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Palo Alto Networks Advanced URL Filtering

Score9.4 out of 10

31 Reviews and Ratings

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What is Palo Alto Networks Advanced URL Filtering?

The majority of attacks and exposure to malicious content occurs during the normal course of web browsing activities, which requires the ability to allow safe, secure web access for all users. URL Filtering with PAN-DB automatically prevents attacks that leverage the web as an attack vector, including phishing links in emails, phishing sites, HTTP-based command and control, malicious sites and pages that carry exploit kits.

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Palo Alto Networks Advanced URL Filtering Reviews

What users are saying about Palo Alto Networks Advanced URL Filtering.
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Palo Alto - Advanced URL Filtering

Incentivized
Verified User
Engineer in Information Technology (201-500 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Palo Alto Network's Advanced URL Filtering throughout our organization. Every network and every user is secured and protected with this technology. The advantage to using Palo's product is that we can use one platform to filter everything. There is no need to have different vendors to secure endpoints vs networks. By incorporating this with Prisma Access, we are even able to filter remote/VPN users as well.

Management of the URL filtering is centralized resulting in a consistent filtering experience that is independent of location/network. User's are able to access different categories of URLs based on AD/Azure group membership. Primarily we use this to prevent access to cloud storage, webmail and other avenues to exfiltrate data. It greatly reduces our risk for leaks of our intellectual property.

Pros

  • Centralized Management
  • Filtering by URL Category and/or Custom URL Lists
  • Frequently Updated
  • Categories for Unknown URLs and IPs

Cons

  • Reporting mis-categorization is cumbersome
  • No ability to re-categorize within environment
  • Must manage exceptions by specific URL

Return on Investment

  • We have reduced Internet traffic by blocking ad-related URLs
  • We have reduced the support required to clean machines from malware
  • We have greatly reduced our risk for data loss and exfiltration

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Cisco Umbrella and Mimecast Web Security

Other Software Used

Palo Alto Networks Prisma Access, Palo Alto Networks Advanced Threat Prevention, Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series

Palo URL Filtering - A Must Have Product.

Incentivized
Jerry RobinsonView profile
Director of IS in Information Technology at Hattiesburg Clinic, PA (1001-5000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

All internet traffic passes through our Palo Alto firewalls with Web Filtering enabled regardless of the point of origin within our network. We do both web filtering and SSL inspection. We create custom access permissions based on active directory group membership or IP address range. The Palo Alto Advanced URL filtering feature was a cost-efficient way to manage access to the internet and provide the necessary protection for our users.

Pros

  • Custom categories.
  • URL Specific filtering on YouTube.
  • Easy overrides for SSL inspection.

Cons

  • The UI is a bit confusing as to where you need to go to do things. It's made more so by the inclusion of Panorama, the centralized management tool, as some things have to be done in Panorama and others on the active node.

Most Important Features

  • Solid performance and throughput.
  • Excellent support.

Return on Investment

  • Palo has been an excellent investment for us.
  • Having robust URL filtering built into the same device as the firewall saves the cost of a separate appliance and improves performance.

Alternatives Considered

Forcepoint Email Security and Barracuda Essentials

Other Software Used

Proofpoint Email Protection, ThreatLocker, Titanium Cloud

Detect & Prevent Modern Web-Based Attacks with Palo Alto Networks Advanced URL Filtering

Incentivized
Fabio Silva
Senior Network Engineer in Information Technology at Fexco (1001-5000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Currently, we are using Palo Alto Networks Advanced URL Filtering as part of security checks for inbound and outbound traffic.

Pros

  • URL category
  • Dynamic Updates
  • URL group

Cons

  • URL category - provide the ability to include sites in multiples categories
  • URL category - sometimes there are categories errors for non English URL pages

Most Important Features

  • URL category
  • Dynamic Updates

Return on Investment

  • We stopped to looking for external content filtering after acquiring PA URL Filtering
  • The dynamic updates help us to mitigate security issues caused by BAD URLs
  • Palo Alto Networks Advanced URL Filtering is helping us to achieve the high reliability of the Network

Alternatives Considered

Qualys Cloud Platform and Palo Alto Networks Prisma Cloud

Other Software Used

Qualys Cloud Platform, Darktrace, Symantec Encrypted Traffic Management

Advanced and Effective URL Filtering Solution

Incentivized
Rekha YadavView profile
Development Team Lead in Information Technology at Accenture (10,001+ employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Palo Alto Networks Advanced URL Filtering is being used in one of the customer environment for preventing threats from web based actors to their critical business applications with the help of out of the box prevention policies, built in patterns and policies enablement to prevent un-authorized traffic and malwares. Palo Alto is one of the critical security enablement solution.

Pros

  • Threat Detection and Prevention (Malwares, Un-Authorized Access)
  • Out of the box patterns for threat detection
  • Built in and Updated identification patterns
  • Unified Dashboard/Alerting on anomaly

Cons

  • Integration with common known software's such as Service Now, Network Monitoring Solution
  • API Operations
  • Documentation and Customer Enablement Sessions

Most Important Features

  • Automatic Policies deployment
  • Automatic prevention policies execution
  • Dashboards and Reporting/Alerting features
  • API based operations
  • Real Time Detection
  • Out of the Box Policies, Patterns to detect new threats

Return on Investment

  • Improved Rules/Logics for Threats Detection
  • Real Time detection and hence less time for MTTR
  • Integrating with other solutions for IT Operations
  • Improved security for critical business applications

Alternatives Considered

Barracuda CloudGen Firewall, Check Point Quantum Security Gateway Next Generation Firewall and Symantec Secure Gateway (ProxySG & ASG)

Other Software Used

Check Point Quantum Security Gateway Next Generation Firewall, Check Point Quantum Security Compliance (easy2comply), Symantec Secure Gateway (ProxySG & ASG)

Palo Alto - Great Filtering Solution

Incentivized
Kaitlyn WrightView profile
Coordinator of Computer Science and Technology in Information Technology at Seeds of Health, Inc. (51-200 employees employees)

Pros

  • Granular filtering with specific categories
  • Constantly updated
  • Alerts you when new categories are added

Cons

  • Does require some filtering knowledge to understand the structure
  • Have to use PUTTY to check the category a website is

Alternatives Considered

Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series, Palo Alto Networks Threat Protection and Palo Alto Networks WildFire

Other Software Used

Google Classroom, Google Drive, Mitel MiCollab