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.
"Easy to implement, and it is also reliable."
"This is an easy solution to deploy."
"All of the features of Fortinet FortiGate are useful and the security protection is good."
"The scalability of Fortinet FortiGate is good."
"Its performance in fulfilling our requirements has been satisfactory."
"Fortinet offers the latest versions to cater to the needs of enterprises."
"Secure, user-friendly, stable, and scalable network security solution. Installation is straightforward."
"Their reliability and their policy of pre-shipping replacements when a unit has failed."
"Strong in NAT and access-lists."
"The interface is user-friendly."
"The most important point is the detection engine which is now part of the next-generation firewalls and which is supported by Cisco Talos."
"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."
"The most valuable feature is the access control list (ACL)."
"One of the most valuable features is the GUI front end, which is very easy to use. But I'm also a command-line guy, and being able to access the device via command-line for advanced troubleshooting is quite important."
"I like all of the features."
"Cisco ASA has an okay CLI with a nice GUI."
"My company mainly works in the health and educational domain, schools and universities. I prevent the improper use of content from schools and universities. I defend the medical records for the patients in our hospitals. That is the main use case for me for the firewall."
"I especially like the VPN part. It works like a charm."
"The concurrent users are perfect for us."
"Its reliability and cost-effectiveness stand out."
"The solution is very easy to use and configure."
"I like pfSense's reports and how I can control access to the policies on the firewall."
"A valuable feature is that the solution is open source."
"I had some outages in the network and we provide services for our company. We sell mobile credits. The terminal gets access to our own server inside the network and if one internet fails, then the other one is still up and we have a back-up link on the devices."
"I have to say that the initial setup was complex. The deployment took a few days to get set up. Initially, we were using an IPVanish. We switched to this tool since we thought it would be easier. But it turns out it wasn't easier to set up and run."
"Scalability is one of the disadvantages. When it comes to scalability, you have to actually change the box. If you want to upgrade it, you need to actually change the existing box and probably you take the system off to other sites."
"Fortinet FortiGate is a firewall solution and once it's deployed, you can rest assured that your system is secure."
"If they could extend their fabric towards other vendor environments for integration, that would be great."
"I haven't had a single issue since using Fortinet."
"The reports are very basic."
"They should offer special pricing to premium partners and customers."
"Technical support could be better. You don't always get the level of help you need right away."
"The Cisco Secure Firewall could benefit from enhancements in its API, documentation, and automation tools."
"I have worked with the new FTD models and they have more features than the ASA line."
"Make the IPS baked-in."
"Critical bugs need to be addressed before releasing the version."
"The only con that I have really seen with it is the reporting structure. FirePOWER is good. It has been a great help because, before that, it was not good at all."
"One of the few things that are brought up is that for the overall management, it would be great to have a cloud instance of that. And not only just a cloud instance, but one of the areas that we've looked at is using an HA type of cloud. To have the ability to have a device file within a cloud. If we had an issue with one, the other one would pick up automatically."
"It is hard to collaborate with our filtered environment."
"Deploying configurations takes longer than it should."
"If a user doesn't have a large amount of experience in Linux systems, they will have problems using this solution. Users need to be highly skilled in troubleshooting competency. Users who do not have such skills will find the product difficult to use."
"It needs to be more secure."
"It was difficult to configure our web printer through the solution. This process could be easier. Additionally, integration with SD-WAN solution."
"The interface is not very shiny and attractive."
"We are at the moment looking to use it as a proxy service so that we can limit what websites people go and view and that sort of thing. That's an area I've struggled with a little bit at the moment and it could be a bit easier to set up."
"Improve analysis of logs and dashboards (control panel) with improved alert functionality."
"I would like to see multiple DNS servers running on individual interfaces."
"The stability could be improved."
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, Sophos UTM, KerioControl and WatchGuard Firebox. See our Cisco Secure Firewall vs. Netgate pfSense report.
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