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.
"VPN and firewall are good features."
"I have found the most valuable feature to be the access control and IPsec VPN."
"The feature set is fine and is rarely a problem."
"We use the solution for deep packet inspection, Internet Edge functionality, IDS, and IDP."
"It's very stable and mature."
"The IP filter configuration for specific political and Static NAT has been most valuable."
"The most valuable features of this solution are advanced malware protection, IPS, and IDS."
"Their performance is most valuable."
"I like that they have given me a solution at a fair price."
"I'm pretty happy with its reliability. It is also very scalable."
"It has improved our security capabilities."
"The interface is very user-friendly and I like it very much."
"Some of the valuable features are the firewall, IPS, web filter, and gateway capabilities. Additionally, it is easy to use and flexible."
"It is a one box solution, which covers most of the edge device’s requirements."
"Virtual Domains (VDOMs) are a feature that we found valuable."
"FortiGate is flexible and easy to use."
"Its interface is sometimes is a little bit slow, and it can be improved. When you need to put your appliance in failover mode, it is a little difficult to do it remotely because you need to turn off the appliance in Cisco mode. In terms of new features, it would be good to have AnyConnect VPN with Firepower. I am not sure if it is available at the moment."
"10Gb interfaces should be available on more models."
"More intuitive support for SIP services are needed. This took a long time to configure properly for the user."
"The management of the firewalls could be improved because there are a lot of bugs."
"The product needs real-time logs to be able to monitor our services, so we can know if any our services have been blocked via the firewall or on the application side."
"They really need support for deployment."
"We were also not too thrilled when Cisco announced that in the upcoming new-gen ASA, iOS was not going to be supported, or if you install them, they will not be able to be managed through the Sourcefire. However, it seems like Cisco is moving away from the ASA iOS to the Sourcefire FireSIGHT firmware for the ASA. We haven't had a chance to test it out."
"It is my understanding that they are in the process of discontinuing this device."
"The initial setup is complex."
"Their software support needs improvement. I would prefer to have better support for bug fixes. Sometimes, we open a ticket, and it is very difficult to get a solution. Specifically, we are not at all happy with their support for load balancing."
"It does not have key authentication for admin access."
"It can be a little bit more user-friendly in terms of policy definition and implementation. It seems a little bit complicated, and it could be simplified."
"The integration with third-party tools may be something that they should work on."
"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."
"With the addition of some features, it is possible that FortiGate can be used in all verticals."
"The renewal price and the availability could be improved."
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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