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.
"There are some hiccups here and there, but compared to the technical support from other vendors, I have had the best experience with Cisco's technical support. I would rate them at nine out of ten."
"Its ability to discover attacks is a valuable feature. All of the other features that have to do with security are good."
"IPSec Tunnel and AnyConnect (of course), the context awareness was a good feature, but clumsy at the beginning. I think it's better now."
"Once you add Firepower onto to it and you start enabling some of its features, you get some IDS/IPS involved with it and you can even do web filtering."
"The best solutions for our company are those we have yet to implement so it will be even better in the future for us than it already is."
"Beats sophisticated cyber attacks with a superior security appliance."
"The integration and configuration were pretty straightforward."
"It is a very stable product. I've not had any issues with it. It is a super product, and I won't need to change it anytime soon."
"I like several features that this product has, such as antivirus and internet navigation inspection. It is also simple to use."
"Secure, user-friendly, stable, and scalable network security solution. Installation is straightforward."
"Fortinet FortiGate is a security device. It can optimize security on the networks of a company. It actually protects the company from attacks from outside. With FortiGate, you can categorize the users. You can create a group of users that can access all of the websites for their work. You can limit other users' access."
"I like Fortinet FortiGate's antispam filter, SPN, and clustering features."
"Good anti-malware and web filtering features."
"The most valuable features of the solution are SD-WAN, filtering testing applications, web filtering, and the new VPN."
"The customization potential is quite impressive."
"The signature database and zero-day detection are Fortinet FortiGate's most valuable features."
"Most users do not have awareness of this product's functionality and features. Cisco should do something to make them aware of them. That would be quite excellent and useful to organizations that are still using legacy data-center-security products."
"The graphical interface should be improved to make the configuration easier, to do things with a single click."
"Firewalls, in general, were not really designed for normal IT personnel, but for firewall and network experts. Therefore, they missed a lot of options and did not provide any good reporting or improvement options."
"I would like to see them update the GUI so that it doesn't look like it was made in 1995."
"Web filtering needs improvement because sometimes the URL is miscategorized."
"The process of procuring modern-day technology within the DOD needs to improve."
"The scalability has room for improvement."
"As it’s a GenX firewall, expertise for both implementation and troubleshooting the pain points can be a challenge. This could be a concern when companies are thinking about buying this product."
"They should offer special pricing to premium partners and customers."
"Fortinet FortiGate should improve the VPN tokens."
"There are a lot of bugs I have found in the solution and it is difficult to upgrade. These areas need improvement."
"I think that the infrastructure for the VPN could be improved. The way that it is bundled also made it difficult to use and sell as it is too expensive."
"The room for improvement is about the global delivery time period. Usually I need to wait for almost one month to deliver it overseas. So if you can shorten the deliver time it'd be great."
"NGN, reporting and controls."
"The cloud features can be improved."
"They need to improve their technical support."
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 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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