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 features I have found most valuable are the ASA firewalls. I like to have features like most integrated systems in ACI."
"IPS and Snort are very important because they also differentiate Cisco from other vendors and competitors."
"Sourcefire has been a great addition. The visibility and control have been nice."
"ASA is stable and with a low level of work required on the maintenance side."
"The web interface was easy for me. The configuration is logical, so it's easy to use and easy to understand how to protect, how to open a port, how to manage and how to route a device. That's why I prefer Cisco. It's robust and I never have issues with the hardware. That's why I choose Cisco and not another vendor."
"The initial setup was completely straightforward."
"Firepower has reduced our firewall operational costs by about 25 percent."
"The greatest benefit that this has provided to our organization is that we've been able to adjust the time that it takes to implement firewall changes. It's gone from a week to less than half a day to implement a change, which means that our DevOps team can be much more agile, and there is much less overhead on the firewall team."
"The signature database and zero-day detection are Fortinet FortiGate's most valuable features."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are the ease of use and there are several operating systems that can include the hardware capacities. In the newer releases, the resources were more useful because they were included in the operating system."
"Its user interface is good, and it is always working fine."
"The pricing is great and very reasonable."
"The ability to set up remote systems is the most valuable feature."
"I appreciate FortiGate's flexibility, which allows for centralized management through FortiManager."
"The usage in general is pretty good."
"Some of the key features of the solution is that it has good reporting, you can receive many details from the connection, for example, clients and website information."
"It could also use a reporting dashboard."
"Some of the features, like the stability, need to be improved."
"Its configuration through GUI as well as CLI can be improved and made easier."
"It doesn't have Layer 7 security."
"It has poor performance."
"In my experience, a number of engineers get tunnel vision with devices. This is exacerbated by vendors fostering a silo mentality in disciplines."
"The ability to better integrate with other tools would be an improvement."
"Multiple WAN connections: Even though you can implement more than one interface to outside connections, it is lacking on load balances, etc."
"The Wi-Fi controller needs a lot of improvement."
"They should improve high CPU and memory usage that occurs."
"WAN load-balancing could be a lot better at detecting when a link is poor or inconsistent, and not just flat out dead."
"From a reporting perspective, there's room for improvement. They're providing FortiAnalyzer through which one can get some enhancements, but the visibility and reporting still need slight improvement."
"Some of the features in the graphical user interface do not work, which requires that we used the command-line-interface."
"There were quite a few problems with the stability of the system."
"Pricing for it is a bit high. It could be cheaper."
"Usually, we sell the bundle with the UTM or threat management piece with IPS, IDS. Other providers, such as Palo Alto, are ahead in terms of safe functionality. So, for me, delivering truly safe service is probably something that still needs to 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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