Security without Compromise: PA-400 Series Beats Competition in Head-to-Head Test

In May 2021, we expanded our portfolio with the launch of the PA-400 Series ML-Powered NGFWs and extended our leadership as a nine-time Gartner Magic Quadrant Leader. The PA-400 Series is purpose built for small office locations and packed with the performance required to deliver enterprise-grade security to distributed enterprise branch locations and small offices. The PA-400 Series ML-Powered NGFWs are easy to deploy and to centrally manage, with Zero Touch Provisioning and Panorama centralized management, and they support the full breadth of Cloud-Delivered Security Services covering the corporate network, the internet edge, data security and IoT. The PA-400 Series is built with Palo Alto Networks’ industry leading Single Pass Architecture, which ensures minimal performance degradation when these security services are enabled.

With the PA-400 Series, networking and network security teams no longer have to make a tradeoff between security and performance at smaller office locations, locations that could otherwise become targets for sophisticated attacks like ransomware sneaking into an enterprise network. The Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for a PA-400 Series ML-Powered NGFW is significantly lower than the competition. We’re proud to announce the PA-400 Series delivers significantly better security and performance at a lower TCO compared to other security vendors, as shown in a new performance validation test report by Miercom. Miercom conducted an independent, third-party test evaluating the PA-400 Series performance against comparative solutions.

The Miercom test found other vendor solutions (e.g Fortinet FG series) were priced and positioned for similar use cases but lacked the consistent performance and security controls available for all deployments, including branch, campus, data center and cloud environments. As noted in the latest Miercom report, Fortinet FG performance degrades significantly when security services are enabled. IT teams that see degradation when advanced security services are enabled may be forced to either turn off security services and be exposed to threats, or inefficiently backhaul traffic to a central location for inspection and security.

Here are the key findings from the Miercom report:

1. Superior throughput with security services enabled. Palo Alto Networks saw up to 6x higher throughput compared to competition across all parameters tested including application traffic
2. Superior real-world application traffic performance. On single application tests for MySQL, SIP and FIX, Palo Alto Networks NGFW platforms have consistently low performance degradation with security services enabled, with an average of 8%.
3. High value, low cost of ownership. Palo Alto Networks showed higher performance and lower cost for every appliance compared to similar Fortinet products, with cost per Mbps up to 9x lower.

With the launch of the PA-400 Series, branch and small office location customers can now get full network security deployed locally. This truly brings the ML-Powered NGFW with enterprise-grade security to each and every small office location, with pricing to match their needs. Cloud-delivered Security Services on the PA-400 Series have also been made simple with easy-to-buy Security Services Subscription Bundles. And customers can rest assured that they are getting the industry-leading Palo Alto Networks security, with performance that matches published datasheet numbers, even as customers consolidate all their security solutions onto a single ML-Powered NGFW.

Read the full report to find out what was tested and how. Make sure you’re getting uncompromising network security for your branches and small offices with the PA-400 Series.