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.
"We find all of its features very useful. Its main features are policies and access lists. We use both of them, and we also use routing."
"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."
"The most important feature is the VPN connection."
"The most valuable feature that Cisco Firepower NGFW provides for us is the Intrusion policy."
"The solution offers very easy configurations."
"I like them mostly because they don't break and they have great diagnostics."
"To be honest, all of the features that are provided, all the other vendor will also have. One feature we did find valuable was the CLI, it is more accurate. Additionally, I was happy with the customization, dashboards, access lists and interface."
"The clusters in data centers are great."
"We are very happy with the general bandwidth agility we have seen from one website to another website."
"FortiGate SD-WAN facilitated a smooth transition for our customers between their two internet service providers, ensuring uninterrupted connectivity without any downtime."
"Easy to implement, and it is also reliable."
"The most valuable feature is the ease of use."
"It is a safe product."
"The solution is very user friendly. The user interface in particular is quite nice."
"I'm pretty happy with its reliability. It is also very scalable."
"Fortinet FortiGate's reliability is valuable."
"The product crashes. We have a cluster of firewalls and we regularly get failovers."
"When comparing the graphical interface of this solution to other vendors it is more difficult to configure. There is a higher learning curve for administrators in this solution."
"Changes you make in the GUI sometimes do not reflect in the command line and vice versa."
"Even on a smaller scale, people are finding you need HA pairs, and there's no way that the ASA can do that, at least in the virtual version."
"The stability could be better because we have a lot of issues with the stability of Cisco Firepower."
"Tech support could not answer all of our questions. I had to do research on the web to solve my issues."
"Make the IPS baked-in."
"One thing that Cisco could improve is the GUI. The graphic user interface should be more user-friendly."
"Stability and technical support are the two major issues I have found with Fortinet."
"It should have a better pricing plan. It is too expensive. It should also have a more granular view of the attack. I don't have FortiAnalyzer, and it is difficult for me to have a complete view when there is an attack on my server."
"The solution could be more user friendly."
"I would like reporting to be improved and should offer a lot more tools to monitor the products."
"The debugging and troubleshooting has room for improvement."
"The ease of use could be improved."
"Pricing for it is a bit high. It could be cheaper."
"It's my understanding that more of the current generation features could be brought in. There could be more integration with EDRs, for example."
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.