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.
"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 product offers good scalability."
"Netting is one of the best features. We can modify it in different ways. Site-to-site VPN is also an awesome feature of Cisco ASA. The biggest advantage of Cisco products is technical support. They provide the best technical support."
"The most valuable feature would be ASDM. The ability to go in, visualize and see the world base in a clear and consistent manner is very powerful."
"The protection and security features, like URL filtering, the inspection, and the IPS feature, are also very valuable for us. We don't have IT staff at most of the sites so for us it's important to have a robust firewall at those sites"
"They provide DDoS protection and multi-factor authentication. That is a good option as it enables work-from-home functionality."
"Protecting our landscape in general and being able to see logging when things aren't going as set out in policies are valuable features. Our security department is keen on seeing the logging."
"The return on investment is not going to be restricted to just the box... Now, these genres have been expanded to cyber, to third-party integrations, having integrated logging, having integrated micro and macro segmentations. The scope has been widened, so the ROI, eventually, has multiplied."
"The features that prevent internet connections, the filtering are the most valuable because we did not have any internet protection before."
"The features that I have found most valuable are that it is good to use, and most importantly, the pricing. The customer especially likes the discount when they trade up or something like that."
"What I like the most is the configuration and that it's simple, and straightforward to maintain."
"Customers are more inclined towards FortiGate because of application control, web filtering, and anti-spam features. The support from the FortiGate team is good, and price-wise, it is affordable."
"FortiGate is on the cheaper end, and it offers good value."
"The initial setup of Fortinet FortiGate was straightforward."
"I like Fortinet FortiGate's antispam filter, SPN, and clustering features."
"The flexibility and ease of configuration are the most valuable features."
"Bandwidth allocation needs improvement."
"I would like it to be easier to work with and have a better user interface. It is not straightforward. You need to know the Cisco command-line interface."
"They really need support for deployment."
"I have used Fortinet, Palo Alto, and Check Point previously and I prefer the process of everything working together."
"In general, they can make it easier to manage the solutions. They can make it easier in terms of administration and provide a single tool for different firewalling solutions. They have different tools to manage different firewalls, such as Firepower or ASA. Sometimes, both are on the same thing. You have ASA with Firepower modules, so you manage some of the things via HTML, and then you manage some of the things via another management tool. It's not seamless."
"The scalability is a bit limiting, to be honest. In terms of when you look to changing landscape in terms of threats, I think to me, my personal it's a bit limiting."
"The usability of Cisco Firepower Threat Defense is an issue. The product is still under development, and the user interface is very difficult to deal with."
"The initial setup could be simplified, as it can be complex for new users."
"The solution lacks sufficient filtering."
"Backup can be improved."
"The process of configuring firewall rules appears excessively complex."
"At first glance, the interface for the device is very confusing."
"Its filtering is sometimes too precise or strict. We sometimes have to bypass and authorize some of the sites, but they get blocked. We know that they are trusted sites, but they are blocked, and we don't know why."
"Its price could be better."
"This product needs to have an analysis feature, rather than having the analysis done through the integration of a different product."
"The setup is pretty complex and not easy to implement."
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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