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 technical team is always available when we have problems."
"The configuration support is very good. You can find a lot of configuration samples and troubleshooting tips on the internet, which is very good."
"The benefits we see from the ASA are connected to teleworking as well as, of course, having the basic functionality of a firewall in place and the prevention of attacks."
"I like all of the features."
"The customer service/technical support is very good with this solution."
"I like that it is easy to change the settings."
"The solution offers very easy configurations."
"The best solutions for our company are those we have yet to implement so it will be even better in the future for us than it already is."
"The most valuable feature is the FortiManager for centralized management."
"Easy to use support and licensing portal as well as activation process."
"It is simple to manage, and there are a lot of functionalities in the same box."
"The most valuable features are that it is very simple to configure and to manage."
"It's quite comfortable to handle the FortiGate firewall."
"It has very easy management and an amazing ETM configuration."
"We are using the FortiGate 100D series. VPN, firewall, anti-malware, OTM, and intrusion prevention are useful features."
"There are great templates, so you don't have to customize them if you don't want to. You do have the option to custom create some folders and some reports, however, with what is there, you don't really need to go through extra effort, as they already give you a lot of predefined views of reports and so forth."
"There is limited data storage on the appliance itself. So, you need to ship it out elsewhere in order for you to store it. The only point of consideration is around that area, basically limited storage on the machine and appliance. Consider logging it elsewhere or pushing it out to a SIEM to get better controls and manipulation over the data to generate additional metrics and visibility."
"I would like to see them release a patch for ASAv with cross-platform FirePower integration."
"I'm not a big fan of the FDM (Firepower Device Manager) that comes with Firepower. I found out that you need to use the Firepower Management Center, the FMC, to manage the firewalls a lot better. You can get a lot more granular with the configuration in the FMC, versus the FDM that comes out-of-the-box with it. FDM is like Firepower for dummies."
"UTM features would be nice or some NextGen features."
"The virtual firewalls don't work very well with Cisco AnyConnect."
"We would like to be able to manage a set of firewalls rather than individual firewalls. We haven't really looked into it or yet implemented it, but a single pane of glass would be helpful. We also use another vendor's firewalls, and they have a centralized management infrastructure that we have implemented, which makes it a little bit easier when you're managing lots of firewalls."
"I would like it to be easier to work with and have a better user interface. It is not straightforward. You need to know the Cisco command-line interface."
"The user interface for the Firepower management console is a little bit different from traditional Cisco management tools. If you look at products we already use, like Cisco Prime or other products that are cloud-based, they have a more modern user interface for managing the products. For Firepower, the user interface is not very user-friendly. It's a little bit confusing sometimes."
"Improvement is needed in the Web Filter quotas to restrict users with allocated quotas."
"I think the only issue that needs improvement is the interface."
"Its reporting and pricing need improvement."
"There can be more security in hybrid implementations. When a customer has a hybrid environment where some parts are in the cloud, we need a consistent security solution for such scenarios."
"One area for improvement is the performance on the bandwidth demands for smaller devices, as well as better web filtering."
"It is stable, but its stability can be improved."
"WAN load-balancing could be a lot better at detecting when a link is poor or inconsistent, and not just flat out dead."
"Quality control on their firmware versions needs improvement. When they introduce new firmware, there tend to be bugs."
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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