We performed a comparison between Cisco Umbrella and Fortinet FortiGate SWG based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Cisco Umbrella is the winner in this comparison. It is a powerful and reliable tool with a proven ROI. It also received higher marks in the Support category.
"The most valuable features are the antivirus as a whole, the anti-malware, and all of the protection features that scan our enterprise devices."
"On the outside, the main differentiation is because Lookout ingest. They have ingested basically all of the apps for the last ten years and all the versions of all the apps, and we have that in a corporate database that allows us to do very large-scale machine learning and analysis on that data set. That's not something that any of the competitors really have the capability to do because they don't have access to the data set. A lot of the apps you can no longer get them because that version of the app is five or six years old, and it just doesn't exist anywhere anymore, except within our infrastructure. So, the ability to have that very rich dataset and learn from that dataset is a real differentiator."
"The protection offered by the product is the most valuable feature. It detects vulnerabilities or traps on our users' phones and then prompts them to clean up their devices. Tools we used previously would only discover, which required us to gather information on the backend, so Lookout is a welcome upgrade."
"The solution is stable."
"The single-pane-of-glass management is really important. In today's era, administration costs and operational expenses will cost you a lot, and it reduces that as well. You don't need extra resources to manage all your parameter firewalls, looking at every single device to allow resources internal access. By just introducing the single-pane-of-glass management, it has lifted the burden off of management, especially the network management."
"The customer experience is very good, and the product improves security posture."
"The primary advantage of Cisco Umbrella is its ability to safeguard our users no matter where they are working from - whether it's in the office or remotely, as per the new work model that has emerged globally. This integrated security solution has simplified our lives by combining all the necessary security measures in one product. Additionally, deploying the product is all it takes to protect all our users."
"I like the DNS layer security."
"Cisco Umbrella is absolutely stable."
"Umbrella, being one pane for managing, being all-encompassing, allows us to quickly go in, make a change, and it applies to either every location, if we want it to, or we can have policies in place that only apply to certain users or certain computers."
"We've found it to be stable and good for our customers."
"The integration features within, for example, the Cisco VPN product and the Umbrella module are valuable."
"The response from the technical support team has always been excellent."
"We have found the product to be scalable."
"The solution is easy to implement and easy to configure. The most valuable feature is FortiGate’s content filtering."
"The product has the most valuable configuration, offloading, and security features."
"FortiGate is a great solution, although initially, it faced challenges in the Brazilian market due to lower brand recognition than Cisco. However, explaining and demonstrating its product format and offerings has proven easy. The cost-effectiveness and better features of FortiGate have made some clients skeptical. We set up a trial period, and they eventually opted for it. Many clients were convinced it was great after experiencing the solution's capabilities firsthand."
"It has the same functionalities throughout the range of products."
"It's a flexible solution."
"It offers web filtering capabilities at a more affordable price compared to other solutions like PSMs or NETGEAR."
"We just submitted an enhancement request reflecting the main area we want to see improvement in; the APIs. Currently, we're able to build dashboards, but it's somewhat backward because we use our MDM API to create them. Lookout should provide API to customers so we can query our data and use it in our cloud, and this is the only outstanding area for improvement with the product right now."
"The stability depends on the service from where you access it. Because sometimes, the place you are in, you have Gateway. You don't have Gateway. The gateway is overutilized. At the end, you need to go through their gateways. And this is the key point here. You have a tracking point. If it's not well orchestrated, and it scales up as you add more to the existing team, you will suffer"
"From the analysis that we've done, they do seem to be maybe a step behind in trying to enter the market with a new solution. But when they do pick up, they do come out with some good products."
"Lookout was moving into the SSE space. And so their work on SecureWeb Gateway and SD-WAN is still sort of evolving."
"We faced an issue regarding virtual appliances (VAs) during deployment. They could improve the quality and management of the virtual appliances offered right now. You can't see much because it is a Linux machine, and they have customized it. You don't have any route access to the machine, only seeing limited things in it. When we opened a ticket, they didn't know much about VAs themselves. So, that is where it is lacking right now. I know this will improve in the long run."
"I feel that the application needs other characteristics that are available with other applications in the market."
"Data reporting could be improved."
"The product can be pretty expensive."
"If the virtual appliances could also gather traffic bandwidth reports, that would be great."
"I would like to see more integrations with more products. Some of the integrations need to be simpler as well. For example, the integration with Cisco Secure Firewall could be simpler. It would be good to make reporting simpler. For those who don't use SecureX, it would be good to make Umbrella really simple to use upfront. It's not a difficult product, but it can be daunting for someone who isn't exposed to it because there are so many options."
"They need to improve analytics so they report on more of the specifics of user activity."
"In my experience with Umbrella support, sometimes the response times take a bit more time than we would like... sometimes, if you go through email, it can take quite a while to get a response."
"The software is a bit expensive to renew."
"It is complicated to manage different kinds of on-premise boxes."
"Their technical support could be improved a little bit in terms of responsiveness."
"We can't identify which users are causing challenges when we have issues."
"We are providing VoIP and the IP licensing could improve in Fortinet FortiGate SWG."
"The UI/UX experience can be a little better."
"Fortinet FortiGate SWG can be expensive for some customers."
"They should make the product user-friendly and enhance the security features."
Cisco Umbrella is ranked 1st in Secure Web Gateways (SWG) with 108 reviews while Fortinet FortiGate SWG is ranked 4th in Secure Web Gateways (SWG) with 39 reviews. Cisco Umbrella is rated 8.8, while Fortinet FortiGate SWG is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Cisco Umbrella writes "Protects endpoints wherever they are, always pushing people to the right locations to avoid malicious intent". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Fortinet FortiGate SWG writes "Non-IT people could plug it in, connect it to the fiber, and get it running without IT help. ". Cisco Umbrella is most compared with Zscaler Internet Access, Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps, Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks, Palo Alto Networks DNS Security and Infoblox Advanced DNS Protection, whereas Fortinet FortiGate SWG is most compared with Fortinet FortiProxy, Sangfor Internet Access Gateway (IAG), Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway, Netskope Next Gen Secure Web Gateway and Axis Security. See our Cisco Umbrella vs. Fortinet FortiGate SWG report.
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