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.
"The application control features, such as Facebook blocking and Spotify blocking, are the most valuable."
"The most valuable feature is the VDOM, which allows the customer to have multiple firewalls in a single campus."
"Their interface is very easy to use, it is without bugs."
"The UTM feature is quite good. FortiAP is easy to deploy because both Fortigate and FortiAP are under the same brand. Otherwise, you need to do more work on the configuration."
"This is an easy solution to deploy."
"What's most important is the ease of use."
"This solution made it very easy to manage our bandwidth."
"The IPS is good. It protect my network from attackers."
"This product is pretty stable."
"ASA 5505 and ASA 5506 are very powerful tools to use in a business environment, and provide a lot of security."
"The AnyConnect remote access VPN gives us an easy way to deploy remote working for our users."
"A stable, reliable solution used to protect the network's perimeter."
"The command line is the same as it is on the Cisco iOS router."
"The most valuable feature for the customers is that they can control what communication is allowed and what is not allowed. That is, they can allow or deny client traffic."
"The deep packet inspection is useful, but the most useful feature is application awareness. You can filter on the app rather than on a static TCP port."
"The most valuable features of this solution are the integrations and IPS throughput."
"Good basic firewall features."
"The most valuable features of pfSense are security, user-friendliness, and helpful online management."
"The solution is very robust."
"Easy to deploy and easy to use."
"What I found most valuable is the cost of the platform, the flexibility of the platform, and the fact that the ongoing fees are not there as they are with the competitor. Some people may think you're taking a risk with using Opensource. I think it just provides the end user, specifically for us small, medium business providers of services, the flexibility we need at the right cost to provide them a higher end, almost enterprise type service."
"The most valuable features of pfSense are the reports, monitoring, filtration, and blocking incoming and outgoing traffic."
"Great extensibility of the platform."
"It is effective. We have not had any problems."
"Due to its higher cost, Fortinet FortiGate can lead to increased operational expenses."
"We sometimes have issues with FortiGate's routing table in the latest firmware update. We had to downgrade the device because our customers complained about bugs."
"I would like to see a more intuitive dashboard."
"Its customer service could be better."
"The solution could have licensing fees reduced in the future."
"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."
"Fortinet needs more memory to save the log files. We need it to save the logs on the hardware and not in the cloud. I know this feature is available in FortiCloud, but if we need this log locally, it is not available."
"They should improve high CPU and memory usage that occurs."
"The use of it has really bogged down our response time for certain problems, given we have to go through AT&T for everything."
"The integration between different tools could be improved. For example, with SecureX, I am yet to find out how to forward security events to different tools such as Microsoft Sentinel, which is what we use for log detection."
"You shouldn't have to use the ASDM to help manage the client."
"Bandwidth allocation needs improvement."
"Most users do not have awareness of this product's functionality and features. Cisco should do something to make them aware of them. That would be quite excellent and useful to organizations that are still using legacy data-center-security products."
"An area of improvement for this solution is the console visualization."
"An area for improvement is the graphical user interface. That is something that is coming up now. They could make the product more user-friendly. A better GUI is something that would make life much easier."
"It is a good firewall, though not NextGen."
"When I checked other packages, it seems they use different tools that are installed on the PSS for functionality. They rely on third-party tools, unlike Fortinet, for example, which has its own tools. In comparison, we also use third-party tools on pfSense. For example, we had a situation where we needed a tool to identify authorized users, and when I searched for a solution, I found a third-party tool. However, using such tools may come with additional costs."
"There's a bit of a learning curve during the initial implementation."
"The solution’s interface must be improved."
"It needs to be more secure."
"ClamAV AntiVirus can cause some crashes. That service should be improved."
"For the third-party packages, I'd rather have it built-in, like a core feature of pfSense, part of the core model."
"The product could offer more integrated plugins."
"There are several levels of firewall configuration such as beginner, advanced, and expert configurations. At each level, it becomes more complex and more tricky to set up the firewall. For example, if you want to install the firewall on your computer system, it would be a lot easier if it just tells you that this is the internet NIC and this is the Wi-Fi NIC."
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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