We performed a comparison between Cisco Secure Firewall and Juniper vSRX 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."The virtual firewall feature is the most valuable. We have around 1,500 firewalls. We did not buy individual hardware, and the virtual firewalls made sense because we don't have to keep on buying the hardware. FortiGate is easier to use as compared to Checkpoint devices. It is user friendly and has a good UI. You don't need much expertise to work on this firewall. You don't need to worry much about DCLA, commands, and things like that."
"FortiGate firewalls are user-friendly, and I like the security profiling features."
"The solution has very good threat and content filtering switches."
"Fortinet FortiGate protects against internet-based threats, both internal and external. It is scalable, stable, easy to use, and easy to install."
"Fortinet FortiGate's reliability is valuable."
"The scalability is good in Fortinet FortiGate."
"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."
"Reliability is the best feature. We faced some issues when we were setting it up, but the service, portal, and administration are good."
"It's pretty reliable and allows for isolation capabilities within the network."
"Feature-wise, we mostly use IPS because it is a security requirement to protect against attacks from outside and inside. This is where IPS helps us out a bunch."
"I like that Cisco Firepower NGFW Firewall is reliable. Support is also good."
"The solution's dashboard is fine, and in terms of support, Cisco is better than other OEMs in the market."
"If you compare the ASA and the FirePOWER, the best feature with FirePOWER is easy to use GUI. It has most of the same functionality in the Next-Generation FirePOWER, such as IPS, IPS policies, security intelligence, and integration and identification of all the devices or hardware you have in your network. Additionally, this solution is user-friendly."
"The features I found most valuable in this solution, are the overall security features."
"I like the IPS feature, it is the most valuable."
"Management Console and user profiling to define activities."
"The initial setup was very straightforward. There was no problem. The initial deployment took about one hour."
"It is easy for me to go in and update settings, make changes, or add/remove rules or security."
"The dashboard, customization, API, and pricing are good."
"We like the solution’s protocol and its dashboard system."
"The most valuable features are application filtering, content filtering, the intrusion prevention system (IPS), and definitely the application firewall."
"Juniper is more flexible with the commit check and the commit confirmed command. The design of the forwarding and contract plan in the operating system is very important for the performance when we have very big traffic."
"The architecture of the OS in Juniper is very good. It's flexibility, scalability, and the technicality is also good."
"It's basic functionality is probably the most valuable feature."
"With the addition of some features, it is possible that FortiGate can be used in all verticals."
"The support is the main thing that needs to be improved."
"Currently, without the additional reporting module, we only have access to basic reporting."
"The support we receive when we need to upgrade is not satisfactory and has room for improvement."
"FortiGate is really good. We have been using it for quite some time. Initially, when we started off, we had around 70 plus devices of FortiGate, but then Check Point and Palo Alto took over the place. From the product perspective, there are no issues, but from the account perspective, we have had issues. Fortinet's presence in our company is very less. I don't see any Fortinet account managers talking to us, and that presence has diluted in the last two and a half or three years. We have close to 1,500 firewalls. Out of these, 60% of firewalls are from Palo Alto, and a few firewalls are from Check Point. FortiGate firewalls are very less now. It is not because of the product; it is because of the relationship. I don't think they had a good relationship with us, and there was some kind of disconnect for a very long time. The relationship between their accounts team and my leadership team seems to be the reason for phasing out FortiGate."
"Fortinet currently has many products bundled with FortiGate including the basic firewall and load balancer, and I think that that they need to have separate product portfolios for each of these specialized services."
"The firmware needs improvement because there are bugs when a new release comes through. Sometimes, the configuration changes, and it's a bit harder to see where the fail is. The first time that you have the firmware, it tends to have some issues, and it's better to wait a bit to update the equipment."
"A sandbox would be good in order to be able to inspect the emails containing spam and be able to validate the emails that contain malware, prior to delivering to the customer."
"One area that could be improved is its logging functionality. Your logs are usually displayed on the screen, but if you want to go back one or two days, then you need another solution in place because those logs are overwritten within minutes."
"In the next release, I would like to see the VPN and UTM features included."
"Cisco ASDM is a problem because it is old."
"The initial setup was a bit complex. It wasn't a major challenge, but due to our requirements and network, it was not very straightforward but still easy enough."
"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."
"Licensing is complex, and I'd like it to be simplified. This is an area for improvement."
"In my experience, a number of engineers get tunnel vision with devices. This is exacerbated by vendors fostering a silo mentality in disciplines."
"On firewall features, Fortinet is better. Cisco needs to become more competitive and add more features or meet Fortinet's offering."
"The biggest downside of Juniper vSRX is its pricing, which may be too high for smaller organizations. While it's a decent solution, the cost may limit its accessibility to smaller customers."
"Some people complain that the solution tends to have a steep learning curve. It could be because most people have basic familiarity with Cisco or other similar products and maybe have never worked closely with Juniper products."
"I've talked to people that say Juniper now, as a device, can be a solution for a data center, but in the past, I have not seen this as being possible."
"Fortinet is more user friendly than Juniper. In terms of remote access, I actually prefer using Fortinet. It's much easier to configure."
"In the next release, I would like to see improvements made to the GUI because it isn't very good."
"The user interface could always be better. They could make it simpler and more intuitive."
"We experienced some technical issues during implementation"
"It is pretty complex to manage and could be easier."
Cisco Secure Firewall is ranked 4th in Firewalls with 404 reviews while Juniper vSRX is ranked 24th in Firewalls with 33 reviews. Cisco Secure Firewall is rated 8.2, while Juniper vSRX is rated 7.8. 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 Juniper vSRX writes "Fast with good usability and fairly scalable". Cisco Secure Firewall is most compared with Palo Alto Networks WildFire, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX, Sophos XG and Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, whereas Juniper vSRX is most compared with Juniper SRX Series Firewall, Azure Firewall, Meraki MX, OPNsense and Zscaler Cloud Firewall. See our Cisco Secure Firewall vs. Juniper vSRX report.
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