CrowdSec vs. Palo Alto Networks Virtualized Next-Generation Firewalls - VM Series

Since I've only used CrowdSec in a homelab/small-medium sized business setup, that's really the only market I can safely recommend it and say it's well suited for, because I don't know how much it would cost to run it in an enterprise environment. I've heard some pricing and how they plan on rolling out a subscription model, but it's still in talks. Either way, if you have publicly exposed web applications hosted locally or on a virtual private server, then CrowdSec should be part of every virtual machine and/or network. Even with the lmited number of filter you get out of the free subscription, it provides a nice layer of constantly updated data,

Incentivized

PaloAlto VM-200 is a virtualized firewall with high processing power and network edge protection. The great advantage is being able to implement in a VMware environment without worrying about hardware, rack space, physical network connections and others. It can be easily managed via the web and remotely to create protection, access and reporting rules. The VM-200 firewall can be used by any company, small or large because it has several models available according to the real needs of each one.

Incentivized

• Provides great integrations with tools you already use, such as fail2ban, Cloudflare, WordPress, NGINX, Linux Firewalls, etc.
• Lightweight agents can run on individual servers and report to a main security engine so that if there's an attack on one server and a block is implemented, the entire network can be protected
• There are a lot of ways to receive alerts and store logs
• CrowdSec Central API is a nice way to manage everything externally

Incentivized

• Easy deployment.
• Backups, snapshotting, etc. make returning to pre-change state a snap.
• Threat management, data leak protection, etc. can be done in-line with ease.

Incentivized

• Getting CrowdSec to run on OPNsense can be a challenge, but that's also a limitation of the OS
• You can only subscribe to a couple of feeds before paying an unknown amount of money that's part of their "Enterprise" package. So, there could be better transparency.

Incentivized

• Sometimes the configuration gets out of sync between HA peers, it won't sync, and it also won't say why.
• Every time I log in I get warned that the logfile partition is almost full. Yes, I know that, you're deleting the oldest ones, I know: stop telling me about it with a giant pop-up at login.
• I like green, but I wish I could choose mauve as a background color for the web interface.

Incentivized

It is very easy to use, even for those with little experience in this particular firewall. Some of the advanced content filtering and content-based policies are difficult to pick up; however, almost all required decoders are built in. Built-in logging and rule testing make rule definition easy, and labels/tags allow filtering, grouping, and categorisation of rules. Updates are easy, and high availability is also reliable.

Incentivized

Palo Alto VM series are best selling and industry's top-selling security product which customers prefer while securing their public cloud environment

Incentivized

The above firewalls are great but the Palo Alto is the king. The Palo Alto does everything from layer 3 to layer 7. It gives visibility to the network, unlike other firewalls. When configured properly it will monitor and report on each and every packet that enters and leaves the network. If there is a compromised computer on a network Palo Alto can identify it and alert the administrators and block the computer from accessing the network until the administrator has taken a look at the computer, and cleaned it up of malware or viruses first.

Incentivized

• It flat-out blocks malicious IPs from accessing any PC on my network.
• It's free-tier makes this a no brainer to implement

Incentivized

• It has help us determine the necessary spend for internet bandwidth
• Has helped us easily monitor policy compliance
• Provided tools that increase understanding of security for non-IT staff

Incentivized