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 solution is stable."
"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 most valuable features are the antivirus as a whole, the anti-malware, and all of the protection features that scan our enterprise devices."
"One of the great advantages of Umbrella DNS is that it's really simple to deploy. It's easy to install, the users do not notice that it's there, and it doesn't interfere with your work. The simplicity and transparency are great advantages of Cisco Umbrella."
"I was able to implement it myself. It was really easy to install. You could install it on a server locally if you want to. If you have the biggest site, you would do that, but for my site, it was just directing all the traffic out through the Cisco Umbrella DNS. It was really handy. When the owners of the company went overseas, I knew that they would be secure because even if they were not on the company network, they would still go through the Cisco Umbrella servers. It was a complete solution for protecting the company with outgoing data."
"The most valuable feature is the website protection capabilities because it prevents end-users from entering bad sites that potentially have malware or could be used for phishing."
"It is a good cloud-based solution for DNS security."
"For me, it's important that I get a connection to my corporate network in a secure and fast way. This product just runs in the background and doesn't need any attention. For me, as a user, it's perfect."
"The single-pane-of-glass management is very important. We have a very small team. We can't spend a lot of time going from product to product to product to either investigate or set up policy. We need to have one place that we can go to and set everything up."
"One of the most important features is the security posture check which Umbrella offers when a user accesses any website. That is one of the most unique features that it offers."
"Cisco Umbrella is a totally different solution. They are the first to come up with this idea of security. It's a totally new concept of security for everybody, for every time, real time, perfectionism."
"It's a flexible solution."
"Web filters, particularly web application controls, grant us the ability to regulate user access effectively."
"It has the same functionalities throughout the range of products."
"The most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiGate SWG is inspection."
"The most useful features are application control, web filtering, and SD-WAN."
"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."
"The pricing on offer is excellent."
"Lookout was moving into the SSE space. And so their work on SecureWeb Gateway and SD-WAN is still sort of evolving."
"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"
"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."
"It would be better if there was a little bit of flexibility for organizations that don't have SD One in their environment. Because of the complexity of the environment, it's not easy to actually turn on the feature of the secure internet gateway for our users. We have not been able to explore that option yet."
"User interface could be a little smoother and more intuitive."
"Its price could be better."
"Their support should be improved. It is necessary that the support is efficient. It is not really easy to get a resolution for an issue from Cisco support. They should be faster and more efficient."
"Support for multiple domains is important to us."
"The API is very Cisco orientated, which is absolutely fine if you're using Cisco Firepower and SecureX kind of products, but if you want to integrate with third parties, it is a bit tricky. There are some key API connectors for the more prevalent SIEM tools. I would really like to see in Cisco Umbrella the ability to create customized reports and then assign the rights to view these reports to people within a group. I should be able to create a customized report, which is viewable by anybody who has the rights. I should be able to create groups within Cisco Umbrella, and then assign reports to groups and have those reports split out automatically only to those groups. I can kind of do it by restricting my email list, but it is a half-complete way of doing it."
"For us, as an MSP, the initial licensing changes were a roadblock, and they still could be a lot clearer. Specifically, it's an honor-based licensing system. We'd like it to be more specific to our traffic or our users so that we can make sure that the customer is paying for all their licensing."
"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."
"It is essential to leverage its capabilities more professionally to achieve an even higher level of security."
"FortiGate's reporting features could provide a better picture of what is happening in the box."
"Support could be improved."
"FortiGate needs to be elastic to the market's trends. It should be easy for SMBs to get the solution."
"The UI/UX experience can be a little better."
"Fortinet FortiGate SWG's SSL offloading features need improvement."
"Their technical support could be improved a little bit in terms of responsiveness."
"Fortinet FortiGate SWG could improve the price, it is expensive."
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.
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