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.
"Malicious URLs are being blocked."
"A stable and solid solution for protection from external threats and for VPN connections."
"The most valuable feature is IPS. It's a feature that's very interesting for tackling the most current attacks."
"The features I have found most valuable are the ASA firewalls. I like to have features like most integrated systems in ACI."
"It brings us the ability to work from anywhere and has allowed us to work remotely without having to incur a lot of other costs. If we didn't have this type of solution, since we have so many on-prem services that are required, we would have likely lost money and been unable to deliver. We have a video services team who helped build the content for our sporting events. When you are watching a Leaf game and those swipes come by as well as the clips and things, those are all generated in-house. Without the ability to access our on-premise resources, we would have been dead in the water. So, the return on that is pretty impressive."
"Clustering architecture which offers zero downtime upgrades, keeping uptime close to 99.999%."
"The content filtering is good."
"Even in very big environments, Cisco comes in handy with configuration and offers reliability when it comes to managing multiple items on one platform."
"The reporting and monitoring are very good."
"The initial installation is very straightforward."
"Consolidated our network environment at all locations, but mainly at our datacenter."
"The FortiGate controls the user's activities and maximizes my bandwidth use overall."
"The IPS is good. It protect my network from attackers."
"It increases security posture and is helpful for firewall reporting, intrusion protection, web filtering, and SD-WAN implementation."
"The pricing is great and very reasonable."
"User-friendly and affordable security solution that's recommended for SMB customers. This solution has good technical support."
"They should work on making it a little more intuitive for users and not quite as complex. Still, it's a good product."
"In NGFW, Cisco should be aligned with the new technology and inspection intelligence because Cisco is far behind in this pipeline."
"Maybe the dashboard could be a bit better."
"The initial setup was complex."
"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."
"Comparing Cisco solution to others, it is expensive, it would be better for it to be cheaper."
"The access layer of this solution could be improved in terms of the way the devices interconnect with our network. We need to be able to analyze the traffic between the different interconnection in these areas."
"The licensing needs simplification."
"The scalability could be better."
"A lack of integration between our data centers."
"I don't really have anything negative to say as far as Fortinet firewalls are concerned. If anything, they can support a user a little bit better. They can stop being so time-sensitive about how much time the support call has taken, and they can help you do it yourself."
"It is stable, but its stability can be improved."
"The support team for Fortinet FortiGate needs to be more customer friendly."
"I would like Fortinet to add more automation to FortiGate."
"The price of FortiGate should be reduced because there are some other leading products that are cheaper."
"Backup 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, WatchGuard Firebox and Check Point NGFW. 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.