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.
"Being able to use it as a policy-based VPN is valuable. It's very easy to understand. It's very easy to troubleshoot."
"The initial setup was completely straightforward."
"A powerful enterprise security solution that is dependible."
"It makes it very easy to have delineated roles and responsibilities between network engineering and network security."
"The stability is very good; there's no vagueness. Either it works or it doesn't, and it's also very easy to find out why."
"It's a flexible solution."
"Once you add Firepower onto to it and you start enabling some of its features, you get some IDS/IPS involved with it and you can even do web filtering."
"Clustering architecture which offers zero downtime upgrades, keeping uptime close to 99.999%."
"The most valuable features are the enterprise modeling and the simple interface."
"The email protection and VPN features are the most valuable."
"It's great for capturing the traffic and troubleshooting it."
"The customization potential is quite impressive."
"SSL-VPN is very useful for us and has been very reliable."
"It's quite comfortable to handle the FortiGate firewall."
"The ease of setting the solution up is a valuable aspect for us."
"LinkGreat firewall capabilities"
"The inclusion of an autofill feature would improve the ease of commands."
"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."
"We found it difficult to publish an antennae sidewalk with the ASDM. I think Cisco should improve this by creating a simpler interface for the firewall."
"There are some limitations with SSL. Regarding the security assessment for the ISO 27000 standard, there are certain features that Cisco needs to scale up. Not all products support it, so you need to be slightly careful, especially on the site track."
"In terms of functionality, there isn't much to improve. There could be more bandwidth and better interface speed."
"On the VPN side, Firepower could be better. It needs more monitoring on VPNs. Right now, it's not that good. You can set up a VPN in Firepower, but you can't monitor it."
"Bandwidth allocation needs improvement."
"This is an older product and has reached end-of-life."
"The solution can have more features in a single box that can be multi-applied to integrate everything."
"Lacks training for new features."
"We had a minor problem where there was a major system upgrade on the hardware platfrom and the Mac client was not available as soon as it might have been. The PC client was available immediately, but we had to wait a month or so, before there was a mac client. I was slightly irritated that it was not ready on time, but it was eventually resolved."
"The visibility of the network can be better. The GUI can be improved for better visibility of the network flow. Other solutions have better GUI in terms of network visibility."
"The platform's interface could improve."
"Fortinet doesn't provide multiple virtual firewalls which would facilitate end users and customers."
"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."
"Fortinet FortiGate is a stable solution. However, my issue is the performance only. When I use all the profiles, this affects the performance. From the beginning, I should have had a better sizing of the box."
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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