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 firewall power that comes with Cisco ASAv is the most valuable asset. They are are very easy to manage."
"The web interface was easy for me. The configuration is logical, so it's easy to use and easy to understand how to protect, how to open a port, how to manage and how to route a device. That's why I prefer Cisco. It's robust and I never have issues with the hardware. That's why I choose Cisco and not another vendor."
"Cisco Secure Firewall is robust and reliable."
"The firewall and policy side are easy to use."
"We have been using a 5520 for seven years in our datacenter and we are satisfied by this version."
"It is a very user-friendly product."
"Firepower NGFW has improved my organization in several ways. Before, we were trying to stamp out security threats and issues, it was a one-off type of way to attack it. I spent a lot of manpower trying to track down the individual issues or flare-ups that we would see. With Cisco's Firepower Management, we're able to have that push up to basically one monitor and one UI and be able to track that and stop threats immediately. It also gives us a little more granularity on what those threats might be."
"On the network side, where you create your rules for allowing traffic — what can come inside and what can go out — that works perfectly, if you know what you want to achieve. It protects you."
"Mainly the FortiGate reporting system is very good. It guides us through all the expectations of security. Fortinet provides us all that we need for security. Also, Fortinet FortiGate is a next-generation firewall. It is much more advanced than others."
"Valuable features include the Web Application Firewall, and it even has DLP (data leak prevention)."
"The customization potential is quite impressive."
"The GUI is good."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are the ability to work in proxy mode, which other solutions, such as Palo Alto cannot. There are some features that are better that come at no extra license or subscriptions cost, such as basic SD-WAN. The DLT is useful, other solutions have the same feature too, such as Palo Alto."
"Fortinet FortiGate is easy to use. Anyone can easily maintain it."
"Consolidated our network environment at all locations, but mainly at our datacenter."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are it is one of the most mature firewalls in the UTM bundle."
"It would be great if some of the load times were faster."
"In terms of functionality, there isn't much to improve. There could be more bandwidth and better interface speed."
"They should work on making it a little more intuitive for users and not quite as complex. Still, it's a good product."
"We had an event recently where we had inbound traffic for SIP and we experienced an attack against our SIP endpoint, such that they were able to successfully make calls out... Both CTR, which is gathering data from multiple solutions that the vendor provides, as well as the FMC events connection, did not show any of those connections because there was not a NAT inbound which said either allow it or deny it."
"They should improve their interface."
"It is slowly not supported and other vendors are a few years ahead of Cisco in development."
"Maybe the dashboard could be a bit better."
"We would really like to see dual dual power supplies for some Cisco Firewall products."
"I think that the infrastructure for the VPN could be improved. The way that it is bundled also made it difficult to use and sell as it is too expensive."
"FortiGate should have a better way of detecting and managing the system memory because otherwise if the memory is too low, a system restart is required."
"I would like to see better pricing in the next release, as well as a simplification of the installation."
"We'd like more management across other integrations."
"It is stable, but its stability can be improved."
"Scalability for Fortinet FortiGate needs to be improved. SD-WAN security for this solution also needs some improvement."
"Due to its higher cost, Fortinet FortiGate can lead to increased operational expenses."
"I think the only issue that needs improvement is the interface."
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.
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