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 user interface is easy to navigate."
"I think Cisco ASA Firewall is the most stable firewall solution."
"It helped us a lot with our VPNs for the home office during COVID. There has been more security and flexibility for VPNs and other applications."
"The configuration capabilities and the integration with other tools are the most valuable features. I really like this product. Cisco is one of my favorite brands, and I always think Cisco solutions are very reliable, easy to configure, and very secure."
"Cisco ASA is very strong."
"I love the ASDM (Adaptive Security Device Manager) which is the management suite. It's a GUI and you're able to see everything at a glance without using the command line. There are those who love the CLI, but with ASDM it is easier to see where everything is going and where the problems are."
"Signature-based detection; user-defined signatures with regular expressions; integrated URL and content filtering; custom URL categories filtering."
"Valuable features include DMZ segmentation, and IDS and IPS."
"The CLI and GUI do a good job of putting a lot at your fingertips."
"The performance is good."
"The ability to set up remote systems is the most valuable feature."
"The solution is very user friendly. The user interface in particular is quite nice."
"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."
"The reporting you receive out of this appliance is excellent. You will not need an external management system."
"Our security improved from being able to put in rules and close off unwanted traffic."
"I like how we can achieve total integration."
"It should have packets, deep level inspections and controls, like the features which other IPS solutions used to have."
"In my experience, a number of engineers get tunnel vision with devices. This is exacerbated by vendors fostering a silo mentality in disciplines."
"I would like it to have faster deployment times. A typical deployment could take two to three minutes. Sometimes, it depends on the situation. It is better than it was in the past, but it could always use improvement."
"An area of improvement for this solution is the console visualization."
"We are still running the original ASAs. The software that you are running for the ASDM software and Java application has never been a lot of fun to operate. It would have been nice to see that change update be redesigned with modern systems, which don't play nicely with Java sometimes. Cybersecurity doesn't seem to love how that operates. For us, a fresher application, taking advantage of the hardware, would have been a better approach."
"I would like to see an IE version of the solution where it is ruggedized."
"One area that could be improved is its logging functionality. Your logs are usually displayed on the screen, but if you want to go back one or two days, then you need another solution in place because those logs are overwritten within minutes."
"The service could use a little more web filtering. If I compare it to Cyberoam, Cyberoam has more the web filtering, so if you want to block a website, it's easier in other solutions than in Cisco."
"With the addition of some features, it is possible that FortiGate can be used in all verticals."
"I would like to see improvements made to the dashboard and UI, as well as to the reporting."
"The graphical user interface of Fortinet's FortiGate product does not function well with text-based interfaces."
"Fortigate's hardware capacities could be improved."
"Fortinet already improved FortiGate, but in the current market, many brands of security devices have improved together. Fortinet still needs to catch up with market standards. Fortinet is lacking in features in comparison to competitors."
"I would suggest that Fortinet add sandboxing to their solution."
"There are mainly two areas of improvement in Fortinet FortiGate— the licensing cost and the timing of upgrading licenses for boxes."
"The setup is pretty complex and not easy to implement."
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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