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.
"For us, the most valuable features are the IPX and the Sourcefire Defense Center module. That gives us visibility into the traffic coming in and going out, and gives us the heads-up if there is a potential outbreak or potential malicious user who is trying to access the site. It also helps us see traffic generated by an end device trying to reach out to the world."
"The ASA has seen significant improvement due to the IPS."
"They provide DDoS protection and multi-factor authentication. That is a good option as it enables work-from-home functionality."
"The feature I find most valuable is the Cisco VPN Interconnection."
"The TAC is always very helpful. We pay for Tier 1 support, so we get whatever we need from them. They always give us a solution. If they can't give us an answer that day, they get back to us within at least 24 hours with a solution or fix. I have never had a problem with the TAC. I would rate them as 10 out of 10."
"The solution offers very easy configurations."
"Our company operates in Saudi Arabia, primarily working with government sectors. If any hardware malfunctions, the defective device is removed, and we receive a replacement from the reseller. We have not encountered any issues related to delays in receiving replacements for malfunctioning devices which has been beneficial."
"It is pretty stable. I haven't seen many issues during the past four years."
"It's user-friendly and easy to operate."
"What I like the most is the configuration and that it's simple, and straightforward to maintain."
"Layer-3 firewall and routing are the most valuable features."
"I'm pretty happy with its reliability. It is also very scalable."
"The pipe filter application is an outstanding feature."
"The dashboard I have found the most valuable in Fortinet FortiGate."
"The ease of setting the solution up is a valuable aspect for us."
"Centralized monitoring, policy management, and virtualized appliances allow us to take control over our public and private infrastructure."
"It is a good firewall, though not NextGen."
"Implementations require the use of a console. It would help if the console was embedded."
"They need a user-friendly interface that we could easily configure."
"Technical support takes a long time to respond."
"Its user interface is good, but it could be better. Currently, you have to know what to do before you can manage a device. If you don't know what to do, you can mess things up. There are some devices that are easier, such as FortiGate. The user interface of FortiGate is more intuitive. It is very easy to log in and configure things."
"The ASA has become a bit old and needs updating."
"It is surprising that you need to have a virtual appliance for the Firepower Management Center. It is not good if you have to setup a VMware server just for it."
"Migration with other appliances is not easy. It has to be done manually, and this takes a long time."
"I would like to see improvements made to the dashboard and UI, as well as to the reporting."
"I would like to see a more intuitive dashboard."
"There are a lot of bugs I have found in the solution and it is difficult to upgrade. These areas need improvement."
"The UI could be improved."
"Monitoring and reporting could be better."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve by adding enhancements to FortiMail, FortiSOAR, and FortiDeceptor."
"The non-error conserve mode has room for improvement."
"They sometimes hide some features and if you want to enable them, you have to go in the CLI, enable the feature and configure it through the CLI. Customers, typically, like everything to be done by the GUI."
Cisco Secure Firewall is ranked 4th in Firewalls with 112 reviews while Fortinet FortiGate is ranked 2nd in Firewalls with 67 reviews. Cisco Secure Firewall is rated 8.2, while Fortinet FortiGate is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Cisco Secure Firewall writes "Includes multiple tools that help manage and troubleshoot, but needs SD-WAN for load balancing". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Fortinet FortiGate writes "Efficient, user-friendly, and affordable". 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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