We performed a comparison between Cisco IOS Security and Cisco Secure Firewall 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."Fortigate's most valuable feature is that it doesn't need a push policy when writing rules."
"It has improved our organization with control data."
"The user interface is relatively easy. The devices are easy to deploy and figure out when you have experience with other security appliances."
"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."
"Fortinet FortiGate appears to be scalable."
"Fortinet offers the latest versions to cater to the needs of enterprises."
"It's quite comfortable to handle the FortiGate firewall."
"You can create multiple Virtual Domains (VDOMs), which are treated as separate firewall instances."
"The product has valuable features for business intelligence."
"The capabilities for scalability with this product are huge"
"You can scale it when you need to."
"Completely integrates branch offices with perimeter security."
"We are able to filter a lot of traffic especially when a lot of the traffic is in layer 7."
"The hardware is pretty stable. It's also a very good product performance-wise. Initially, it wasn't mature like a firewall and there were other leaders, but now they have included almost all the features of next-generation security. Basically, it's a good product to work with."
"The most valuable feature is the scalability. The nice thing with the bigger vendors is that they're very good at scale."
"It covers everything we need it to without looking to secondary solutions."
"Firepower NGFW has improved my organization in several ways. Before, we were trying to stamp out security threats and issues, it was a one-off type of way to attack it. I spent a lot of manpower trying to track down the individual issues or flare-ups that we would see. With Cisco's Firepower Management, we're able to have that push up to basically one monitor and one UI and be able to track that and stop threats immediately. It also gives us a little more granularity on what those threats might be."
"They provide DDoS protection and multi-factor authentication. That is a good option as it enables work-from-home functionality."
"The most valuable features are the flexibility and level of security that this solution provides."
"The most valuable feature we have found to be the VPN because we use it often."
"Cisco Secure Firewall's security solutions, advanced malware protection, and DDoS communication are very good."
"Cisco ASA works out-of-the-box. With the setup wizard, it was easy to get it deployed quickly, even by novice IT users."
"The implementation is pretty straightforward."
"It makes it very easy to have delineated roles and responsibilities between network engineering and network security."
"The product does need better support in the cloud environment. It's not exactly cloud-native right now."
"The non-error conserve mode has room for improvement."
"Tunnel flapping was one of the major things I had seen wherein your internet link remains but your VPN tunnel is down. However, since I got a fix from the TAC team, I have not noticed it, but the customer complained a few times that they couldn't access the internet because of this problem."
"It would be a benefit if Fortinet would release a one-stop solution that is better integrated with other products and an automated emergency response system."
"They need to improve their technical support."
"There are some tiny bugs that sometimes affect the operations. In the past revision of it, there was a bug. Because of the bug, we had to downgrade the version. It happened only with the last revision."
"The process of configuring firewall rules appears excessively complex."
"Its price could be better."
"It takes too much time to deploy a policy to FMC. It takes around eight minutes. You can't afford any downtime when you're changing policies."
"The solution’s setup process could be better."
"Cisco IOS Security should improve its functionalities."
"Cisco is a scalable product, but it is expensive compared to other vendors."
"There could be a bit more functions on offer that could make it easier to use."
"I would love it if it has a link-by-link feature, integration with Unified Threat Management (UTM), and load balancers. They haven't got any link-by-link feature right now, which can be a very attractive option. This link-by-link feature can also be made available for Cisco's UTM firewalls. The link-by-link feature is available in some of the other firewalls. Currently, integration with UTM is missing. Cisco IOS Security also doesn't have the load balancers and a few things that need to be done to get a good UTM firewall. Normally, other firewalls have UTM. As a next-generation firewall, it's good, but as a UTM, it has to do some work."
"The pricing is the only con for this product."
"In the next release of this solution, we would like to see support for the 100BT and 7000 models."
"The software was very buggy, to the point it had to be removed."
"Cisco should redo their website so it's actually usable in a faster way."
"It is my understanding that they are in the process of discontinuing this device."
"The pricing is a bit high."
"They need a user-friendly interface that we could easily configure."
"One thing that Cisco could improve is the GUI. The graphic user interface should be more user-friendly."
"We only have an issue with time sync with Cisco ASA and NTP. If the time is out of sync, it will be a disaster for the failover."
"I have a lot of difficulties with the solution's Firewall Management Center (FMC) and the GUI. Neither is responsive enough and should be improved."
Cisco IOS Security is ranked 22nd in Firewalls with 47 reviews while Cisco Secure Firewall is ranked 4th in Firewalls with 404 reviews. Cisco IOS Security is rated 8.0, while Cisco Secure Firewall is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Cisco IOS Security writes "User-friendly and excels in documentation, making it easier to resolve issues". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Cisco Secure Firewall writes "Highlights and helps us catch Zero-day vulnerabilities traveling across our network". Cisco IOS Security is most compared with Meraki MX, Fortinet FortiOS, Netgate pfSense, OPNsense and Palo Alto Networks URL Filtering with PAN-DB, whereas Cisco Secure Firewall is most compared with Palo Alto Networks WildFire, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX, Sophos XG and Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls. See our Cisco IOS Security vs. Cisco Secure Firewall report.
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