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 is very good; there's no vagueness. Either it works or it doesn't, and it's also very easy to find out why."
"It is pretty stable. I haven't seen many issues during the past four years."
"The most valuable features are the IPsec VPN and web filtering."
"The most valuable feature is the access control list (ACL)."
"It protects our network."
"My confidence continues to build upon using Cisco firewalls."
"I have found the most valuable feature to be the access control and IPsec VPN."
"Cisco ASA Firewall is a well known product. They're always updating it, and you know what they're doing and that it works."
"SSL-VPN is very useful for us and has been very reliable."
"Centralized monitoring, policy management, and virtualized appliances allow us to take control over our public and private infrastructure."
"The features that I have found most valuable are the SD-WAN and their IP4 policy."
"Its stability is the most valuable."
"We use the FortiGate Sandbox to detect zero-day vulnerabilities, such as anomalies or malware, that are unknown and have not yet been discovered."
"It's quite comfortable to handle the FortiGate firewall."
"I really like the captive portal feature for our guest network. It has nice VLAN features in terms of separating our network. The anti-virus is also good."
"The solution is highly scalable because they have devices that can handle a large amount of traffic."
"There are always vulnerabilities that come up and there was one in early 2018 but this was patched with software updates."
"It could also use a reporting dashboard."
"It is not easy to configure."
"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."
"Cisco wasn't first-to-market with NGFWs... they should look at what other vendors are doing and try not only to be on the same wavelength but a little bit better."
"There is no support here in Georgia. If something goes wrong, support is not always very helpful with the other firewalls or other products."
"It should have packets, deep level inspections and controls, like the features which other IPS solutions used to have."
"The Cisco Firewall UI could be improved."
"Fortigate's hardware capacities could be improved."
"There were quite a few problems with the stability of the system."
"The initial setup is complex."
"The reports are very basic."
"Palo Alto has a feature called WildFire Analysis that is unavailable in FortiGate. WildFire is better than a sandbox because it can address zero-day threats and vulnerabilities. It can immediately identify zero-day threats from the cloud."
"We were not able to build a full-mesh VPN; however, I am not sure if this was the fault of Fortinet FortiGate."
"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."
"The command line is complicated, and the interface could be better."
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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