We performed a comparison between Cisco Secure Firewall and Fortinet Fortigate based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Based on the parameters we compared, Fortinet Fortigate comes out on top. Its ease of deployment combined with its solid set of features and excellent service and support ratings make it a more desirable solution than Cisco Secure Firewall.
"Strong in NAT and access-lists."
"The most important point is the detection engine which is now part of the next-generation firewalls and which is supported by Cisco Talos."
"One of the best features is the ease of use. It's also easy to teach new engineers to use the ASA CLI."
"The GUI is among the most valuable features,"
"All the features except IPS are valuable. IPS is not a part of my job."
"We moved from a legacy firewall to the ASA with FirePOWER, increasing our Internet Edge defense dramatically."
"The integration of network and workload micro-segmentation helps a lot to provide unified segmentation policies across east-west and north-south traffic. One concrete example is with Cisco ACI for the data center. Not only are we doing what is called a service graph on the ACI to make sure that we can filter traffic east-west between two endpoints in the same network, but when we go north-south or east-west, we can then leverage what we have on the network with SGTs on Cisco ISE. Once you build your matrix, it is very easy to filter in and out on east-west or north-south traffic."
"The implementation is pretty straightforward."
"Fortinet has a very good solution for Secure SD-WAN. One very good feature is that they have robust and simple FortiOS through which they provide all solutions. That's their strength. There's not much complexity involved with the Secure SD-WAN solution of Fortinet as compared to Cisco's solution, which has a lot of flexibility but complexity also comes with that flexibility."
"We are very happy with the general bandwidth agility we have seen from one website to another website."
"FortiGate is very simple to manage and easy to use."
"The solution is highly scalable because they have devices that can handle a large amount of traffic."
"The initial setup of Fortinet FortiGate was straightforward."
"Allows for firewall rules to be programmed and named in a way that makes it “readable”"
"Initial setup is easy to configure."
"The security features are about the best that I've seen anywhere."
"The inclusion of an autofill feature would improve the ease of commands."
"The ASA has become a bit old and needs updating."
"You have to know the ASA command line very well because not all operations are available in the graphical interface"
"I would like for them to develop better integration with other security platforms."
"For the new line of FTDs, the performance could be improved. We sometimes have issues with the 41 series, depending what we activate. If we activate too many intrusion policies, it affects the CPU."
"I would like the ability to drill down into certain reports because currently, that cannot be done."
"It is hard to control the bandwidth of end-users with a Cisco Firewall. That is the main issue I've faced. I used Mikrotik for many years for this very reason. Mikrotik has the option to set a bandwidth restriction for a single IP or complete segments. Cisco should add this option to their firewall."
"I have worked with the new FTD models and they have more features than the ASA line."
"If they had better integration with security products, such as Cisco ISE or Rapid Threat Containment, then it would be an improvement."
"They should offer special pricing to premium partners and customers."
"Security is a continuous process. In every product, there is a requirement for improvement. Its pricing should also be improved according to Indian market requirements. They must also improve on the reporting part. Its reporting can be more precise. If we can get a real-time report in a specific format, it will be helpful for customers to know about the current status of their security."
"The support from Fortinet FortiGate could improve. They are not easily accessible when we need them. They could improve their response time."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve by having better visibility. Palo Alto has better visibility."
"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."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve by having a frequent ask questions(FAQ) area for people to receive quick answers to popular questions. Additionally, it would be beneficial to have an SMS notification feature. For example, if you cannot access your email you could receive an SMS message."
"Fortinet Fortigate could benefit by simplifying some of their processes."
Cisco Secure Firewall is ranked 4th in Firewalls with 404 reviews while Fortinet FortiGate is ranked 2nd in Firewalls with 306 reviews. Cisco Secure Firewall is rated 8.2, while Fortinet FortiGate is rated 8.4. 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 Fortinet FortiGate writes "It's a reliable solution that's easy to install and cheaper than competitors ". Cisco Secure Firewall is most compared with Palo Alto Networks WildFire, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX, Sophos XG and Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, whereas Fortinet FortiGate is most compared with Sophos XG, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX, WatchGuard Firebox and Check Point NGFW. See our Cisco Secure Firewall vs. Fortinet FortiGate report.
See our list of best Firewalls vendors.
We monitor all Firewalls reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.