We performed a comparison between Cisco IOS Security and Fortinet FortiManager based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Netgate, Fortinet, OPNsense and others in Firewalls."We were looking for the VPN feature and controlling the inflow and outflow of all the traffic within the site and across the sites. We are also using it for the VPN and VLANs."
"The user interface (UI) is very, very good."
"The IPsec tunnels are very easily created, and quite interoperable with devices from other vendors."
"The Fortinet FortiGate local partners were good. I did not have direct contact with Fortinet support."
"The customization potential is quite impressive."
"The most valuable feature is the policy routing and application control."
"We use a lot of function on the IPS and it works well for us."
"I really like the captive portal feature for our guest network. It has nice VLAN features in terms of separating our network. The anti-virus is also good."
"I've found their network routing to be very good."
"You can scale it when you need to."
"The most valuable features of Cisco IOS Security are the plenty of functionality it provides, many people are IT certified the usage, and the user interface is good."
"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."
"Cisco IOS allows us to keep the same security features as our principal offices."
"The most valuable feature is the scalability. The nice thing with the bigger vendors is that they're very good at scale."
"The most valuable feature is endpoint protection."
"The technical support is good."
"The firewall configuration has more capabilities than the other firewall management systems that I have worked with."
"The solution has the best stability for application control and inspections."
"Everybody is quite happy with the way that the graphical user interface works."
"It's a scalable product."
"FortiManager's most valuable features are web-based or web-rule-based policies, SD-WAN, and the ease of upgrading to new firmware."
"It is stable."
"FortiManager enables us to set unified firewall policies from one centralized dashboard, reducing human error. If you do not have a central dashboard, there's a chance you might set a policy on one firewall and forget to do it for another."
"The capability of centralized management is valuable. We can configure all firewall boxes with the same configuration."
"One area for improvement is the performance on the bandwidth demands for smaller devices, as well as better web filtering."
"The pricing could be reduced or include the first year warranty."
"The renewal price and the availability could be improved."
"We would like to see a better training platform implemented."
"It would be ideal if they had some sort of GUI interface for troubleshooting and diagnostics."
"One of the problems I was having was with user mapping, and it is an issue for which I have escalated tickets with Fortinet support."
"The search tool needs improvement. It's very difficult to search for policies right now."
"The solution's framework needs to be frequently updated in order to have a stable solution."
"I think they should bring back remote VPN for users."
"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."
"Cisco IOS Security should improve its functionalities."
"In the next release of this solution, we would like to see support for the 100BT and 7000 models."
"We have a very bad experience on the support. They take too much time requesting logs, and they are not coming directly online to resolve the issues."
"Sometimes I find it difficult to manage. Some configurations are difficult for new engineers, for example."
"Cisco is an expensive firewall, so the pricing can be improved."
"Cisco is a scalable product, but it is expensive compared to other vendors."
"Regional support in African countries needs to be improved."
"We have experienced a series of minor bugs that necessitated contacted technical support on several occasions."
"The fabric for integrations or connections could be improved."
"The solution has to be enhanced to manage new switches."
"FortiManager could be more user-friendly."
"Fortinet FortiManager could improve them by adding more portfolio components."
"It would be better if it were easier to run a routing protocol. In the next release, I would like them to enhance some features in the GUI rather than CLI or OSP. For example, whenever a customer generates an ISP directly on the firewall, it's complicated to configure the routing protocol."
"The scalability has room for improvement."
Cisco IOS Security is ranked 22nd in Firewalls with 47 reviews while Fortinet FortiManager is ranked 3rd in Network Management Applications with 61 reviews. Cisco IOS Security is rated 8.0, while Fortinet FortiManager is rated 8.0. 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 Fortinet FortiManager writes "Easy to set up with good integration capabilities but we've had troubles when moving devices". Cisco IOS Security is most compared with Cisco Secure Firewall, Fortinet FortiOS, Meraki MX, Netgate pfSense and OPNsense, whereas Fortinet FortiManager is most compared with Fortinet FortiGate Cloud, Fortinet FortiOS, Cisco DNA Center, Zabbix and AlgoSec.
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.