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 feature that I found most valuable is the overall stability of the product."
"Since the product is stable, we do not have to spend additional money to buy other firewalls. Once deployed, we can use the product for a long time. Thus, it is cost effective."
"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."
"The most valuable feature would be ASDM. The ability to go in, visualize and see the world base in a clear and consistent manner is very powerful."
"We chose Cisco because it had the full package that we were looking for."
"The ASA has seen significant improvement due to the IPS."
"The monitoring dashboard is valuable to us for troubleshooting."
"It's quite a capable box for UTM."
"I think that the UTM features are the most value, as it truly protects my infrastructure."
"This version is stable. I don't have any issues with this solution, in our environment, it works well."
"It's super reliable. I don't think I've ever had a reliability issue with it."
"Whenever I need something, Fortinet improves and updates the software for me."
"Fortinet has a very good solution for Secure SD-WAN. One very good feature is that they have robust and simple FortiOS through which they provide all solutions. That's their strength. There's not much complexity involved with the Secure SD-WAN solution of Fortinet as compared to Cisco's solution, which has a lot of flexibility but complexity also comes with that flexibility."
"Centralized monitoring, policy management, and virtualized appliances allow us to take control over our public and private infrastructure."
"We are a visual effects company, and there have been a number of high profile security issues in our industry. This has brought us to a higher standard of security, which our clients are very keen on these days."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are remote access, web filtering, and IPS."
"The phishing emails could be improved."
"FMC could be improved because management with FMC is quite difficult compared to using Firepower web-based management."
"We only have an issue with time sync with Cisco ASA and NTP. If the time is out of sync, it will be a disaster for the failover."
"Cisco provides us with application visibility and control, although it's not a complete solution compared to other vendors. Cisco needs to work on the application behavior side of things, in particular when it comes to the behavior of SSL traffic."
"The graphical interface should be improved to make the configuration easier, to do things with a single click."
"This product is managed using the Firepower Management Center (FMC), but it would be better if it also supported the command-line interface (CLI)."
"It lacks management. For me, it still doesn't have a proper management tool or GUI for configuration, logging, and visualization. Its management is not that easy. It is also not very flexible and easy to configure. They used to have a product called CSM, but it is no longer being developed. FortiGate is better than this solution in terms of GUI, flexibility, and user-friendliness."
"Cisco Secure Firewall's integration with cloud providers has room for improvement. We could do more in terms of integration, for example, if we had a tag on an instance."
"Fortinet FortiGate needs to improve the logging and reporting. Additionally, the next-generation application's policies should be improved. When they were released they had bugs."
"The setup is pretty complex and not easy to implement."
"The support structure needs to be improved because every time we contact them, there is a delay in the response."
"There were quite a few problems with the stability of the system."
"If they had better integration with security products, such as Cisco ISE or Rapid Threat Containment, then it would be an improvement."
"Price, of course, can always be more competitive or better."
"The routing capability on the FortiGate devices has room for improvement."
"I would suggest that Fortinet add sandboxing to their solution."
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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