Panorama is very stable. In my three years of use, there was only one incident where I had a problem, but it was quickly resolved.

It is easy to scale with no problems.

The customer service and support are very good. We received excellent feedback from the third-party support providers.

Positive

I was not involved in the initial setup, but I believe it would be quite easy.

Palo Alto Networks Panorama is expensive but provides good value for money. For the higher end, the cost is justified. However, for the lower end, a reduction in cost could improve competitiveness.

I really like the product. My involvement began when we faced an external denial-of-service attack on our cloud environment. After unsuccessfully battling the attack for a week, we deployed a Palo Alto firewall, which resolved the issue within hours. Since then, I have been impressed with Palo Alto. Overall, I rate Palo Alto Networks Panorama a nine out of ten.

On-premises

I am still working for Lotus. We work with Palo Alto three series, Panorama, and Firewall Banu, specifically Firewall three series and five series.

I find this solution valuable for full monitoring, centralized control for reporting, and centralized management. These features are instrumental in achieving effective results.

The solution requires more flexibility and quicker response times. High-speed replies are crucial. 

Additionally, the AI module should be on-premises, not in the cloud. It should support more flexibility and OpenShift Direct, not just the basics. 

The virtualization feature needs to be more advanced.

I have been using it for about one year.

It is very good in terms of scalability.

I would rate customer service as seven out of ten.

Neutral

The setup cost is too high.

Consider the environment, as it is very high priced. If you have money to spare, it's a good option. I would rate it a nine out of ten. 

On-premises

What do you like best about the product?

For me, one of the best features that Palo Alto Networks Panorama offers is: the centralized management and the visibility across multiple firewalls.

What do you dislike about the product?

For me Palo Alto Networks Panorama offers many good features, the Complexity for New Users, Learning Curve and the Initial Setup are some aspects that the users can find hard or difficult at the beginning.

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

One problem experienced was that Without centralized management, the organization face a hard time trying to enforce uniform security policies across a large network. And that generate security vulnerabilities for the company.
The Solution that Palo alto offers is that allows the centralized creation and the enforcement of security policies, that can be applied across all the managed firewalls in the network of the company.
From my point of view, the benefit that i can observed is that the consistency in the security posture and a stronger defense against differents attacks, that offers Palo Alto, and the security policies are uniform across the whole environment, it will reduce the chances of a policy loophole and a hard time for the company.