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 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."
"The most valuable feature is that it has the ability to divide the network into three parts; internal, external, and DMZ."
"So far, it has been very stable."
"The most valuable features are the flexibility and level of security that this solution provides."
"The stability is good. Very simple. Upgrades are great."
"The solution is excellent for enterprise-level networks."
"If only a Layer 4 FW is needed, this is a good solution."
"We definitely feel more secure. We have more control over things going in and out of our network."
"Allows for firewall rules to be programmed and named in a way that makes it “readable”"
"The initial installation is very straightforward."
"It is a good source for firewall protection."
"The features that I have found most valuable are the SD-WAN and their IP4 policy."
"The payment function for applications is good."
"The main reason why I purchased the particular unit was that it had good reviews and what other people were saying as far as its completeness and its leading capabilities in terms of endpoint security was very good."
"It performs very well."
"The solution is stable."
"The IPS and GUI are outdated."
"One feature I would like to see, that Firepower doesn't have, is email security. Perhaps in the future, Cisco will integrate Cisco Umbrella with Firepower. I don't see why we should have to pay for two separate products when both could be integrated in one box."
"The license system is also good but it's not very impressive. It's a very regular licensing system. They call it a smart license which means that your device will connect to the internet. This is a little bit of a headache for some customers. It doesn't make the customer happy because most of the customers prefer not to connect their firewall or system to the internet."
"Cisco suffers from some integration issues with other products... There is a problem with the Cisco Catalyst Switches in terms of assembling bursts and having them interact properly with the Cisco Firepower."
"Critical bugs need to be addressed before releasing the version."
"One area where the ASA could be improved is that it doesn't have AMP. When you get an ASA with the Firepower model, ASA with FTD, then you have advanced malware protection."
"We would like to see improvement in recovery. If there is an issue that forces us to do recovery, we have to restart or reboot. In addition, sometimes we have downtime during the maintenance windows. If Cisco could enhance this, so that upgrades would not necessarily require downtime, that would be helpful."
"Report generation is an area that should be improved."
"There is one big configuration file with no separations for the unique VDOMs. Maybe they could separate individual VDOM configuration files with the root VDOM configuration file referencing the individual VDOM config files."
"The product does need better support in the cloud environment. It's not exactly cloud-native right now."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve by having more capabilities for troubleshooting VPN connections. For example, I do get some feedback about the current status, but I could use some history and logging of important events. The information is logged in our Syslog server, but I could use that information from the device. If they could provide a GUI to have some more insight on what's going with my VPN would be useful."
"The support structure needs to be improved because every time we contact them, there is a delay in the response."
"The support costs and licensing are sometimes so expensive."
"It is very expensive, and their support is not very good. I hope that their technical support will be better in the future."
"It would be nice if FortiGate incorporated some built-in endpoint protection features. I would also like a built-in SOC dashboard for managing multiple Fortinet firewalls."
"I don't like that anything more than very basic reporting is not included."
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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