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.
"Its Snort 3 IPS has better flexibility as far as being able to write rules. This gives me better granularity."
"I found that setting up rules for HTTPS and SSH access to the management interface are straightforward, including setting the cypher type."
"The monitoring dashboard is valuable to us for troubleshooting."
"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."
"For business purposes, it's a very detailed solution, which is it's greatest benefit, as you can get almost any piece of information you need from the solution. It allows for admins to be able to troubleshoot pretty easily."
"VPN and firewall are good features."
"The clusters in data centers are great."
"The features that are most valuable within the firewall are the IPS as well as the Unified Communications. We also really like the dynamic grouping."
"Virtual Domains (VDOMs) are a feature that we found valuable."
"What's most important is the ease of use."
"Anti-Spam web content filterinG."
"The management console is pretty simple, so anyone who understands networking can initially deploy the solution."
"The solution is highly scalable because they have devices that can handle a large amount of traffic."
"It's very easy to set up, it's very easy to make policies and, for an organization, that means you don't need IT expert in firewalls. You just need to have somebody who knows a little bit of IT, and that's it. With other products, you need someone with a "Masters" degree in firewalls."
"This is an easy solution to deploy."
"This version is stable. I don't have any issues with this solution, in our environment, it works well."
"The solution’s GUI could be better."
"I would like it if they made the newer generation a bit simpler. You can do ASA code and FXOS. It is just a bit confusing with the newer generational equipment on what it can do."
"It is my understanding that they are in the process of discontinuing this device."
"As it’s a GenX firewall, expertise for both implementation and troubleshooting the pain points can be a challenge. This could be a concern when companies are thinking about buying this product."
"There is no support here in Georgia. If something goes wrong, support is not always very helpful with the other firewalls or other products."
"I'm working on a slightly older version, but what it needs is a better alert management. It's pretty standard, but there's no real advanced features involved around it."
"Technical support takes a long time to respond."
"Sometimes my customers say that Cisco Firewalls are a bit more difficult compared to Fortigate or Palo Alto. There is complexity in the configuration and the GUI could be improved."
"I need user-behavior analytics, to find threat scenarios from inside the organization, insider attacks. That would be very helpful for us. In addition, I would like next-generation features for small and medium businesses. These businesses require UTM, all in one product. Fortinet must include it."
"Fortinet FortiGate can be integrated with different platforms. They have integrations in place, but I can't say they're 100%."
"The way everything is set up could be easier. Currently, people need a lot of experience and knowledge to administer it and to link it to devices."
"Lacks training for new features."
"Some features of Fortinet FortiGate are actually fee enabled that are inconvenient for deploying in production. Other issues relate to isolation with Cisco products and your server."
"One issue that I have had is that sometimes I need to monitor the traffic, so I need to filter it according to the user and which user is using it the most. I experience a bottleneck most of the time, particularly at the peak time when the number of contracts and users are at maximum."
"A sandbox would be good in order to be able to inspect the emails containing spam and be able to validate the emails that contain malware, prior to delivering to the customer."
"Its price could be better."
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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