We performed a comparison between Cisco Secure Firewall and Sonicwall TZ based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Of the two solutions, Sonicwall TZ seems to be the more desirable product because of its easy deployment, great set of features, and affordable price.
"The performance is good."
"It is a safe product."
"It's super reliable. I don't think I've ever had a reliability issue with it."
"The stability and scalability of this solution are satisfactory. Its SD-WAN, VPN, and URL filtering features are very useful."
"It can expand easily."
"It's very fast and easy to configure."
"The product is easy to use and is stable. The SV1 functionality is a benefit."
"The next-generation firewall is great."
"For our very specific use case, for remote access for VPN, ASAs are very good."
"Collaboration with other Cisco products such as ISE and others is the most valuable feature."
"If only a Layer 4 FW is needed, this is a good solution."
"Cisco Secure Firewall's security solutions, advanced malware protection, and DDoS communication are very good."
"The most valuable feature we have found to be the VPN because we use it often."
"I have not contacted technical support. There is a lot of information on the internet for troubleshooting. All you need to do is use a search engine and you will find the information you are looking for easily."
"Cisco ASA works very nicely from an administration perspective. The management of the device is very nice. The ASDM (Adaptive Security Device Manager) is the software that we use and it is very easy to configure using the GUI."
"The most valuable features for my client are the ASDM and monitoring."
"It does what it says it is going to do."
"The most valuable feature of SonicWall TZ is the double authentication, where it asks for one password and again asks for a four-digit code, which changes every 30 seconds."
"The product is easy to deploy."
"The performance has been very good. Overall, the solution is quite stable."
"It's been very easy to implement and deploy."
"It is very stable with no issues. The firewall's been up for the past 35 days non-stop. It's performed great. It has performed as it should perform."
"They give good protection to my network and support it."
"It is a scalable solution."
"While FortiGate is cheaper than most other solutions, we're seeing increased license renewal costs. Most of our clients are asking for more significant discounts because the price is going up."
"It should provide better visibility over the network and more information in the form of reports for the end users. Its installation should also be easier."
"In the next release, I would like to see the interface simplified to be more user-friendly."
"Bandwidth usage in reporting could be improved for Fortinet FortiGate."
"Quality control on their firmware versions needs improvement. When they introduce new firmware, there tend to be bugs."
"The reporting in Fortinet FortiGate could improve. Customers are having to purchase additional reporting components. When I have used the Sophos solution it is a complete solution, in Fortinet FortiGate you have to use additional tools to have the features needed."
"I think there could be more QoS features"
"At first glance, the interface for the device is very confusing."
"The ASA has become a bit old and needs updating."
"If the implementation was easier, it would be a lot better for us."
"One of the few things that are brought up is that for the overall management, it would be great to have a cloud instance of that. And not only just a cloud instance, but one of the areas that we've looked at is using an HA type of cloud. To have the ability to have a device file within a cloud. If we had an issue with one, the other one would pick up automatically."
"Cisco ASA Firewall could improve by adding more advanced features such as web filtering, which is available in the next-generation firewalls. However, the Cisco ASA Firewall I am using could be old and these features have been updated."
"You need to have a little bit of knowledge to be able to configure it. Otherwise, it would be very difficult to configure because there is no GUI. The latest software available in the market has a GUI and probably zero-touch provisioning and auto-configuration. All these things are not available in our version. You need to manually go and configure everything in the switch. In terms of new features, we would definitely want to have URL-based filtering, traffic steering, and probably a little bit steering in the bandwidth based on the per-user level and per-user group. We will definitely need some of these features in the near future."
"The user interface for the Firepower management console is a little bit different from traditional Cisco management tools. If you look at products we already use, like Cisco Prime or other products that are cloud-based, they have a more modern user interface for managing the products. For Firepower, the user interface is not very user-friendly. It's a little bit confusing sometimes."
"They need a user-friendly interface that we could easily configure."
"While this applies to all vendors, pricing can be always lower. In my opinion, Cisco is the most expensive. The pricing can be reduced."
"In terms of what needs to be improved, I would say better load balancing and data filtering."
"I think content filtering is the area this product should improve. It's a little tricky to get put in correctly."
"The VPN that is available in the new version is a bit bulky and slower in speed."
"Getting support can be slow."
"I would like to see a SonicWall integration with the DLP tool, this would be interesting. Data Loss Prevention integration."
"User interface could be improved."
"They should consider working a bit more on their ransomware application."
"Full monitoring obviously needs to be improved. We need full monitoring covered under the security licensing."
Cisco Secure Firewall is ranked 4th in Firewalls with 404 reviews while SonicWall TZ is ranked 12th in Firewalls with 78 reviews. Cisco Secure Firewall is rated 8.2, while SonicWall TZ is rated 8.0. 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 SonicWall TZ writes "Has efficient user access control feature and good technical support services ". Cisco Secure Firewall is most compared with Palo Alto Networks WildFire, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX, Sophos XG and Azure Firewall, whereas SonicWall TZ is most compared with Sophos XG, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX, SonicWall NSa and OPNsense. See our Cisco Secure Firewall vs. SonicWall TZ report.
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