We performed a comparison between Cisco Secure Firewall and Fortinet FortiGate-VM based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Features: Cisco Secure Firewall provides important functionalities like protection against threats, visibility into applications, efficient problem-solving, compatibility with other Cisco offerings, and impressive data transfer rates. Fortinet FortiGate-VM stands out for its robust security features, geofencing capabilities, user-friendly interface, and ability to adapt to varying needs.
The reviews highlight various areas where both the Cisco Secure Firewall and the Fortinet FortiGate-VM need improvement, including network performance, policy administration, customization options, centralized management, logging functionality, public cloud functionality, cloud management, technical support, MFA offerings, web filtering options, application inspection, GUI features, availability and delivery, setup process, data center clustering, throughput enhancement, web application firewall integration, integration simplicity, policy customization, and web-filtering configuration improvement.
Service and Support: The opinions on customer service for Cisco Secure Firewall are divided, with some customers appreciating their technical support, while others express concerns about delays and difficulties. Fortinet FortiGate-VM receives mixed reviews, with some satisfied customers and others suggesting that their support could be improved.
Ease of Deployment: The setup process for Cisco Secure Firewall can be more complex depending on the user's familiarity and environment, while Fortinet FortiGate-VM offers a generally straightforward and easy initial setup, with assistance provided by Fortinet.
Pricing: The cost of setting up Cisco Secure Firewall can vary, and some reviewers find it pricey due to additional expenses for licensing, support, and hardware. Fortinet FortiGate-VM is seen as competitive and more affordable than certain alternatives. It provides flexible pricing options and includes support for entitlement in the licensing fees. However, costs may rise when scaling or adding extra features.
ROI: Cisco Secure Firewall offers different levels of ROI depending on how it is used and the overall system design, whereas Fortinet FortiGate-VM delivers enhanced security and stability, potentially resulting in ROI.
Comparison Results: Fortinet FortiGate-VM is the preferred choice when comparing it to Cisco Secure Firewall. Users find the initial setup of Fortinet FortiGate-VM to be straightforward and easy. Fortinet FortiGate-VM is highly praised for its strong security features, user-friendly interface, and easy deployment.
"Its stability is the most valuable."
"The solution is very, very easy to use."
"It can expand easily."
"This product is definitely scalable."
"It's very easy to set up, it's very easy to make policies and, for an organization, that means you don't need IT expert in firewalls. You just need to have somebody who knows a little bit of IT, and that's it. With other products, you need someone with a "Masters" degree in firewalls."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are the ease of use and there are several operating systems that can include the hardware capacities. In the newer releases, the resources were more useful because they were included in the operating system."
"The interface is very good."
"The inspection and web security features are most valuable."
"The main thing that I love the most is its policy and objects. Whenever I try to give access to a user, I can create an object via group creation in the object fields. This way, I am not able to enter a user in the policy repeatedly."
"I have integrated it for incidence response. If there is a security event, the Cisco firewall will automatically block the traffic, which is valuable."
"I have experience with URL filtering, and it is very good for URL filtering. You can filter URLs based on the categories, and it does a good job. It can also do deep packet inspection."
"The IPS, as well as the malware features, are the two things that we use the most and they're very valuable."
"The AnyConnect remote access VPN gives us an easy way to deploy remote working for our users."
"The ASA 55-x range is a solid and reliable firewall. It secures the traffic for normal purposes."
"Our company operates in Saudi Arabia, primarily working with government sectors. If any hardware malfunctions, the defective device is removed, and we receive a replacement from the reseller. We have not encountered any issues related to delays in receiving replacements for malfunctioning devices which has been beneficial."
"I like that it is easy to change the settings."
"The initial setup was quite straightforward."
"It provides an ease of management and configuration as well."
"We are able to closely monitor the usages of individual users and see their usage habits and other items, including the data itself, which gives us quite a bit of visibility."
"The solution offers good documentation."
"High network throughput while providing leading edge network security technology for a competitive price."
"It is easy to set up the solution."
"It's almost perfect. It's very stable. We don't have many hardware issues."
"The stability of the solution is good. We haven't faced any issues at all while using the product."
"They've become quite expensive."
"Fortinet should focus on enhancing the capabilities of FortiGate by consolidating its various products, such as FortiGate Cloud, FortiManager, and FortiAnalyzer."
"They should make the rule sets more understandable for the end user. When you're trying to explain to somebody how a computer network is secured, sometimes it's difficult for an end user or customer to understand. If there was a way to make the terminology more accessible to the end user, the set up could be easier. They should translate the technical jargon to an easily relatable and understandable conversation for the end user, the customer, that would be brilliant. Particularly in an environment where the IT structure is audited regularly, there's always pressure from the auditor to up the standards and up the security and you get your USCERT's that come out and there's a warning about this and the customer will want to lock out so much and when you apply it they run into issue where they can't search the internet or print to their remote office. Of course they can't print to your remote office, they just locked it up. They should make the language more understandable for the customer. If there's a product out there that made the jargon understandable to John Q. Public, I would buy that."
"Backup can be improved."
"When we cluster the two Fortinet FortiGate boxes together we have some issues."
"Fortinet could improve the windows opener or the virtual IP solutions for opening windows. The virtual IP settings need improvement as firewalls are trending in new development directions."
"Fortinet doesn't provide multiple virtual firewalls which would facilitate end users and customers."
"The solution lacks sufficient filtering."
"They should allow customers to talk to them directly instead of having to go through the reseller."
"I think that the solution can be improved with the integration of application-centric infrastructure. It could be used to have better solutions in one box."
"The IPS module is combined with the main operating system."
"The phishing emails could be improved."
"The Cisco Secure Firewall could benefit from enhancements in its API, documentation, and automation tools."
"It would be great if some of the load times were faster."
"HTTPs inspection and higher throughput/spec would be good."
"Cisco Secure Firewall should be easier to handle. It uses ASDM, which is not easy to understand. It would be better if there was direct access via HTTPS."
"I have worked on some of the largest and smallest solutions that Fortinet sells and they all scale really well."
"Now they do have the ability to pop up a command line, which is nice, however, the fact that you can't do everything within the GUI is probably a problem."
"There should be a bit more automation."
"The product is satisfactory. I haven't identified any features to improve, and based on the number of deployments I've handled with FortiGate-VM, there haven't been any complaints from the customer's side."
"With FortiGate, we sometimes encounter bugs in various operating systems."
"There are certain GUI features that should be present but are not."
"The stability could be improved. I find Cisco to be more stable than Fortigate, which is I major differentiator between the two."
"VM should be more optimized."
Cisco Secure Firewall is ranked 4th in Firewalls with 404 reviews while Fortinet FortiGate-VM is ranked 9th in Firewalls with 113 reviews. Cisco Secure Firewall is rated 8.2, while Fortinet FortiGate-VM 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-VM writes "An easy-to-manage and configure tool that provides ample documentation to help with the setup phase". 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-VM is most compared with Azure Firewall, Palo Alto Networks VM-Series, Fortinet FortiOS, OPNsense and Netgate pfSense. See our Cisco Secure Firewall vs. Fortinet FortiGate-VM report.
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