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.
"If configured, Firepower provides us with application visibility and control."
"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 most valuable features of this solution are advanced malware protection, IPS, and IDS."
"The Inline Mode configuration works really well, and ASA works very impressively."
"It brings us the ability to work from anywhere and has allowed us to work remotely without having to incur a lot of other costs. If we didn't have this type of solution, since we have so many on-prem services that are required, we would have likely lost money and been unable to deliver. We have a video services team who helped build the content for our sporting events. When you are watching a Leaf game and those swipes come by as well as the clips and things, those are all generated in-house. Without the ability to access our on-premise resources, we would have been dead in the water. So, the return on that is pretty impressive."
"Cisco ASA Firewall is a well known product. They're always updating it, and you know what they're doing and that it works."
"It's got the capabilities of amassing a lot of throughput with remote access and VPNs."
"I like the user interface because the navigation is very easy, straightforward on your left side pane you have all the sites that you need to browse. Unlike any other firewalls, it's pretty straightforward."
"Initial setup is straightforward. There weren't too many issues with setting it up. It takes one hour or so."
"Consolidated our network environment at all locations, but mainly at our datacenter."
"It can expand easily."
"The solution is very user-friendly."
"Its user interface is good, and it is always working fine."
"The solution is extremely reliable."
"The solution is very, very easy to use."
"Fortinet FortiGate's reliability is valuable."
"I would say that in inexperienced hands, the interface can be kind of overwhelming. There are just a lot of options. Too much, if you don't know what you are looking for or trying to do."
"I have worked with the new FTD models and they have more features than the ASA line."
"Its interface is sometimes is a little bit slow, and it can be improved. When you need to put your appliance in failover mode, it is a little difficult to do it remotely because you need to turn off the appliance in Cisco mode. In terms of new features, it would be good to have AnyConnect VPN with Firepower. I am not sure if it is available at the moment."
"We have encountered problems when implementing new signatures and new versions on our firewall. Sometimes, there is a short outage of our services, and we have not been able to understand what's going on. This is an area for improvement, and it would be good to have a way to monitor and understand why there is an outage."
"When we first got it, we were doing individual configuring. Now, there is a way to manage from one location."
"I'm working on a slightly older version, but what it needs is a better alert management. It's pretty standard, but there's no real advanced features involved around it."
"The ability to integrate (as options) all-in-one features -- like anti-spam, anti-virus, etc."
"It is hard to collaborate with our filtered environment."
"The captive portal could be improved."
"MTBF: Hardware failure is more common when compared to SonicWall or Cisco ASA."
"Fortinet could improve the windows opener or the virtual IP solutions for opening windows. The virtual IP settings need improvement as firewalls are trending in new development directions."
"From a reporting perspective, there's room for improvement. They're providing FortiAnalyzer through which one can get some enhancements, but the visibility and reporting still need slight improvement."
"I use the FortiGate 60D model and realized the 300Mbps bandwidth limitation. Because it is a product that offers many services, I think it could have greater bandwidth capacity."
"Fortinet FortiGate should improve the VPN tokens."
"The process of configuring firewall rules appears excessively complex."
"The inability to scale the FortiAnalyzer to match our growth necessitates the purchase of new hardware."
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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