Miercom recently recognized Palo Alto Networks Cloud NGFW with the prestigious Miercom Certified Secure Award. After an independent, industry-wide study in the first quarter of 2025, Miercom positioned Cloud NGFW as the undisputed leader in managed firewalls. Miercom validated its superior security efficacy and user experience compared to the most common managed firewall alternatives in cloud service provider (CSP) platforms.
Read on to learn how recent advancements make Cloud NGFW the definitive choice, as proven by Miercom testing, for modern cloud environments and how you can get started with the new Try & Buy experience directly from Strata Cloud Manager.
Validate Cloud Security and Accelerate Deployment
Organizations have accelerated cloud adoption across Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure. Security leaders, however, face the persistent challenge of protecting VPC and VNet traffic from sophisticated threats without slowing development.
Cloud NGFW, a managed firewall service, addresses this challenge by delivering advanced threat prevention. Miercom test results provide independent validation of Cloud NGFW’s security efficacy. Also, a new streamlined onboarding experience for AWS in Strata Cloud Manager removes operational friction and accelerates the time to security value.
Quantify Risk Reduction with Independent Validation
Independent test lab Miercom published a comparative analysis of managed cloud firewalls in the first quarter of 2025. The results show quantifiable data on the significant security gap between Cloud NGFW and the native firewall offerings from Cloud Service Providers (CSPs).
The Miercom report, which details Cloud NGFW’s significant differences in threat prevention and highlights its advantages, provides critical validation for assessing and directly mitigating enterprise risk:
- Exploit blocking: Cloud NGFW blocked an average of 95.3% of exploits across all vulnerability categories, achieving the highest-rated result in the evaluation. In comparison, other managed firewalls blocked as little as 3.9%.
- Malware protection: The platform blocked 100% of malware samples, far surpassing other managed firewalls, which ranged from 11% to 38%.
- Evasive threat defense: When tested against sophisticated evasion techniques, including environment awareness and encryption, Cloud NGFW achieved a perfect 100% block rate.
This data demonstrates a material difference in security posture, which directly impacts organizations’ ability to defend against common and evasive threats.
Accelerate Secure Adoption by Removing Onboarding Friction
Security efficacy is only one part of the challenge; security must also operate at the speed of the business. We have streamlined the evaluation and deployment of Cloud NGFW for AWS by integrating the Try & Buy experience directly into Strata Cloud Manager.
Previously, onboarding required managing subscriptions in the AWS Marketplace. This operational friction created a bottleneck, slowing down development teams and security’s response. The new Strata Cloud Manager workflow removes this complexity. It enables your teams to evaluate, deploy, operate, and manage billing for Cloud NGFW for AWS from a single console. This integrated approach reduces operational overhead, accelerates time-to-value and enables security teams to provision consistent protection as fast as developers deploy new applications.
Get Started on Your 3-Step Try & Buy Journey
Our Try & Buy journey enables your teams to begin using Cloud NGFW instantly and connect it to AWS billing when ready in just three steps:
- Evaluate the full-featured service: Deploy Cloud NGFW directly from the Strata Cloud Manager console to validate security policies in your live environment before subscribing.
- Link to AWS billing without disruption: When ready, generate a unique billing code in Strata Cloud Manager using your AWS account ID to subscribe via the AWS Marketplace. This action does not impact active deployments or interrupt protection.
- Optimize spending with contract credits: Procure and activate Cloud NGFW Contract Credits for predictable billing. The platform automatically uses these credits and seamlessly reverts to your pay-as-you-go (PAYG) subscription upon exhaustion, ensuring continuous service.
Deploy a Purpose-Built Cloud Firewall
The Miercom report confirms the significant protection and usability gap between purpose-built cloud firewalls and native CSP offerings. The new, streamlined Strata Cloud Manager experience closes the operational gap, making it simpler to deploy with superior security. Together, these advancements provide a clear path to reducing cloud risk while enabling business agility.
Next steps:
- See how Cloud NGFW outperforms cloud-native firewalls in this unsponsored independent Miercom competitive review. Get the report.
- Our experts can help you identify unprotected assets and develop a strategy to achieve comprehensive visibility and protection. Request a complimentary Cloud Network and AI Risk Assessment (CLARA).
- Current customers now have a streamlined onboarding and management experience for Cloud NGFW for AWS. Learn how.