We performed a comparison between WatchGuard Firebox 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."The interface is very user-friendly and I like it very much."
"Fortinet FortiGate is a scalable solution."
"Reliability is the best feature. We faced some issues when we were setting it up, but the service, portal, and administration are good."
"All of the features of Fortinet FortiGate are useful and the security protection is good."
"The VPN is the most valuable feature."
"UTM/NGFW features and FortiCloud for logs and backups are awesome."
"It works very well. It has a lot of different functionalities. Its cost is also fine for our customers."
"The reporting you receive out of this appliance is excellent. You will not need an external management system."
"The most valuable feature for small and medium businesses is the support for various protocol proxies."
"I like intrusion detection the most."
"I like the High Availability features of the newest ones I'm using because they allow a firewall to fail and still be up and running."
"WatchGuard Firebox's two-factor authentication feature is particularly useful and provides an added layer of protection."
"What I found most valuable in WatchGuard Firebox is that it's a functional platform that works, and each of its features works well. The solution also has good reporting and dashboard capabilities. I also find the overall performance of WatchGuard Firebox great."
"The throughput is great. It's perfect. We have no issues whatsoever. The management features are very powerful..."
"It's pretty simple to understand when you want to do any diagnostics on your network. If you want to go in and see what packages are having trouble getting through, what's being held, stalled, etc., it's very easy to use in that way."
"The product's usability is good. It is straightforward and simple. One of the benefits is that it is easy to navigate and intuitive."
"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."
"The cloud proxy and integration are some of the key features. Since there is cloud waste, we can quickly provision it and start working on the configuration. On top of that, they have added a few more features. They have integrated CASB, and file sandboxing is part of it."
"The initial setup is very straightforward."
"We enjoy all of the proxy capabilities and the capability to integrate into the SIEM/SOC solution."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to drop packets."
"Zscaler Web Security protects our users in remote locations from internet threats - even if they are not connected to our network."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is SWG traffic."
"Zscaler covers all the features needed to replace a VPN or proxy solution. They are good. They've been on the market for 15 years now, so they are mature enough."
"Quality control on their firmware versions needs improvement. When they introduce new firmware, there tend to be bugs."
"A sandbox would be good in order to be able to inspect the emails containing spam and be able to validate the emails that contain malware, prior to delivering to the customer."
"Application management can be improved."
"FortiGate support could do some improvements on their IPv6 configuration. Right now it's still in the very early stage for utilizing in an enterprise level network environment."
"The search tool needs improvement. It's very difficult to search for policies right now."
"The Web-filter in this solution is not very good."
"FortiGate is really good. We have been using it for quite some time. Initially, when we started off, we had around 70 plus devices of FortiGate, but then Check Point and Palo Alto took over the place. From the product perspective, there are no issues, but from the account perspective, we have had issues. Fortinet's presence in our company is very less. I don't see any Fortinet account managers talking to us, and that presence has diluted in the last two and a half or three years. We have close to 1,500 firewalls. Out of these, 60% of firewalls are from Palo Alto, and a few firewalls are from Check Point. FortiGate firewalls are very less now. It is not because of the product; it is because of the relationship. I don't think they had a good relationship with us, and there was some kind of disconnect for a very long time. The relationship between their accounts team and my leadership team seems to be the reason for phasing out FortiGate."
"Fortinet should focus on enhancing the capabilities of FortiGate by consolidating its various products, such as FortiGate Cloud, FortiManager, and FortiAnalyzer."
"In terms of the reporting and management features — and this isn't necessarily a WatchGuard issue, this seems to be more of an industry-wide issue — you get reports, but a lot of times you don't know what you're looking at. You're so overwhelmed with the data. You're getting a lot of stuff that doesn't matter, so it takes time to parse through it, to actually get what you want to know."
"I haven’t dug deeply into the reporting features yet or if they are working well. However, I have generated several reports and there was too much unnecessary information, in comparison with the reporting features in the Sophos firewall. Sophos' reporting is more readable and easier to configure."
"The documentation for the System Manager/Dimension configuration, could be a little bit clearer... The use case where you have multiple sites with multiple firewalls, and one site that has the System Manager server and the Dimension server, wasn't really well defined. It took me a little bit of digging to get that to actually work."
"Cloud-based central administration of all devices from one point would be nice"
"It would be wonderful if the WatchGuard team develops nice products for threat intelligence."
"Last year, I had an issue with one of the Fireboxes going down. It was overheated, because my server room became overheated and this fried it."
"Websense is an application that monitors and filters internet traffic. Websense was derived from WatchGuard. But when you go to WatchGuard to actually implement that particular feature, you have to use some type of additional feature and you have to pay for it, unfortunately. I think it should be free or free in the WatchGuard box itself, as an option. It would be nice if they didn't charge us for that."
"There is room for improvement on the education side, regarding what does what, rather than just throwing it at a person and assuming they know everything about it. A lot of times, you have to call WatchGuard support to get the solution that will work, rather than their just having it published so that you can fix the problem on your own."
"The OS capabilities and WSL support could be improved."
"The tool should improve the predefined dictionaries."
"Cloud App’s database should be improved."
"They block Zscaler IPs when the traffic origin is from Zscaler IPs. They've been blocked by certain government organizations so the end users are not able to visit those websites unless we ask them to unblock those IP. This is a bit problematic."
"One thing that they could improve is the ability to import rules from other platforms."
"Sometimes it's not easy to use during large deployments of workstations."
"Zscaler needs to add client-to-client communication. It's always client-to-server communication. The cloud and branch connectors could be improved because we're still dependent on traditional firewalls. They should eliminate this. They should also provide WAN devices should to compete with the SD-WAN solutions also."
"There are a few features that are not compatible with the Azure cloud."
WatchGuard Firebox is ranked 13th in Firewalls with 79 reviews while Zscaler Internet Access is ranked 2nd in Secure Web Gateways (SWG) with 46 reviews. WatchGuard Firebox is rated 8.4, while Zscaler Internet Access is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of WatchGuard Firebox writes "Offers a streamlined deployment, intuitive interface and robust security features". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Zscaler Internet Access writes "Provides integrated CASB and file sandboxing but could be less expensive ". WatchGuard Firebox is most compared with Netgate pfSense, Sophos XG, OPNsense, SonicWall TZ and Meraki MX, 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 WatchGuard Firebox vs. Zscaler Internet Access report.
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