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.
"My confidence continues to build upon using Cisco firewalls."
"The clusters in data centers are great."
"Their performance is most valuable."
"Cisco ASA is very strong."
"We moved from a legacy firewall to the ASA with FirePOWER, increasing our Internet Edge defense dramatically."
"Feature-wise, we mostly use IPS because it is a security requirement to protect against attacks from outside and inside. This is where IPS helps us out a bunch."
"The most valuable features of this solution are the integrations and IPS throughput."
"It's pretty reliable and allows for isolation capabilities within the network."
"Initial setup is straightforward. There weren't too many issues with setting it up. It takes one hour or so."
"Fortinet FortiGate is stable. It's used across all the countries, this is the way most multinationals run their system."
"We've found the solution to be pretty stable."
"FortiGate has a very strong unified threat management system."
"The solution is very, very easy to use."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are remote access, web filtering, and IPS."
"I like several features that this product has, such as antivirus and internet navigation inspection. It is also simple to use."
"Their reliability and their policy of pre-shipping replacements when a unit has failed."
"At times the product is sluggish and slow"
"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."
"My team tells me that other solutions such as Fortinet and Palo Alto are easier to implement."
"The application detection feature of this solution could be improved as well as its integration with other solutions."
"You need to have a little bit of knowledge to be able to configure it. Otherwise, it would be very difficult to configure because there is no GUI. The latest software available in the market has a GUI and probably zero-touch provisioning and auto-configuration. All these things are not available in our version. You need to manually go and configure everything in the switch. In terms of new features, we would definitely want to have URL-based filtering, traffic steering, and probably a little bit steering in the bandwidth based on the per-user level and per-user group. We will definitely need some of these features in the near future."
"Integration aspects and traffic shaping need improvement."
"Lacks a good graphical user interface."
"There was an error in the configuration, related to our uplink switches, that caused us to contact technical support, and it took a very long time to resolve the issue."
"NGN, reporting and controls."
"I think they need to improve more in order to be a competitor with the leaders of the field."
"It's my understanding that more of the current generation features could be brought in. There could be more integration with EDRs, for example."
"They are doing good, but they can improve the distributor assignment. The availability of the product and the timeline of delivery are the main things. The distribution should be swift, and the distributor should not reach out to end customers directly. They should work as a distributor. There should also be one more local distributor. Currently, there is only one distributor in Pakistan, and the rest of them are in UAE. It is difficult to work with only one distributor. Sometimes, you don't get along with the same distributor, and that's why they should have one more distributor. Their licensing should also be improved. The activation or renewal of the product should be done from the date of renewal, not from the date on which the license expired."
"We would like to have the ability to disable some of the security functionalities."
"Pricing for it is a bit high. It could be cheaper."
"The support structure needs to be improved because every time we contact them, there is a delay in the response."
"One issue that I have had is that sometimes I need to monitor the traffic, so I need to filter it according to the user and which user is using it the most. I experience a bottleneck most of the time, particularly at the peak time when the number of contracts and users are at maximum."
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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