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 stability of the solution is very good. We can see that it gets even better with every release."
"Its ability to work with the traffic."
"Easy to deploy in a working environment between servers and users."
"Beats sophisticated cyber attacks with a superior security appliance."
"It integrates with various Cisco security portfolios and products, and there is an easy and seamless integration for building a complete security framework for our customers."
"This solution has good security, and it's a good product. You can trust Cisco, and there's support as well, which is really good."
"The most valuable feature we have found to be the VPN because we use it often."
"We are mostly using it for remote access, so the remote access feature is the most valuable, but all other features are also needed and required. It is also a very straightforward and reliable solution."
"The security features that they have are quite good. On top of that, their licensing model is quite nice where they don't charge you anything for the SD-WAN functionality for the firewall."
"Fortinet FortiGate is a scalable solution."
"Whenever we raise a complaint with FortiGate, their response and resolution times are minimal."
"We are using the FortiGate 100D series. VPN, firewall, anti-malware, OTM, and intrusion prevention are useful features."
"The most important features of Fortinet FortiGate are the Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) and firewall control applications."
"The next-gen features, the unified threat management capabilities are something that just about everybody is interested in at this point."
"The most valuable features are that it is very simple to configure and to manage."
"Good load balancing feature."
"The solution’s GUI could be better."
"The initial setup could be simplified, as it can be complex for new users."
"Cisco still has a lot of work to do. You can convert an ASA over to a Firepower, but the competitors, like Palo Alto and Juniper, are coming in. And believe it or not, they are a little bit more intuitive. Cisco has a little bit more work to do. They're playing catch up."
"There are some limitations with SSL. Regarding the security assessment for the ISO 27000 standard, there are certain features that Cisco needs to scale up. Not all products support it, so you need to be slightly careful, especially on the site track."
"The solution could offer better control that would allow the ability to restrictions certain features from a website."
"Even on a smaller scale, people are finding you need HA pairs, and there's no way that the ASA can do that, at least in the virtual version."
"I would like to see more integration with third-party devices in general. There is great integration with Cisco devices, but there's not much integration with third-party devices."
"It could also use a reporting dashboard."
"Some of the software stability could improve."
"A sandbox would be good in order to be able to inspect the emails containing spam and be able to validate the emails that contain malware, prior to delivering to the customer."
"I would like to see improvements with the antivirus and IPS as they are not working properly all the time."
"In some cases, its initial setup could be hard for customers."
"Usually, we sell the bundle with the UTM or threat management piece with IPS, IDS. Other providers, such as Palo Alto, are ahead in terms of safe functionality. So, for me, delivering truly safe service is probably something that still needs to be improved."
"Fortinet should focus on enhancing the capabilities of FortiGate by consolidating its various products, such as FortiGate Cloud, FortiManager, and FortiAnalyzer."
"For the migration, everyone has a firewall in use and I am selling Fortinet. Typically, I am replacing another firewall. Previously, there was a tool available to convert configurations from one firewall, such as Palo Alto, to Fortinet, but this tool is no longer free. If it could be made free again, it would be very beneficial."
"FortiGate support could do some improvements on their IPv6 configuration. Right now it's still in the very early stage for utilizing in an enterprise level network environment."
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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