When it comes to setting policies, the PA-5020 does a good job of giving administrators the ability to deploy granular security strategies.

The applicance can support up to 2,000 simultaneous, monitored VPN tunnels without any negative impact on security - plus, up to 20 virtual routers. It has overall throughput of 5 gigabits per second, with 2Gbps dedicated to detecting threats and another 2Gbps to supporting virtual private network tunnels.

One of the secrets to the reliability of the PA-5020 is its built-in dedicated bandwidth.

Powerful Bandwidth Matched with Targeted Security And if a business needs to go above that, it can swap out the PA-5020 for a PA-5050 (2 million maximum sessions) or PA-5060 (4 million). At peak, i t can process 120,000 new sessions per second - up to a maximum of 1 million. Designed for either general or specific deployments, such as guarding internet gateways, its maximum capacity is extremely high. The PA-5020 can handle large data streams. I took a look at the entry-level PA-5020 (though that hardly describes what this protection monster can accomplish). These next-generation firewalls have advanced features such as dedicated processing resources assigned to networking, security, signature matching and management functions - guaranteeing reliable and predictable ongoing performance. But as a business grows, the IT team eventually will need an enterprise tool, which is why Palo Alto Networks created its PA-5000 series of security appliances. Almost every small business, from the mom-and-pop shop on the corner to the 50-person design startup, now has some type of firewall.

Palo alto next gen firewall