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Palo Alto Networks offers comprehensive and innovative security solutions. Their products are designed to protect your organization from a wide range of online threats, including malware, ransomware and phishing attacks. Fortinet is a cybersecurity company that provides products and services to protect networks, devices and data from cyberattacks. Fortinet's products include firewalls, antivirus software, intrusion detection systems, and other security solutions.
In addition to their exceptional product lineup, Palo Alto Networks also provides expert threat intelligence and 24/7 support services to help keep you protected against the latest threats. Fortinet offers a range of services, including consulting, education, and managed security services. Fortinet has been recognized as a leader in the cybersecurity industry for its innovative products and services.
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Perhaps the two largest and most influential companies in IT network security not named Cisco, whose horizontally integrated product line is in a class by itself, are Fortinet and Palo Alto Networks. Furthermore, the two companies openly acknowledge and treat each other as competitors, with Fortinet going so far as to show financial comparisons with Palo Alto at its latest Investor Presentation. Although Palo Alto is about 36 percent larger by revenue, as the chart below illustrates, Fortinet is growing just as fast (both with 20+ percent annual revenue increases) and has consistently been profitable while Palo Alto continues to burn cash on acquisitions, expansions and product development, losing almost $500 million over the past twelve months.
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Fortinet and Palo Alto Networks started by concentrating on very different markets — Fortinet on SMBs and SOHO users needing easily deployed and managed appliances and Palo Alto on enterprises and service providers requiring highly performant and scalable next-generation firewalls. However, in the last few years and particularly since the initial Covid restrictions, their paths have crossed as organizations needed security solutions to address an explosion in the number of remote workers and usage of cloud services.
For example, Palo Alto expanded into the Work-From-Home (WFH) market with the Okyo Garde appliance that combines a Wi-Fi 6, mesh-enabled AP with Palo Alto's firewall technology to protect against intrusions, malware and phishing attacks. Conversely, Fortinet attacked Palo Alto's strength in data center firewalls with the FortiGate 4200F that uses the company's proprietary seventh-generation NP7 security processor to deliver what the company claims is 5 to 15 times better performance than comparable products from Palo Alto, Check Point, Cisco and Juniper.
As we compare these two companies, note that there are many ways to categorize enterprise security products, made more difficult since there has been significant industry consolidation with every network security company grouping their products in different ways. For example, Palo Alto breaks its offerings into:
Edge security using SASE services and Zero-Trust Access (ZTA) controls.
Fortinet uses similar categories with a few additions, but also slices products by customer segment into enterprise, SMB and service provider offerings. Here, we tweak these groupings and compare the two companies in three areas: Core enterprise networking and cloud-SaaS security products, notably SASE and various consulting services.
The following charts illustrate each company’s SASE architecture and feature segmentation.
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It is easy to see why Fortinet and Palo Alto Networks consider themselves to be fierce rivals since, as the following product summaries from their respective investor day meetings illustrate, they each have a comprehensive set of network security products and compete across every product line. Nonetheless, both companies were founded on firewall technology and NGFWs remain their strength, with each consistently ranked among the top network firewalls by analysts, product reviewers and buyers.
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Palo Alto Networks host regular webinars, request the next available dates now. You'll learn about their value proposition and how their solution meets the needs of specific business requirements.
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