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 management aspect of the product is very straightforward."
"The interface is user-friendly."
"What I like about Cisco is the security zone. By default when you configure it, it gives you a security zone, which other firewalls don't have."
"It has definitely improved our organization. It gives us remote connectivity, helps workers connect remotely, and also gives us good connectivity to our other branches."
"The greatest benefit that this has provided to our organization is that we've been able to adjust the time that it takes to implement firewall changes. It's gone from a week to less than half a day to implement a change, which means that our DevOps team can be much more agile, and there is much less overhead on the firewall team."
"We are using the Cisco AnyConnect for our end-user VPN with the ASA."
"The high-availability and remote VPN features are most valuable."
"Manageability of Cisco ASA. It has a GUI interface, unlike the most of Cisco IOS. For beginners they can "sneak in" and apply the command and see the actual commands that the GUI launches. In addition, Cisco has the reputation regarding security."
"It can expand easily."
"What's most important is the ease of use."
"Fortinet FortiGate's reliability is valuable."
"The most valuable feature is the SSL VPN, as it allows us to connect and it separates this product from other firewalls."
"It has very easy management and an amazing ETM configuration."
"It is quite easy to handle."
"We use the filtering feature the most. It has filtering and inbuilt securities. We can create customized rules to define which users can access a particular type of site. We can create policies inside the firewall."
"A strong point of FortiGate is that the graphical interface is complete and easy to use, especially if we think there is a list of operations that we are able to perform inside."
"There may have been one or two incidences of malicious threats."
"This solution could be more granular and user-friendly."
"The ASA has become a bit old and needs updating."
"The relatively new Firepower Threat Defense image (mix of ASA and Sourcefire network security) fills a lot of gaps and features that were missing on ASA."
"There is huge scope for improvement in URL filtering. The database that they have is not accurate. Their content awareness and categorization for URL filtering are not that great. We faced many challenges with their categorization and content awareness. They should improve these categorization issues."
"I think that the solution can be improved with the integration of application-centric infrastructure. It could be used to have better solutions in one box."
"Usually, the customers are satisfied, but I am going to recommend that all clients upgrade to FirePOWER management. I want Cisco to improve the feature called anti-spam. We use a Cisco only email solution, that's why we need the anti-spam on email facility."
"Managing various product integrations, such as Umbrella, is challenging."
"The initial setup is complex."
"I would like Fortinet to add more automation to FortiGate."
"I think that the infrastructure for the VPN could be improved. The way that it is bundled also made it difficult to use and sell as it is too expensive."
"They should offer special pricing to premium partners and customers."
"It needs more available central management."
"Fortinet currently has many products bundled with FortiGate including the basic firewall and load balancer, and I think that that they need to have separate product portfolios for each of these specialized services."
"We have an issue with hotel guest vouchers."
"The support is the main thing that needs to 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, Check Point NGFW and WatchGuard Firebox. See our Cisco Secure Firewall vs. Fortinet FortiGate report.
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