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.
"A stable and solid solution for protection from external threats and for VPN connections."
"You can also put everything into a nice, neat, little package, as far as configuration goes. I was formerly a command-line guy with the ASA, and I was a little nervous about dealing with a GUI interface versus a command line, but after I did my first deployment, I got a lot more comfortable with doing it GUI based."
"Manageability of Cisco ASA. It has a GUI interface, unlike the most of Cisco IOS. For beginners they can "sneak in" and apply the command and see the actual commands that the GUI launches. In addition, Cisco has the reputation regarding security."
"Cisco Secure Firewall is reliable, which is why we opted for it during the pandemic for our remote users."
"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."
"It is easy to create interfaces and routing, which all can be done at the GUI level."
"The most important point is the detection engine which is now part of the next-generation firewalls and which is supported by Cisco Talos."
"The features I have found most valuable are the ASA firewalls. I like to have features like most integrated systems in ACI."
"This version is stable. I don't have any issues with this solution, in our environment, it works well."
"The interface is very good."
"Security solution with a straightforward and quick setup. It's a stable and scalable product."
"I appreciate FortiGate's flexibility, which allows for centralized management through FortiManager."
"Initial setup is straightforward. There weren't too many issues with setting it up. It takes one hour or so."
"What I like the most is the configuration and that it's simple, and straightforward to maintain."
"The features that I have found most valuable are the SD-WAN and their IP4 policy."
"Overall, the pricing of the solution is very good. The product offers good value."
"Bandwidth allocation needs improvement."
"We are replacing ASA with FTD which offers many new features not available using ASA."
"Cisco still has a lot of work to do. You can convert an ASA over to a Firepower, but the competitors, like Palo Alto and Juniper, are coming in. And believe it or not, they are a little bit more intuitive. Cisco has a little bit more work to do. They're playing catch up."
"One of the challenges we've had with the Cisco ASA is the lack of a strong controller or central management console that is dependable and reliable all the time."
"A major area of improvement would be to have more functionality in public clouds, especially in terms of simplifying it. The high availability doesn't work right now because of the limitations in the cloud."
"There are always vulnerabilities that come up and there was one in early 2018 but this was patched with software updates."
"Setting it up is not as intuitive as other more modern NGFWs."
"The licensing needs simplification."
"There are some cloud-based features that could be much more flexible than they currently are."
"Cisco Meraki products are rising very quickly in the cloud and the connected era. Meraki products offer much better ROI, upgradability, and manageability."
"Fortigate's hardware capacities could be improved."
"There are a lot of bugs I have found in the solution and it is difficult to upgrade. These areas need improvement."
"In the next release, maybe the documentation on how to use this solution could be improved."
"It would be nice if backups could more easily migrate between different models."
"The setup is pretty complex and not easy to implement."
"It is stable, but its stability can 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.
See our list of best Firewalls vendors.
We monitor all Firewalls reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.