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.
"We can shift traffic, block certain content, or redirect policies."
"The traffic inspection and the Firepower engine are the most valuable features. It gives you full details, application details, traffic monitoring, and the threats. It gives you all the containers the user is using, especially at the application level. The solution also provides application visibility and control."
"It is a comprehensive suite and complete package."
"The feature that I found most valuable is the overall stability of the product."
"I found that setting up rules for HTTPS and SSH access to the management interface are straightforward, including setting the cypher type."
"Our company operates in Saudi Arabia, primarily working with government sectors. If any hardware malfunctions, the defective device is removed, and we receive a replacement from the reseller. We have not encountered any issues related to delays in receiving replacements for malfunctioning devices which has been beneficial."
"This solution has good security, and it's a good product. You can trust Cisco, and there's support as well, which is really good."
"We get the Security Intelligence Feeds refreshed every hour from Talos, which from my understanding is that they're the largest intelligence Security Intelligence Group outside of the government."
"The main benefit is the grouping of our security monitoring."
"FortiGate improved our security. It's one of the best hardware firewalls."
"The notable features that I have found most valuable are that it includes the antivirus, and also IPS, and even SD-WAN."
"The threat prevention is the solution's most valuable aspect."
"The email protection and VPN features are the most valuable."
"The license management is very valuable. You can get a new license each year, or you can enroll every two to four years. You can get the logs, and you will get the information on the risk in your network and the entire organization. With this information, you can take action on your actives, computers, or devices. You can bring your own device as an SSE."
"The application control features, such as Facebook blocking and Spotify blocking, are the most valuable."
"The management console is pretty simple, so anyone who understands networking can initially deploy the solution."
"We use the FTD management platform for the boxes. The GUI that manages multiple Firepower boxes could be improved so that the user experience is better."
"The scalability has room for improvement."
"I believe that the current feature set of the device is very good and the only thing that Cisco should work on is improving the user experience with the device."
"Cisco should redo their website so it's actually usable in a faster way."
"It is surprising that you need to have a virtual appliance for the Firepower Management Center. It is not good if you have to setup a VMware server just for it."
"There used to be information displayed about the packets in a module called Packet Flow, but it is no longer there."
"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."
"We would really like to see dual dual power supplies for some Cisco Firewall products."
"The non-error conserve mode has room for improvement."
"FortiGate should have a better way of detecting and managing the system memory because otherwise if the memory is too low, a system restart is required."
"Technical support needs to be improved."
"MTBF: Hardware failure is more common when compared to SonicWall or Cisco ASA."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve by having better visibility. Palo Alto has better visibility."
"The solution needs to improve its integration with cybersecurity."
"It is quite new for us, and we need to go more in-depth into the monitoring tools. It provides different features that we need to do what we want. So far, it is okay for us. In terms of improvement, in the future, they can provide a faster implementation of features. Some of the features are first available in other solutions. Fortinet sometimes takes a little bit longer than other solutions, such as Check Point, to implement new features."
"I would prefer to have more detailed logs within the FortiGate products themselves rather than relying on a separate tool."
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.
See our list of best Firewalls vendors.
We monitor all Firewalls reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.