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.
"Cisco ASA Firewall is a well known product. They're always updating it, and you know what they're doing and that it works."
"The most valuable feature is IPS. It's a feature that's very interesting for tackling the most current attacks."
"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."
"It is a highly stable product. We rarely receive any serious outdates, so it works quite well."
"The setup was straightforward. I was happy with the configuration and deployment of the solution, as it was quick."
"The implementation is pretty straightforward."
"The security features are the most valuable. My customers find the security products very useful because nowadays there are many threats from the internet and other malicious users. The security products really help."
"The product is quite robust and durable."
"Advanced routing (RIP, OSPF, BGP, PBR). It gives you a seamless and simple integration into a large network."
"We are using the FortiGate 100D series. VPN, firewall, anti-malware, OTM, and intrusion prevention are useful features."
"Valuable features include the Web Application Firewall, and it even has DLP (data leak prevention)."
"The tool is a nice product and easy to handle. The software's user interface is also good. You can easily implement remote access in the solution."
"The technical support is great."
"It is very flexible to use."
"The most valuable features are the enterprise modeling and the simple interface."
"The usage in general is pretty good."
"I would like to see the inclusion of a protocol that can be used to protect databases."
"One thing that we really would have loved to have was policy-based routing. We had a lot of connections, and sometimes, we would have liked to change the routing depending on the policies, but it was lacking this capability. We also wanted application filtering and DNS filtering."
"ASDM can be improved."
"Antivirus features must be integrated for end user security."
"The stability and the product features have to really be worked on."
"The ability to integrate (as options) all-in-one features -- like anti-spam, anti-virus, etc."
"Lacks a good graphical user interface."
"I would like to see improvement when you create policies on Snort 3 IPS on Cisco Firepower. On Snort 2, it was more like a UI page where you had some multiple choices where you could tweak your config. On Snort 3, the idea is more to build some rules on the text file or JSON file, then push it. So, I would like to see a lot of improvements here."
"There are some complex administration tasks in their administration portal. That needs to be improved."
"The reports are very basic."
"The search tool needs improvement. It's very difficult to search for policies right now."
"The solution's framework needs to be frequently updated in order to have a stable solution."
"The room for improvement is about the global delivery time period. Usually I need to wait for almost one month to deliver it overseas. So if you can shorten the deliver time it'd be great."
"It could use better throughput on some of the smaller boxes for the branch offices."
"The support team for Fortinet FortiGate needs to be more customer friendly."
"It should provide better visibility over the network and more information in the form of reports for the end users. Its installation should also be easier."
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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