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 helped us a lot with our VPNs for the home office during COVID. There has been more security and flexibility for VPNs and other applications."
"The customer service/technical support is very good with this solution."
"We have not had to deal with stability issues."
"The IP filter configuration for specific political and Static NAT has been most valuable."
"All the features except IPS are valuable. IPS is not a part of my job."
"I'm a big fan of SecureX, Cisco's platform for tying together all the different security tools. It has a lot of flexibility and even a lot of third-party or non-Cisco integration. I feel like that's a really valuable tool."
"It is easy to create interfaces and routing, which all can be done at the GUI level."
"I think Cisco ASA Firewall is the most stable firewall solution."
"Initial setup is easy to configure."
"FortiGate has a strong security topic which allows all of the Fortinet devices to communicate and share information which makes their security more powerful."
"The usage in general is pretty good."
"The stability and scalability of this solution are satisfactory. Its SD-WAN, VPN, and URL filtering features are very useful."
"You can create multiple Virtual Domains (VDOMs), which are treated as separate firewall instances."
"SSL-VPN is very useful for us and has been very reliable."
"FortiGate improved our security. It's one of the best hardware firewalls."
"The simplicity of the product is great. It's very easy to use, which is a compliment we get all the time in terms of feedback."
"The ASA needs to incorporate the different modules you have to integrate to achieve UTM functions, especially for small businesses."
"The pricing is a bit high."
"It could also use a reporting dashboard."
"I needed to be well-versed with all the command lines for Cisco ASA in order to fully utilize it. I missed this info and wasted some operational costs."
"One thing that we really would have loved to have was policy-based routing. We had a lot of connections, and sometimes, we would have liked to change the routing depending on the policies, but it was lacking this capability. We also wanted application filtering and DNS filtering."
"It lacks management. For me, it still doesn't have a proper management tool or GUI for configuration, logging, and visualization. Its management is not that easy. It is also not very flexible and easy to configure. They used to have a product called CSM, but it is no longer being developed. FortiGate is better than this solution in terms of GUI, flexibility, and user-friendliness."
"Cisco makes horrible UIs, so the interface is something that should be improved."
"In my experience, a number of engineers get tunnel vision with devices. This is exacerbated by vendors fostering a silo mentality in disciplines."
"There is a lot of improvement needed with SSL-VPN."
"This product needs to have an analysis feature, rather than having the analysis done through the integration of a different product."
"They should improve high CPU and memory usage that occurs."
"At first glance, the interface for the device is very confusing."
"The cloud features can be improved."
"The routing capability on the FortiGate devices has room for improvement."
"The renewal price and the availability could be improved."
"Fortinet doesn't provide multiple virtual firewalls which would facilitate end users and customers."
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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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.