We performed a comparison between Azure Firewall and Fortinet FortiOS based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Firewalls solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."It's a firewall that secures our internal network. I have been using it since 2013, and I find that most of the features are advanced, and very user friendly."
"The VPN is the most valuable feature."
"The SD-WAN is the most valuable feature."
"The simplicity of the configuration and the stability of the product are most valuable. The VPN concentrator is very useful."
"FortiGate's web and URL filtering are unlike any other firewall I've used. The functionality of URL filtering in those solutions is problematic because everything is encrypted, and firewalls can't break that encryption protocol. Fortinet has an SSL proxy, so the encryption is done before the packet ever leaves the FortiGate. The URL filter is definitely one of the most helpful features."
"One of the nice things about FortiGate is that it can be deployed on the cloud or on-premises. You can actually do both. That's the biggest reason why I stick with this solution as opposed to something like Cisco Meraki. Another nice thing is that I can log directly into a FortiGate or get to it through their FortiCloud access products. They're pretty reliable and consistent. One of the reasons why I started using the product was their single pane of management. I can deploy their line of firewalls in conjunction with their switching and access points, and I can manage the entire network from one interface. I don't have to log into one interface for the firewall, another one for the access points, and another one for the switches. These firewalls have access point controller functionality built right into the system, so I don't even have to purchase additional devices to manage them."
"Its user interface is good, and it is always working fine."
"The UTM feature is quite good. FortiAP is easy to deploy because both Fortigate and FortiAP are under the same brand. Otherwise, you need to do more work on the configuration."
"Microsoft's technical support is very good. They're quite knowledgable and responsive."
"We use the solution for application and server deployment."
"I like its order management feature. It doesn't have the kind of threat intelligence that Palo Alto has, but the order management makes it much simpler to know the difference."
"In terms of the reporting, it's beautiful. It integrates with Azure monitoring and with Azure policies. That piece is a big help. You can set governing policies and you can use the application firewall, as well as the Azure Firewall, to enforce those policies."
"The initial setup is straightforward; Azure Firewall does not have a complex implementation process. It is very simple; you just need to enable the service within Azure. It does not require any maintenance because it is managed by Microsoft, that is, it is a fully managed service."
"Network filtering is valuable. The scalability capability from the cloud-native service helps us a lot because it simplifies our day-to-day maintenance activity."
"The solution is stable."
"It's auto-scalable, which is a great feature."
"The user experience is great. The graphical user interface is also good."
"The product is scalable and easily expands."
"The customer service and support team are excellent."
"For ten to 12 years it has been quite secure."
"I personally think the site-to-site VPN is the most useful feature. A lot of firewalls have that, but to me, that's one of the features that's essential."
"Fortinet FortiOS's valuable features include intuitive policy creation and deployment, precise parameter settings to determine thresholds, and security profiles such as web filtering and remote application filtering, among others."
"I find filtering traffic, filtering web traffic, session traffic, and managing the network as valuable features."
"The classification of the websites is helpful."
"There aren't really any negative aspects to discuss."
"The solution could be more user friendly."
"The integration with third-party tools may be something that they should work on."
"There are just some services that aren't available. For example, the Ethernet or point-to-point protocols. They could add these services to their product offering - especially services for ISPs."
"The solution could be more evenly structured."
"The product does need better support in the cloud environment. It's not exactly cloud-native right now."
"The solution is very expensive."
"Bandwidth usage in reporting could be improved for Fortinet FortiGate."
"There is room for further integration of AI into the system."
"Azure has new versions including a premium firewall. But I would like to see them not put the premium features on Azure Firewall Premium alone because it is quite expensive."
"Right now, with Azure Firewall, we cannot have a normal inbound traffic flow. For inbound, Microsoft suggests using application gateways, so the options are very limited. I cannot use this firewall as an intermediate firewall because of the limitations, and I cannot point routing to another firewall. So if I want to use back-to-back firewall architecture in my environment, I cannot use Azure Firewall for that type of configuration either."
"This solution is not mature when it comes to handling perimeter traffic like internet browsing."
"It would be much easier if the on-premises, firewall rules, had some kind of export-import possibility in place, which is not the case right now."
"We find it's different implementing it region-to-region. It might help if it was universal across all regions."
"The interface could be improved, it's not very user friendly."
"The solution lacks artificial intelligence and machine learning. It might be in the roadmap. However, currently, it's not available."
"Their technical support needs improvement."
"There is some room for improvement in the support."
"The solution could improve by making the dashboard easier to use."
"For me, it is important to be able to block VPN applications, like Facebook, so I would like to see that included in the next release. With this version, if you want to block or allow a site, you now have to drag all the domains related to this site."
"The implementation could be simplified."
"I would like to see more statistics in the monitoring part."
"The solution's graphic interface could be a bit more responsive and include notations when changes are made."
"There are some features for FortiGate using FortiOS that can only be enabled via a command line. These aren't very advanced features they have been part of FortiOS for quite some time but they still aren't accessible from the graphical user interface. It makes it a little bit harder than it should be for us to manage the solution. That's my main concern with the user interface. Another concern we have is some elements for the user interface, if they're not properly configured, it could lead to hardware and performance degradation."
Azure Firewall is ranked 21st in Firewalls with 33 reviews while Fortinet FortiOS is ranked 15th in Firewalls with 73 reviews. Azure Firewall is rated 7.2, while Fortinet FortiOS is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Azure Firewall writes "Easy to use and configure but could be more robust". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Fortinet FortiOS writes "Provides effective filtering features, good stability but initial setup is moderately challenging". Azure Firewall is most compared with Fortinet FortiGate-VM, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Microsoft Defender for Cloud, Palo Alto Networks VM-Series and Check Point NGFW, whereas Fortinet FortiOS is most compared with Fortinet FortiManager, Fortinet FortiGate-VM, Fortinet FortiWeb, Infoblox Advanced DNS Protection and Darktrace. See our Azure Firewall vs. Fortinet FortiOS report.
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