We performed a comparison between Cisco Umbrella and Fortinet FortiGate SWG based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Cisco Umbrella is the winner in this comparison. It is a powerful and reliable tool with a proven ROI. It also received higher marks in the Support category.
"The protection offered by the product is the most valuable feature. It detects vulnerabilities or traps on our users' phones and then prompts them to clean up their devices. Tools we used previously would only discover, which required us to gather information on the backend, so Lookout is a welcome upgrade."
"On the outside, the main differentiation is because Lookout ingest. They have ingested basically all of the apps for the last ten years and all the versions of all the apps, and we have that in a corporate database that allows us to do very large-scale machine learning and analysis on that data set. That's not something that any of the competitors really have the capability to do because they don't have access to the data set. A lot of the apps you can no longer get them because that version of the app is five or six years old, and it just doesn't exist anywhere anymore, except within our infrastructure. So, the ability to have that very rich dataset and learn from that dataset is a real differentiator."
"The solution is stable."
"The most valuable features are the antivirus as a whole, the anti-malware, and all of the protection features that scan our enterprise devices."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to filter malware sites that could infect clients or allow them to download infected files."
"Threats never come close to your network with security at the DNS level."
"Cisco's technical support is pretty good. When a solution is available, they will find it. On a scale from one to ten with ten being the best, I'd rate Cisco's technical support at nine."
"Reports provide insight into internet usage and information helpful in creating QoS rules."
"The solution is very easy to manage. We found the initial setup, for example, to be quite simple."
"I haven't needed to reboot the servers for years due to their excellent stability."
"The documentation is good, and we have been able to resolve any issues ourselves."
"You can manage and create policies based on a group of users. It can permit some URLs and block others."
"It has a valuable SD-WAN feature and provides good performance."
"It offers web filtering capabilities at a more affordable price compared to other solutions like PSMs or NETGEAR."
"The most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiGate SWG is its stability."
"FortiGate is a great solution, although initially, it faced challenges in the Brazilian market due to lower brand recognition than Cisco. However, explaining and demonstrating its product format and offerings has proven easy. The cost-effectiveness and better features of FortiGate have made some clients skeptical. We set up a trial period, and they eventually opted for it. Many clients were convinced it was great after experiencing the solution's capabilities firsthand."
"The user interface is intuitive. Anyone can configure the firewall with little knowledge of the product. The back-end is robust with good security."
"The product's most valuable features are SD-WAN and the integration of WiFi and switches."
"It is simpler to configure. It is not like Cisco Firepower, where you go crazy trying to follow the Cisco documentation to figure out how to configure one little thing. Unlike Cisco Firepower, where you can't do everything through the web interface and you have got to do some command line stuff, Fortinet FortiGate SWG is simpler. There are four different things in Cisco to get in, which is not the case with Fortinet FortiGate SWG. It is one of my favorite solutions to work with. I would much rather work with it than Cisco Firepower, for example. Even though I've got 20 years of Cisco experience with different firewalls, I would much prefer this solution."
"The solution is superior to Cisco in terms of security."
"Lookout was moving into the SSE space. And so their work on SecureWeb Gateway and SD-WAN is still sort of evolving."
"We just submitted an enhancement request reflecting the main area we want to see improvement in; the APIs. Currently, we're able to build dashboards, but it's somewhat backward because we use our MDM API to create them. Lookout should provide API to customers so we can query our data and use it in our cloud, and this is the only outstanding area for improvement with the product right now."
"From the analysis that we've done, they do seem to be maybe a step behind in trying to enter the market with a new solution. But when they do pick up, they do come out with some good products."
"The stability depends on the service from where you access it. Because sometimes, the place you are in, you have Gateway. You don't have Gateway. The gateway is overutilized. At the end, you need to go through their gateways. And this is the key point here. You have a tracking point. If it's not well orchestrated, and it scales up as you add more to the existing team, you will suffer"
"There are a couple of interface issues. I know that they say that there are feature enhancements that are noted. For example, we've got the Cisco Meraki security appliances, and there, we geofence our company to where we're allowed to send and receive traffic. So, in our case, by default, we only allow traffic to six different countries, which allows us to effectively prevent traffic for the majority of bad players in the world, but they don't give you an easy way to do that in Cisco Umbrella. With Cisco Meraki, I can specify or pick the countries. I can say that I want to only allow traffic from these six countries, and I'm done. With Cisco Umbrella, I have to rely on the fact that they're going to prevent traffic to other countries. They're going to decide if it's good or bad."
"There are a couple of different pieces that have different portals. I know they're working on getting them all into one portal, but that's probably the biggest thing that needs improvement right now. It's not a single pane of glass yet."
"It should have a real-time malware classification engine. It should check the malware on the website. It would be good if it had a real-time malware check for the websites because currently, it just compares the DNS queries of the blacklist. It should also have malware control over file execution and the types of files that the users are allowed to download."
"There are some situations where we would like to block things for specific user groups. I know that Umbrella does that, but it's not that easy.... when you want a specific task for specific rules and policies for user groups, you have to go three levels down in the menu, and it's hard to find where you do that task."
"The solution's technical support is not very good."
"I would like for their support to be faster."
"I'd like to see improvement in its overall integration with all the other platforms. There's some integration between Umbrella and Meraki, but an overall Cisco problem is that there are so many different tools, and finding easy, seamless ways of connecting everything together is always a challenge."
"Data reporting could be improved."
"It is complicated to manage different kinds of on-premise boxes."
"We are providing VoIP and the IP licensing could improve in Fortinet FortiGate SWG."
"Their technical support could be improved a little bit in terms of responsiveness."
"The graphical user interface of Fortinet FortiGate SWG is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"The UI/UX experience can be a little better."
"FortiGate's reporting features could provide a better picture of what is happening in the box."
"We have experienced a number of failures when trying to upgrade firmware and the process takes a long time. We only experienced this when doing major upgrades between versions."
"Fortinet FortiGate SWG's costs need improvement."
Cisco Umbrella is ranked 1st in Secure Web Gateways (SWG) with 108 reviews while Fortinet FortiGate SWG is ranked 4th in Secure Web Gateways (SWG) with 39 reviews. Cisco Umbrella is rated 8.8, while Fortinet FortiGate SWG is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Cisco Umbrella writes "Protects endpoints wherever they are, always pushing people to the right locations to avoid malicious intent". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Fortinet FortiGate SWG writes "Non-IT people could plug it in, connect it to the fiber, and get it running without IT help. ". Cisco Umbrella is most compared with Zscaler Internet Access, Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps, Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks, Palo Alto Networks DNS Security and Infoblox Advanced DNS Protection, whereas Fortinet FortiGate SWG is most compared with Fortinet FortiProxy, Sangfor Internet Access Gateway (IAG), Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway, Netskope Next Gen Secure Web Gateway and Axis Security. See our Cisco Umbrella vs. Fortinet FortiGate SWG report.
See our list of best Secure Web Gateways (SWG) vendors.
We monitor all Secure Web Gateways (SWG) 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.