We performed a comparison between Cisco Secure Firewall and Zscaler Internet Access 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."We use the filtering feature the most. It has filtering and inbuilt securities. We can create customized rules to define which users can access a particular type of site. We can create policies inside the firewall."
"The most valuable features are SD-WAN, application control, IPS control, and FortiSandbox."
"We use the FortiGate Sandbox to detect zero-day vulnerabilities, such as anomalies or malware, that are unknown and have not yet been discovered."
"LinkGreat firewall capabilities"
"FortiGate is flexible and easy to use."
"Security solution with a straightforward and quick setup. It's a stable and scalable product."
"Fortinet FortiGate is a scalable solution."
"The technical support in our region is excellent."
"There are some hiccups here and there, but compared to the technical support from other vendors, I have had the best experience with Cisco's technical support. I would rate them at nine out of ten."
"I like the firewall features, Snort, and the Intrusion Prevention System (IPS)."
"The most valuable feature is that it has the ability to divide the network into three parts; internal, external, and DMZ."
"With the FMC and the FirePOWERs, the ability to quickly replace a piece of hardware without having to have a network outage is useful. Also, the ability to replace a piece of equipment and deploy the config that the previous piece of equipment had is pretty useful."
"AnyConnect has been very helpful, along with the ability to use LDAP for authentication."
"The most valuable feature of the Firepower solution is FireSIGHT, which can be easily managed and is user-friendly."
"I have experience with URL filtering, and it is very good for URL filtering. You can filter URLs based on the categories, and it does a good job. It can also do deep packet inspection."
"The most valuable features of this solution are advanced malware protection, IPS, and IDS."
"The users are at different locations, and Zscaler helps us to put the organization's central security controls on these roaming users."
"All internet access flows through the Zscaler proxy, regardless of whether people are in office or remote. I have greater control site access and I minimize the number of compromises that we experience to almost none."
"We enjoy all of the proxy capabilities and the capability to integrate into the SIEM/SOC solution."
"We don't have to buy equipment to use it. And when our engineers set it up on our side, we just configured a few settings and we were in."
"Zscaler Internet Access's best feature is the granular policy controls."
"Zscaler excels in security protection and the cloud is always up-to-date. It does not matter if you are a small or big organisation, you will receive the same security quality."
"The solution replaces multiple vendor technologies with one which makes it worth the cost."
"The protection is most valuable."
"The feature which gives us a lot of pain is ASIC architecture."
"From a reporting perspective, there's room for improvement. They're providing FortiAnalyzer through which one can get some enhancements, but the visibility and reporting still need slight improvement."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve the user interface. There should be more functionality and options through the GUI."
"The user interface could be improved."
"Fortinet currently has many products bundled with FortiGate including the basic firewall and load balancer, and I think that that they need to have separate product portfolios for each of these specialized services."
"Fortinet needs to overhaul its documentation."
"Fortinet FortiGate can improve the integration with Active Directory. Additionally, I would like to have a Cloud Controller, such as they do in the Cisco Meraki solution."
"It does not have key authentication for admin access."
"Sometimes, it is not easy to troubleshoot. You need to know where to go. It took me quite awhile. It's like, "Okay, if it doesn't go smoothly here, then go find the documentation." Once you do it, it is not so bad. However, it is sometimes a steep learning curve on the troubleshooting part of it."
"Cisco's inspection visibility could be better."
"It integrates with other security products from Cisco, but sometimes, there can be glitches or errors."
"The artificial intelligence and machine learning (behavioral based threat detection), which I can this will be coming out in another year, these are what we need now."
"The stability and the product features have to really be worked on."
"Implementations require the use of a console. It would help if the console was embedded."
"One of the challenges we've had with the Cisco ASA is the lack of a strong controller or central management console that is dependable and reliable all the time."
"These firewalls are not for beginners."
"In every cloud service in the world, you have multiple upstream internet providers to create diversity so that if one of your providers fails, your network just continues. In South Africa, there is only one upstream provider, and that's not right. That that's a problem."
"Cloud App’s database should be improved."
"Sometimes it's not easy to use during large deployments of workstations."
"The performance needs improvement. Some areas create performance issues and, depending on the use cases, require reconfiguration to perform again."
"The main issue with Zscaler Internet Access is proxy IP detection, which sometimes makes sites inaccessible."
"An improvement would be if they could provide an out-of-the-box experience, like 20 to 30 features all ready to go. In comparison, LogRhythm offers out-of-the-box features. With Zscaler Internet Access, there is firewall IPS, multiple security services, filtering, DLP, and CASB browser isolation. These are things that all users are going to be using. However, when an administrator or architect would start building this, I would definitely need to engage professional services to help clients do it."
"Zscaler should continue to make the user interface better. They should also improve the backup network and continue to expand it so that it can handle larger numbers of customers."
"One thing that they could improve is the ability to import rules from other platforms."
Cisco Secure Firewall is ranked 4th in Firewalls with 404 reviews while Zscaler Internet Access is ranked 2nd in Secure Web Gateways (SWG) with 46 reviews. Cisco Secure Firewall is rated 8.2, while Zscaler Internet Access is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Cisco Secure Firewall writes "Highlights and helps us catch Zero-day vulnerabilities traveling across our network". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Zscaler Internet Access writes "Provides integrated CASB and file sandboxing but could be less expensive ". Cisco Secure Firewall is most compared with Palo Alto Networks WildFire, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX, Sophos XG and Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, whereas Zscaler Internet Access is most compared with Cisco Umbrella, Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps, Netskope , Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks and Appgate SDP. See our Cisco Secure Firewall vs. Zscaler Internet Access report.
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