We performed a comparison between Cisco Secure Firewall and Fortinet Fortigate 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, Fortinet Fortigate comes out on top. Its ease of deployment combined with its solid set of features and excellent service and support ratings make it a more desirable solution than Cisco Secure Firewall.
"The Firepower IPS, based on Snort technology, has an amazing detection engine and historical analysis capability of files that eases threat investigations a lot."
"One of the nice things about Firepower is that you can set it to discover the environment. If that is happening, then Firepower is learning about every device, software operating system, and application running inside or across your environment. Then, you can leverage the discovery intelligence to get Firepower to select the most appropriate intrusion prevention rules to use for your environment rather than picking one of the base policies that might have 50,000 IPS rules in it, which can put a lot of overhead on your firewall. If you choose the recommendations, as long as you update them regularly, you might be able to get your rule set down to only 1,000 or 1,500, which is a significant reduction in a base rule set. This means that the firewall will give you better performance because there are less rules being checked unnecessarily. That is really useful."
"Cisco ASA provides us with very good application visibility and control."
"This product is pretty stable."
"Its ability to discover attacks is a valuable feature. All of the other features that have to do with security are good."
"Management Console and user profiling to define activities."
"Previously, our customers had to always utilize hand-to-hand delivery. Now, they are able to move completely to a secure digital method. They use a strictly dark fiber optics connection from a central location to the endpoint."
"An eight because it's a good security solution. It's more mature than its competitors."
"The features that prevent internet connections, the filtering are the most valuable because we did not have any internet protection before."
"The ease of setting the solution up is a valuable aspect for us."
"The most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiGate is the simple configuration."
"Fortinet FortiGate appears to be scalable."
"We can detect any attack of viruses or malware at the first point of contact."
"It enables our organization to become more productive. Also, it protects our NEtWare from viruses and malware."
"We use the FortiGate Sandbox to detect zero-day vulnerabilities, such as anomalies or malware, that are unknown and have not yet been discovered."
"I only deal with it from a security analyst's point of view. I don't really get into the features of the actual FortiGate. From the security point of view, it works, and it does its job."
"The graphical interface should be improved to make the configuration easier, to do things with a single click."
"The throughput highlighted on the datasheet (10Gbps) should be reviewed. This throughput is only for a UDP running environment, which you will never find in the real world. Rather consider a multiprotocol throughput."
"I think that the solution can be improved with the integration of application-centric infrastructure. It could be used to have better solutions in one box."
"The performance should be improved."
"Virtual patching would be helpful for servers that are not able to update patches due to compatibility issues."
"Recently, we have been having an issue with the ASA firewall. We haven't found the root cause yet and are still working on it. We failed over the firewall from active to passive and suddenly that resolved the issue. We are now working to find the root cause."
"Cisco Firepower NGFW Firewall can be more secure."
"MSSP oriented interface: I would like a single console which would allow me to manage settings creating consistency across all customers."
"There are some license issues. Not every feature must have a separate license. There must be some of kind synergy between the license so we don't have to pay for every individual license that we would like to have."
"Some of the software stability could improve."
"The stability could be a bit better."
"WAN load-balancing could be a lot better at detecting when a link is poor or inconsistent, and not just flat out dead."
"Its customer service could be better."
"In some cases, its initial setup could be hard for customers."
"The Web-filter in this solution is not very good."
"A lack of integration between our data centers."
Cisco Secure Firewall is ranked 4th in Firewalls with 404 reviews while Fortinet FortiGate is ranked 2nd in Firewalls with 306 reviews. Cisco Secure Firewall is rated 8.2, while Fortinet FortiGate is rated 8.4. 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 Fortinet FortiGate writes "It's a reliable solution that's easy to install and cheaper than competitors ". Cisco Secure Firewall is most compared with Palo Alto Networks WildFire, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX, Sophos XG and Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, whereas Fortinet FortiGate is most compared with Sophos XG, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX, Check Point NGFW and WatchGuard Firebox. See our Cisco Secure Firewall vs. Fortinet FortiGate report.
See our list of best Firewalls vendors.
We monitor all Firewalls 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.