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.
"Cybersecurity resilience has been paramount. Because there is a threat of losing everything if ransomware or another sort of attack were to happen, the cybersecurity resilience has been top-notch."
"There are some hiccups here and there, but compared to the technical support from other vendors, I have had the best experience with Cisco's technical support. I would rate them at nine out of ten."
"Feature-wise, we mostly use IPS because it is a security requirement to protect against attacks from outside and inside. This is where IPS helps us out a bunch."
"The initial setup was completely straightforward."
"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."
"It's a flexible solution and is well-known in the community."
"The features I have found most valuable are the ASA firewalls. I like to have features like most integrated systems in ACI."
"The most valuable features of this solution are the integrations and IPS throughput."
"It's a firewall that secures our internal network. I have been using it since 2013, and I find that most of the features are advanced, and very user friendly."
"Reliability is the best feature. We faced some issues when we were setting it up, but the service, portal, and administration are good."
"Good load balancing feature."
"The most valuable feature is the bundled subscription, which is IPS, TV and web filtering."
"The pipe filter application is an outstanding feature."
"The tool is a nice product and easy to handle. The software's user interface is also good. You can easily implement remote access in the solution."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are the APIs. They are the most widely known."
"A strong point of FortiGate is the graphical interface is complete and easy to use."
"The intelligence has room for improvement. There are some hackers that we haven't seen before and its ability to detect those types of attacks needs to be improved."
"Some of the features, like the stability, need to be improved."
"The phishing emails could be improved."
"It would be better if we could manage all of our firewalls as a set rather than individually. I would like to see a single pane of glass type of option. We also use another vendor's firewalls and they have a centralized management infrastructure that we have implemented. This infrastructure is a bit easier to manage."
"It can be improved when it comes to monitoring. Today, the logs from the firewalls could be improved a bit more without integrating with other devices."
"I wish the Cisco interface was not so granular. Check Point was easier to create specific rules than with ASAv."
"It is hard to collaborate with our filtered environment."
"It is not easy to configure."
"I use the FortiGate 60D model and realized the 300Mbps bandwidth limitation. Because it is a product that offers many services, I think it could have greater bandwidth capacity."
"I feel that the reporting needs to be improved."
"This product needs to have an analysis feature, rather than having the analysis done through the integration of a different product."
"Monitoring and reporting could be better."
"Maybe they could make some features more accessible, such as a way to translate directions between two networks that share the same subnets."
"I think the only issue that needs improvement is the interface."
"FortiGate should have a better way of detecting and managing the system memory because otherwise if the memory is too low, a system restart is required."
"The solution's framework needs to be frequently updated in order to have a stable solution."
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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