Palo Alto Networks has injected excitement and innovation into the firewall market with its "next-generation" appliances that combine traditional firewalls and threat mitigation technologies such as anti-malware.

Palo Alto earns short list status

We first tested Palo Alto in late 2008 and found the PA-4020 to be an interesting product that still needed work. This time around, we tested Palo-Alto's newest high-end appliance, the PA-5060 and found plenty to love.

The product clocked multi-gigabit speeds even with all threat mitigation and identification features enabled, proving that it's capable of conducting deep session analysis in an enterprise setting. In fact, using the exact same test scenario, the PA-5060 forwarded traffic 10 times faster than the product we tested in 2008 (see story, "Palo Alto PA5060 is one fast firewall").

With a solid basic firewall feature set and UTM protections such as anti-malware and intrusion-prevention system (IPS), the PA-5060 can be used for inbound traffic. And its application awareness makes it even better suited as an outbound firewall, giving extended visibility into what is happening, and fine-grained control over what is allowed.

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