We performed a comparison between Cisco Secure Firewall vs. pfSense based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Cisco Secure Firewall and pfSense come out about equal in this comparison. Cisco ASA Firewall has a slight edge when it comes to service and support, but pfSense has an edge when it comes to pricing.
"I appreciate FortiGate's flexibility, which allows for centralized management through FortiManager."
"FortiGate firewalls are easy to manage through a user-friendly web interface. They also have advanced features like DDoS and DLP. However, I wouldn't recommend enabling all of these features on one device because it can cause performance issues."
"We are a visual effects company, and there have been a number of high profile security issues in our industry. This has brought us to a higher standard of security, which our clients are very keen on these days."
"It's a firewall that secures our internal network. I have been using it since 2013, and I find that most of the features are advanced, and very user friendly."
"The solution is highly scalable because they have devices that can handle a large amount of traffic."
"The user interface is relatively easy. The devices are easy to deploy and figure out when you have experience with other security appliances."
"Fortinet FortiGate is user-friendly and affordable."
"Their reliability and their policy of pre-shipping replacements when a unit has failed."
"It's a flexible solution and is well-known in the community."
"The IPS (In-plane switching) is the most valuable feature."
"We are mostly using it for remote access, so the remote access feature is the most valuable, but all other features are also needed and required. It is also a very straightforward and reliable solution."
"This solution made our organization more secure and gave us better control."
"The primary benefits of using Cisco Secure solutions are time-saving, a robust API, and convenience for the security team."
"The solution is excellent for enterprise-level networks."
"The configuration support is very good. You can find a lot of configuration samples and troubleshooting tips on the internet, which is very good."
"A stable and solid solution for protection from external threats and for VPN connections."
"The flexibility of adding new kinds of services without spending any money can't be beaten."
"pfSense helped us during COVID-19 because we used OpenVPN to connect from home."
"I especially like the VPN part. It works like a charm."
"I like pfSense's security features."
"The interface is straightforward and easy to use."
"Improved service performance and availability through redundancy."
"I like the connectivity to the open VPN. It's very smooth."
"We like the fact that the product is open-source. It's free to use. There are no costs associated with it."
"Its reporting capabilities can be improved. It should have some out-of-the-box reporting capabilities and some degree of customization. The basic reporting that it currently has is not sufficient to create more usable reports. It needs some sort of out-of-the-box reporting. They try to make customers purchase FortiAnalyzer for this kind of reporting, which is an additional cost. Other firewall vendors, such as SonicWall and Sophos, provide this sort of reporting without any additional cost."
"When we cluster the two Fortinet FortiGate boxes together we have some issues."
"The UI could be improved."
"It would be nice if FortiGate incorporated some built-in endpoint protection features. I would also like a built-in SOC dashboard for managing multiple Fortinet firewalls."
"With FortiGate, the main complaint that I have heard is about the technical support."
"The biggest "gotcha" is that if the client purchases what they call the UTM shared bundle, which has unified threat management on both, it's not as easy to manage if you have more than one firewall."
"I need user-behavior analytics, to find threat scenarios from inside the organization, insider attacks. That would be very helpful for us. In addition, I would like next-generation features for small and medium businesses. These businesses require UTM, all in one product. Fortinet must include it."
"A sandbox would be good in order to be able to inspect the emails containing spam and be able to validate the emails that contain malware, prior to delivering to the customer."
"Other firewalls, upgrading is a very easy task; from the graphical user interface, you just need to import the firmware versions into it and install it. In this firewall, you need to have a third-party solution in both. It's a process. It's a procedure, a hard procedure, actually, so there is no straightforward procedure for upgrading."
"Cisco ASA is not a next-generation firewall product."
"The product line does not address the SMB market as it is supposed to do. Cisco already has an on-premises sandbox solution."
"If they want to add better features to the current Cisco ASA, they can start by increasing the encryption. That is the only thing they need to improve."
"I'm working on a slightly older version, but what it needs is a better alert management. It's pretty standard, but there's no real advanced features involved around it."
"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."
"We are looking for software taxi capabilities."
"While this applies to all vendors, pricing can be always lower. In my opinion, Cisco is the most expensive. The pricing can be reduced."
"There's a bit of a learning curve during the initial implementation."
"Ease of use is a problem for a user who is unfamiliar with this product because, in the interface, everything has to be set manually."
"I believe improving integration with various antivirus vendors could be beneficial."
"The solution’s interface must be improved."
"In terms of areas of improvement, the interface seemed like it had a lot. The GUI interface that I had gotten into was rather elaborate. I don't know if they could zero in on some markets and potentially for small, medium businesses specifically, give them a stripped-down version of the GUI for pfSense."
"Perhaps the documentation is not clear and because it is supported in the community there is no basic documentation."
"There could be a way to remote to it through a mobile app. You can always browse through your browser on your mobile phone or tablet, but it would be good to have a dedicated app. I understand that iOS and Android developers are expensive, but there should be a mobile app."
"The router monitoring needs improvement when compared with Sonicwall."
Cisco Secure Firewall is ranked 4th in Firewalls with 404 reviews while Netgate pfSense is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 128 reviews. Cisco Secure Firewall is rated 8.2, while Netgate pfSense is rated 8.6. 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 Netgate pfSense writes "User-friendly, easy to manage the firewall, rule-wise and interface-wise". Cisco Secure Firewall is most compared with Palo Alto Networks WildFire, Meraki MX, Sophos XG, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls and Juniper SRX Series Firewall, whereas Netgate pfSense is most compared with OPNsense, Sophos XG, KerioControl, Sophos UTM and WatchGuard Firebox. See our Cisco Secure Firewall vs. Netgate pfSense report.
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