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.
"The setup was straightforward. I was happy with the configuration and deployment of the solution, as it was quick."
"It's a flexible solution and is well-known in the community."
"I'm a big fan of SecureX, Cisco's platform for tying together all the different security tools. It has a lot of flexibility and even a lot of third-party or non-Cisco integration. I feel like that's a really valuable tool."
"The GUI is among the most valuable features,"
"The grouping of the solutions helps save time. If you have a problem and you have a high-level overview of the system, you can easily dig deeper into the problem. For example, I can check to see why ASA isn't working but the reason for the outage is actually because of Duo. I can spend a lot of time working in the wrong direction because I didn't have an overview."
"The most valuable feature is that it's secure."
"All the features except IPS are valuable. IPS is not a part of my job."
"Its Snort 3 IPS has better flexibility as far as being able to write rules. This gives me better granularity."
"The multi-tenancy feature is most valuable. It integrates very well with FortiManager and FortiAnalyzer."
"FortiGate firewalls are user-friendly, and I like the security profiling features."
"I like Fortinet's cloud management. It allows me to manage all my devices in different branches for three cloud accounts. Even though I use on-prem devices, I can manage everything on the cloud."
"LinkGreat firewall capabilities"
"Good anti-malware and web filtering features."
"The FortiGate controls the user's activities and maximizes my bandwidth use overall."
"It's very easy to configure."
"It's very good and very stable for businesses. It works very well."
"The only drawback of the user interface is when it comes to policies. When you open it and click on the policies, you have to move manually left and right if you want to see the whole field within the cell. Checkpoint has a very detailed user interface."
"Sometimes, it is not easy to troubleshoot. You need to know where to go. It took me quite awhile. It's like, "Okay, if it doesn't go smoothly here, then go find the documentation." Once you do it, it is not so bad. However, it is sometimes a steep learning curve on the troubleshooting part of it."
"The solution could offer better control that would allow the ability to restrictions certain features from a website."
"I needed to be well-versed with all the command lines for Cisco ASA in order to fully utilize it. I missed this info and wasted some operational costs."
"Report generation is an area that should be improved."
"The phishing emails could be improved."
"Its configuration through GUI as well as CLI can be improved and made easier."
"Intrusion prevention, we currently need to apply deep bracket inspection manually to use web filtering."
"We'd like more management across other integrations."
"Fortinet needs more memory to save the log files. We need it to save the logs on the hardware and not in the cloud. I know this feature is available in FortiCloud, but if we need this log locally, it is not available."
"Technical support could be better. You don't always get the level of help you need right away."
"I would like to see more advanced developments of a wireless controller in the future."
"Some configuration elements cannot be easily altered once created."
"Fortinet FortiGate needs to improve to be on par with its competitors, such as Palo Alto and Sophos. They are the market leaders. Fortinet FortiGate needs to improve its capabilities. However, we are happy with Fortinet FortiGate."
"The performance and speed are aspects of the solution that could always be improved upon."
"The feature which gives us a lot of pain is ASIC architecture."
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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