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 solution is pretty easy to deploy."
"Cisco Secure Firewall improved our organization. We have it in every one of our French offices."
"It's pretty reliable and allows for isolation capabilities within the network."
"They wanted to leverage something which is equivalent that can give them the next gen features like application awareness and intrusion protection. So that is a major reason they were looking forward to this. The original ASA firewall did not have these features. This was the major reason the customer moved on to Cisco Firepower Threat Defense (FTD). Now they can go ahead and leverage those functionalities."
"The content filtering is good."
"The greatest benefit for the organization is the confidence that we are secured."
"Implementing Cisco Secure Firewall has saved us time because we rely on most of the out-of-the-box signatures. It has reduced the time and effort spent in configuration within the security network."
"The Adversity Malware Protection (AMP) feature is the most valuable. It is also very easy to use. Every technical user can operate this solution without any difficulty. The dashboard of Cisco Firepower has every tool that a security operator needs. You can find every resource that you need to operate through this dashboard."
"It is a safe product."
"The flexibility and ease of configuration are the most valuable features."
"Initial setup is straightforward. There weren't too many issues with setting it up. It takes one hour or so."
"We are very happy with the general bandwidth agility we have seen from one website to another website."
"Initial setup is easy to configure."
"We use a southern institution that's audited for IT security and the reporting that automatically comes off the unit makes it much easier to meet compliance standards and makes it easier as far as the amount of time that has to be spent to compile that information. If you get your reporting set up correctly when you initially set it up, you just select the one you want and hit print. The auditing trail on it is the best feature."
"It is very flexible to use."
"FortiGate SD-WAN facilitated a smooth transition for our customers between their two internet service providers, ensuring uninterrupted connectivity without any downtime."
"You shouldn't have to use the ASDM to help manage the client."
"The artificial intelligence and machine learning (behavioral based threat detection), which I can this will be coming out in another year, these are what we need now."
"Its configuration through GUI as well as CLI can be improved and made easier."
"It seems very clunky and slow. I would like to be able to tune it to be a more efficient product."
"The software was very buggy, to the point it had to be removed."
"We had an event recently where we had inbound traffic for SIP and we experienced an attack against our SIP endpoint, such that they were able to successfully make calls out... Both CTR, which is gathering data from multiple solutions that the vendor provides, as well as the FMC events connection, did not show any of those connections because there was not a NAT inbound which said either allow it or deny it."
"The ease of use needs improvement. It is complex to operate the solution. The user interface is not friendly."
"I would like for the user interface to be easier for the admin and network admin. I would also like to be able to access everything from the GUI interface. The way it is now, it needs somebody experience in iOS to be able to operate it. I would like to have a GUI interface."
"I use the FortiGate 60D model and realized the 300Mbps bandwidth limitation. Because it is a product that offers many services, I think it could have greater bandwidth capacity."
"The support costs and licensing are sometimes so expensive."
"The user interface could be improved."
"Application management can be improved."
"Web security solutions can be improved."
"Its customer service could be better."
"Fortinet FortiGate should improve the VPN tokens."
"There are some cloud-based features that could be much more flexible than they currently are."
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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