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.
"The product is easy to manage and simple. It works with the rest of our Cisco products. You can drop in new ones if you need more performance. The training and documentation provided are good."
"The monitoring dashboard is valuable to us for troubleshooting."
"The Firepower IPS, based on Snort technology, has an amazing detection engine and historical analysis capability of files that eases threat investigations a lot."
"This solution has good security, and it's a good product. You can trust Cisco, and there's support as well, which is really good."
"Its security and filtering are most valuable. Every layer of data that comes into the organization goes through it. After setting up the criteria, it automatically filters the traffic. We don't have to check it often."
"The firewall power that comes with Cisco ASAv is the most valuable asset. They are are very easy to manage."
"With the FMC and the FirePOWERs, the ability to quickly replace a piece of hardware without having to have a network outage is useful. Also, the ability to replace a piece of equipment and deploy the config that the previous piece of equipment had is pretty useful."
"Unfortunately in Cisco, only the hardware was good."
"What I like the most is the configuration and that it's simple, and straightforward to maintain."
"The response is very quick and they can visually resolve our problems in a short period."
"It is easy to use. We chose this product for the possibility to have virtual domains (VDOMs). We are building another company in the group, and we would like to split the firewalling rules and policies between these two companies. Each company would be able to manage its own policies and security rules, which is an advantage of Fortinet FortiGate. We can define VDOMs, and every company can manage its own VDOM as if it has its own physical firewall, but in fact, we would be using the same physical appliance because we are also using the same internet lines. So, it allows us to reuse the existing resources without the disadvantage of having to compromise on policies and security. Each company can choose its own way of working."
"The solution is scalable."
"From the firewall perspective, the rules and policies are very sufficient and easy to use."
"Fortinet FortiGate is a stable solution."
"The CLI is robust and powerful, enabling rapid, consistent changes via SSH."
"The most valuable feature is the ease of use."
"Intrusion prevention, we currently need to apply deep bracket inspection manually to use web filtering."
"Lacks a good graphical user interface."
"We found it difficult to publish an antennae sidewalk with the ASDM. I think Cisco should improve this by creating a simpler interface for the firewall."
"The solution needs to have better logging features."
"It will be nice if they had what you traditionally would use a web application scanner for. If the solution could take a deeper look into HTTP and HTTPS traffic, that would be nice."
"The only con that I have really seen with it is the reporting structure. FirePOWER is good. It has been a great help because, before that, it was not good at all."
"We don't have any serious problems. The firewall models that we have are quite legacy, and they have slower performance. We are currently investigating the possibility of migrating to next-generation firewalls."
"The cost is very high. Most organizations cannot afford it."
"Stability and technical support are the two major issues I have found with Fortinet."
"The web-cache feature which was previously on the FortiGate device, but was deleted with the recent upgrade should be returned. It was a very valuable feature for us."
"Fortinet Fortigate could benefit by simplifying some of their processes."
"If I had any criticism that I would give FortiGate, it would be that they need to stop changing their logging format. Every time we do a firmware upgrade, it is a massive issue on the SIM. Parsers have to be rebuilt. Even the FortiGate guys came in and said that they don't play well in the sandbox."
"Performance and technical support are the main issues with this solution."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve by having better visibility. Palo Alto has better visibility."
"I would like to see more advanced developments of a wireless controller in the future."
"Tunnel flapping was one of the major things I had seen wherein your internet link remains but your VPN tunnel is down. However, since I got a fix from the TAC team, I have not noticed it, but the customer complained a few times that they couldn't access the internet because of this problem."
Cisco Secure Firewall is ranked 4th in Firewalls with 112 reviews while Fortinet FortiGate is ranked 2nd in Firewalls with 67 reviews. Cisco Secure Firewall is rated 8.2, while Fortinet FortiGate is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Cisco Secure Firewall writes "Includes multiple tools that help manage and troubleshoot, but needs SD-WAN for load balancing". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Fortinet FortiGate writes "Efficient, user-friendly, and affordable". Cisco Secure Firewall is most compared with Palo Alto Networks WildFire, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX, Sophos XG and Juniper SRX Series Firewall, 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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