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.
"What I found the most valuable about Cisco Secure Firewall is that if a client is educated about the solution, it can help him or her avoid many problems and mistakes."
"A stable and solid solution for protection from external threats and for VPN connections."
"I would say the Firepower module is most valuable. I'm trying more to transition to this kind firewall. I had to study a little on Palo Alto Networks equipment. There is a lot I have to learn about the difference."
"The most valuable feature is zone segmentation, which we utilize through the Firepower management console."
"The dashboard is the most important thing. It provides good visibility and makes management easy. Firepower also provides us with good application visibility and control."
"A powerful enterprise security solution that is dependible."
"The whole firewall functionality, including firewall policies and IPS policies, is valuable. It has all kinds of functionalities. It has IPS, VPN, and other features. They are doing quite a lot of stuff with their devices."
"The clusters in data centers are great."
"SSL-VPN is very useful for us and has been very reliable."
"Fortinet FortiGate protects against internet-based threats, both internal and external. It is scalable, stable, easy to use, and easy to install."
"Initial setup is straightforward. There weren't too many issues with setting it up. It takes one hour or so."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are the different types of profiling. It has been the most effective for me. The WAF and the antivirus profile are the most effective in network protection."
"The stability and scalability of this solution are satisfactory. Its SD-WAN, VPN, and URL filtering features are very useful."
"The email protection and VPN features are the most valuable."
"FortiGate is on the cheaper end, and it offers good value."
"The IPS is good. It protect my network from attackers."
"I have a lot of difficulties with the solution's Firewall Management Center (FMC) and the GUI. Neither is responsive enough and should be improved."
"Intrusion prevention, we currently need to apply deep bracket inspection manually to use web filtering."
"I would like to see more integration with third-party devices in general. There is great integration with Cisco devices, but there's not much integration with third-party devices."
"The ASA needs to incorporate the different modules you have to integrate to achieve UTM functions, especially for small businesses."
"Its implementation was not straightforward. It was mainly because we were running two projects together."
"They should improve their interface."
"The pricing is a bit high."
"We would like to see MS Word BPM as a feature."
"The support costs and licensing are sometimes so expensive."
"The solution lacks multi-language support."
"A sandbox would be good in order to be able to inspect the emails containing spam and be able to validate the emails that contain malware, prior to delivering to the customer."
"I would like to see more advanced developments of a wireless controller in the future."
"There is room for improvement related to the logging and reporting aspect."
"With FortiGate, the main complaint that I have heard is about the technical support."
"Sometimes you do need to know some CLI commands, so it's a bit harder for technicians or new people that don't know it."
"The support system could be improved."
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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