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.
"It's the VPN side of things that has been most useful for us. It allows us to secure our users even when they're working from home. They are able to access all of our resources, no matter where they are in the world."
"It is a very stable product. I've not had any issues with it. It is a super product, and I won't need to change it anytime soon."
"The greatest benefit for the organization is the confidence that we are secured."
"The Firepower IPS, based on Snort technology, has an amazing detection engine and historical analysis capability of files that eases threat investigations a lot."
"The firewall and policy side are easy to use."
"It's got the capabilities of amassing a lot of throughput with remote access and VPNs."
"I think Cisco ASA Firewall is the most stable firewall solution."
"If you compare the ASA and the FirePOWER, the best feature with FirePOWER is easy to use GUI. It has most of the same functionality in the Next-Generation FirePOWER, such as IPS, IPS policies, security intelligence, and integration and identification of all the devices or hardware you have in your network. Additionally, this solution is user-friendly."
"Our project needs to link two sides through the internet. One of these was in Cairo and the other in another city. We used FortiGate as the integrating solution between the two locations, i.e. the Fortinet 30E & 100E."
"The payment function for applications is good."
"We use a southern institution that's audited for IT security and the reporting that automatically comes off the unit makes it much easier to meet compliance standards and makes it easier as far as the amount of time that has to be spent to compile that information. If you get your reporting set up correctly when you initially set it up, you just select the one you want and hit print. The auditing trail on it is the best feature."
"It blocks the vulnerabilities that can negatively impact us."
"FortiGate is on the cheaper end, and it offers good value."
"Fortinet FortiGate's ease of management is the most valuable feature."
"The solution is very user friendly. The user interface in particular is quite nice."
"It's quite comfortable to handle the FortiGate firewall."
"It is not easy to configure."
"An area for improvement is the graphical user interface. That is something that is coming up now. They could make the product more user-friendly. A better GUI is something that would make life much easier."
"There are always vulnerabilities that come up and there was one in early 2018 but this was patched with software updates."
"In terms of functionality, there isn't much to improve. There could be more bandwidth and better interface speed."
"If Cisco could stop rebranding, combine all the CLIs/GUIs, and give a consistent experience, this would be great."
"The initial setup could be simplified, as it can be complex for new users."
"In general, they can make it easier to manage the solutions. They can make it easier in terms of administration and provide a single tool for different firewalling solutions. They have different tools to manage different firewalls, such as Firepower or ASA. Sometimes, both are on the same thing. You have ASA with Firepower modules, so you manage some of the things via HTML, and then you manage some of the things via another management tool. It's not seamless."
"They need a user-friendly interface that we could easily configure."
"Fortinet FortiGate can be integrated with different platforms. They have integrations in place, but I can't say they're 100%."
"I don't like that anything more than very basic reporting is not included."
"The scalability could be better."
"Technical support needs to be improved."
"The feedback that I have received is that the performance could be better, and the user experience is not as good compared to a previous solution we used. It could be more user-friendly. Of course, it still works fine for our operations."
"The solution is very expensive."
"Pricing for it is a bit high. It could be cheaper."
"Its customer service 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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