We performed a comparison between Azure 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.
Comparison Results: Based on the parameters we compared, Azure Firewall seems to be the more favorable choice. Fortinet Fortigate VM is more expensive; it includes fewer features; and its support team is less efficient. Users also have yet to see an ROI.
"The solution should be capable of self-scaling, which is one of the features we like about it."
"Azure Firewall is a cloud-native solution that removes the pain of load balancers."
"One of the best features is that it natively integrates with Azure Services and tools. When you have a third-party offering, that is not the case. But Azure Firewall provides a comprehensive and seamless security solution for your Azure resources."
"Network filtering is valuable. The scalability capability from the cloud-native service helps us a lot because it simplifies our day-to-day maintenance activity."
"Great security and connectivity."
"In terms of the reporting, it's beautiful. It integrates with Azure monitoring and with Azure policies. That piece is a big help. You can set governing policies and you can use the application firewall, as well as the Azure Firewall, to enforce those policies."
"The firewall policy control, URL content control, and antivirus are all the most valuable aspects. Threat prevention is as well quite good."
"It provided ease of maintenance. If a new firewall was needed, we only had to run the pipelines for this. So, the maintenance was very easy."
"The web filtering facility and application control are the most valuable features from the point of view of our clients. The VPN feature is also quite popular amongst our clients. Two-factor authentication is one of the good features in Fortinet. These features are important for the current scenario of security. Security has become a necessity nowadays. With cyber-attacks becoming more common, protecting an organization's data is one of the major tasks. It is also very stable and scalable, and it is very straightforward to configure. Their technical support is also good."
"The solution is extremely reliable."
"The solution is easy to configure and maintain remotely."
"Fortinet FortiGate's reliability is valuable."
"Fortigate's most valuable feature is that it doesn't need a push policy when writing rules."
"We purchased Fortinet because of the pricing, its functionality, because it met our requirements, and the total cost of ownership over five years was quite reasonable. In the market, Fortinet is rated quite well."
"Fortigate represents a really scalable way of delivering perimeter network security, some level of layer 7 security, WAF, and also a way to create a meshed ADVPN solution."
"The UTM feature is quite good. FortiAP is easy to deploy because both Fortigate and FortiAP are under the same brand. Otherwise, you need to do more work on the configuration."
"There are a number of things that need to be simplified, but it's mostly costs. It needs to be simplified because it's pretty expensive."
"It would be nice to be able to create groupings for servers and offer groups of IP addresses."
"Azure Firewall should have a free trial version for new users so that they can evaluate it before deploying it."
"There is room for further integration of AI into the system."
"The interface could be improved, it's not very user friendly."
"The solution lacks artificial intelligence and machine learning. It might be in the roadmap. However, currently, it's not available."
"They can improve the pricing of Azure Firewall."
"Azure Firewall definitely needs a broader feature base. It should be able to go all the way up to layer 7 when looking at applications and things like that."
"Some of the web policy reports could be improved."
"The room for improvement is about the global delivery time period. Usually I need to wait for almost one month to deliver it overseas. So if you can shorten the deliver time it'd be great."
"We would like to see a better training platform implemented."
"One of the features that I would like to have is to do with endpoint production, it should be integrated. For example, the firewall gets notified of any kind of forensic event that needs to be done, such as if there is a ransomware attack and how it originated, all those records have to be available from the firewall, which is not."
"The solution could be more secure and stable."
"Some configuration elements cannot be easily altered once created."
"The price of FortiGate should be reduced because there are some other leading products that are cheaper."
"FortiLink is the interface on the firewall that allows you to extend switch management across all of your switches in the network. The problem with it is that you can't use multiple interfaces unless you set them up in a lag. Only then you can run them. So, it forces you to use a core type of switch to propagate that management out to the rest of the switches, and then it is running the case at 200. It leaves you with 18 ports on the firewall because it is also a layer-three router that could also be used as a switch, but as soon as you do that, you can't really use them. They could do a little bit more clean up in the way the stacking interface works. Some use cases and the documentation on the FortiLink checking interface are a little outdated. I can find stuff on version 5 or more, but it is hard to find information on some of the newer firmware. The biggest thing I would like to see is some improvement in the switch management feature. I would like to be able to relegate some of the ports, which are on the firewall itself, to act as a switch to take advantage of those ports. Some of these firewalls have clarity ports on them. If I can use those, it would mean that I need to buy two less switches, which saves time. I get why they don't, but I would still like to see it because it would save a little bit of space in the server rack."
Azure Firewall is ranked 21st in Firewalls with 33 reviews while Fortinet FortiGate is ranked 2nd in Firewalls with 306 reviews. Azure Firewall is rated 7.2, while Fortinet FortiGate is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Azure Firewall writes "Easy to use and configure but could be more robust". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Fortinet FortiGate writes "It's a reliable solution that's easy to install and cheaper than competitors ". Azure Firewall is most compared with Fortinet FortiGate-VM, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Microsoft Defender for Cloud, Palo Alto Networks VM-Series and Check Point NGFW, whereas Fortinet FortiGate is most compared with Sophos XG, Cisco Secure Firewall, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX and WatchGuard Firebox. See our Azure Firewall vs. Fortinet FortiGate report.
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