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 most valuable feature of Cisco Secure Firewall is its ease of configuration and that it's scalable for firewalls and VPNs."
"I like that Cisco Firepower NGFW Firewall is reliable. Support is also good."
"They are easy to maintain."
"The most important point is the detection engine which is now part of the next-generation firewalls and which is supported by Cisco Talos."
"I like them mostly because they don't break and they have great diagnostics."
"We chose Cisco because it had the full package that we were looking for."
"Cisco ASA Firewall is a well known product. They're always updating it, and you know what they're doing and that it works."
"Filtering is the best feature."
"This is a quality product with ok support, and it is better than the competition we've tried."
"Fortinet FortiGate's most valuable features are ease of use, flexibility, and most of the configuration we can be done using the GUI. When we compare Fortinet FortiGate with other solutions the firewall policy are very easy to understand."
"We are using the FortiGate 100D series. VPN, firewall, anti-malware, OTM, and intrusion prevention are useful features."
"The product is easy to use and is stable. The SV1 functionality is a benefit."
"The usage in general is pretty good."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are the different types of profiling. It has been the most effective for me. The WAF and the antivirus profile are the most effective in network protection."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"Overall security features and performance routing is good."
"The solution has not had any layer upgrades. It does not have layer five and upwards, it only has up to layer four. This has caused some problems for us."
"It would be better if we could manage all of our firewalls as a set rather than individually. I would like to see a single pane of glass type of option. We also use another vendor's firewalls and they have a centralized management infrastructure that we have implemented. This infrastructure is a bit easier to manage."
"The graphical interface could be improved. From what I have seen, Fortinet, for example, has a nicer GUI."
"It should have packets, deep level inspections and controls, like the features which other IPS solutions used to have."
"it is not very user-friendly for the administration."
"There are always vulnerabilities that come up and there was one in early 2018 but this was patched with software updates."
"Most users do not have awareness of this product's functionality and features. Cisco should do something to make them aware of them. That would be quite excellent and useful to organizations that are still using legacy data-center-security products."
"Nowadays, nobody is in the office, so I need to figure out how to put the firewall outside. If I could have a centralized firewall that also receives information from external locations, like peoples' home offices, that would help us consolidate everything into one appliance."
"Sometimes you do need to know some CLI commands, so it's a bit harder for technicians or new people that don't know it."
"I feel that the reporting needs to be improved."
"Fortinet FortiGate can improve by integrating the web application firewall and the DDoS protection part of the solution. Having a WAF feature, web application firewall, and proxy together would be a good benefit."
"FortiLink is the interface on the firewall that allows you to extend switch management across all of your switches in the network. The problem with it is that you can't use multiple interfaces unless you set them up in a lag. Only then you can run them. So, it forces you to use a core type of switch to propagate that management out to the rest of the switches, and then it is running the case at 200. It leaves you with 18 ports on the firewall because it is also a layer-three router that could also be used as a switch, but as soon as you do that, you can't really use them. They could do a little bit more clean up in the way the stacking interface works. Some use cases and the documentation on the FortiLink checking interface are a little outdated. I can find stuff on version 5 or more, but it is hard to find information on some of the newer firmware. The biggest thing I would like to see is some improvement in the switch management feature. I would like to be able to relegate some of the ports, which are on the firewall itself, to act as a switch to take advantage of those ports. Some of these firewalls have clarity ports on them. If I can use those, it would mean that I need to buy two less switches, which saves time. I get why they don't, but I would still like to see it because it would save a little bit of space in the server rack."
"I think there could be more QoS features"
"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."
"It could use better throughput on some of the smaller boxes for the branch offices."
"Performance and technical support are the main issues with this solution."
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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