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.
"One of the nice things about FortiGate is that it can be deployed on the cloud or on-premises. You can actually do both. That's the biggest reason why I stick with this solution as opposed to something like Cisco Meraki. Another nice thing is that I can log directly into a FortiGate or get to it through their FortiCloud access products. They're pretty reliable and consistent. One of the reasons why I started using the product was their single pane of management. I can deploy their line of firewalls in conjunction with their switching and access points, and I can manage the entire network from one interface. I don't have to log into one interface for the firewall, another one for the access points, and another one for the switches. These firewalls have access point controller functionality built right into the system, so I don't even have to purchase additional devices to manage them."
"Fortinet FortiGate is a stable solution."
"The scalability of Fortinet FortiGate is good."
"The FortiGate controls the user's activities and maximizes my bandwidth use overall."
"The features that prevent internet connections, the filtering are the most valuable because we did not have any internet protection before."
"The solution is very user-friendly."
"The most important feature, normally for small business customers, is link load balancing."
"The Fortinet FortiGate local partners were good. I did not have direct contact with Fortinet support."
"Cisco has the best documentation. You can easily find multiple documents by searching the web. Even a child can go online and find the required information."
"A stable and solid solution for protection from external threats and for VPN connections."
"One of the most valuable features of Firepower 7.0 is the "live log" type feature called Unified Event Viewer. That view has been really good in helping me get to data faster, decreasing the amount of time it takes to find information, and allowing me to fix problems faster. I've found that to be incredibly valuable because it's a lot easier to get to some points of data now."
"I like the ASDM for the firewall because it is visual. With the command line, it is harder to visualize what is going on. A picture is worth a thousand words."
"ASA is stable and with a low level of work required on the maintenance side."
"Firepower has reduced our firewall operational costs by about 25 percent."
"It is a secure product."
"The ASDM (Adaptive Security Device Manager) which is the graphical user interface, works out, and Cisco keeps it current."
"pfSense allows us to spread the hours of connection and do the filtering on the pfSense site."
"Sophos Intercept X is scalable. Currently, we have almost 30 people using it in our company."
"The "OpenVPN Client Export" package is really helpful in exporting the VPN client software on most popular devices: iOS/Android, Windows, Mac, Linux, and a handful of SIP handsets."
"The solution is fairly scalable when it comes to integrating with other applications and data sets."
"The gain in performance and security from configuring the VPN connections was significant."
"The firewall sensor is highly effective, and it's easy to deploy. You can deploy pfSense with limited hardware resources. It's not necessary to have an appliance with much RAM to make it work. It's cost-effective and performs well."
"Great extensibility of the platform."
"It is much simpler than other solutions such as Fortinet."
"The inability to scale the FortiAnalyzer to match our growth necessitates the purchase of new hardware."
"To the best of my knowledge, Fortinet does not have a CASB solution and Fortinet does not have a Zero trust solution."
"I think that the infrastructure for the VPN could be improved. The way that it is bundled also made it difficult to use and sell as it is too expensive."
"Vulnerability scanning could be improved."
"I feel that the reporting needs to be improved."
"The user interface could be improved."
"Its price could be better."
"The UI could be improved."
"The licensing needs simplification."
"The process of procuring modern-day technology within the DOD needs to improve."
"It doesn't have Layer 7 security."
"An area of improvement for this solution is the console visualization."
"One issue with Firepower Management Center is deployment time. It takes seven to 10 minutes and that's a long time for deployment. In that amount of time, management or someone else can ask me to change something or to provide permissions, but during that time, doing so is not possible. It's a drawback with Cisco. Other vendors, like Palo Alto or Fortinet do not have this deployment time issue."
"If Cisco could stop rebranding, combine all the CLIs/GUIs, and give a consistent experience, this would be great."
"It's mainly the UI and the management parts that need improvement. The most impactful feature when you're using it is the user interface and the user experience."
"Sometimes, it is not easy to troubleshoot. You need to know where to go. It took me quite awhile. It's like, "Okay, if it doesn't go smoothly here, then go find the documentation." Once you do it, it is not so bad. However, it is sometimes a steep learning curve on the troubleshooting part of it."
"Many people have problems setting up the web cache for the web system."
"Improve analysis of logs and dashboards (control panel) with improved alert functionality."
"Netgate pfSense needs to improve the configuration for a VPN."
"A way to clean squid cache from the GUI."
"pfSense has some limitations in detecting site sessions. We want to control internet usage based on sites and their content, and pfSense doesn't perform this function."
"The product could offer more integrated plugins."
"The router monitoring needs improvement when compared with Sonicwall."
"The technical support needs to 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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