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.
"Even in very big environments, Cisco comes in handy with configuration and offers reliability when it comes to managing multiple items on one platform."
"Their performance is most valuable."
"Firepower has reduced our firewall operational costs by about 25 percent."
"Beats sophisticated cyber attacks with a superior security appliance."
"Unfortunately in Cisco, only the hardware was good."
"The most valuable features of this solution are advanced malware protection, IPS, and IDS."
"It's a flexible solution and is well-known in the community."
"You do not have to do everything through a command line which makes it a lot easier to apply rules."
"The performance is good."
"I like how we can achieve total integration."
"The customization potential is quite impressive."
"I like that you are able to manage FortiGate from the FortiManager to create a more centralized environment."
"The user interface is relatively easy. The devices are easy to deploy and figure out when you have experience with other security appliances."
"FortiGate is very simple to manage and easy to use."
"It is a one box solution, which covers most of the edge device’s requirements."
"We have found it to be very reliable and that's why our teams and various users in our company use it as our main firewall every day."
"The ASAs are being replaced with the new Firepowers and they have a different type of structure in the configuration to be able to migrate from one to the other."
"They should work on making it a little more intuitive for users and not quite as complex. Still, it's a good product."
"The dashboard can be improved."
"The ASA needs to incorporate the different modules you have to integrate to achieve UTM functions, especially for small businesses."
"When we're looking at full-stack visibility, it can be difficult to get the right information out of Firepower."
"It can be improved when it comes to monitoring. Today, the logs from the firewalls could be improved a bit more without integrating with other devices."
"They should improve their interface."
"In terms of what could be improved, I would say the UTM part should be more integrated for one price, because if you buy ASA from Cisco, you need to buy another contract service from Cisco as a filter for the dictionary of attacks. In Fortinet, you buy a firewall and you have it all."
"The customization could be improved. Cisco, for example, is much better at this. They need to work to be at least as good as they are."
"We would like to see a better training platform implemented."
"The UI could be improved."
"If they had better integration with security products, such as Cisco ISE or Rapid Threat Containment, then it would be an improvement."
"I would like to see better pricing in the next release, as well as a simplification of the installation."
"The solution lacks multi-language support."
"Fortinet FortiGate is not very easy to use. The navigation could be improved to make it easier to use."
"The captive portal could be improved."
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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