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.
"It is quite easy to handle."
"Fortinet FortiGate appears to be scalable."
"The application control features, such as Facebook blocking and Spotify blocking, are the most valuable."
"Unified Threat Management (UTM) features."
"The solution is stable."
"Fortinet offers the latest versions to cater to the needs of enterprises."
"The most valuable features are simplicity, management, and that it's constantly evolving."
"We are using the FortiGate 100D series. VPN, firewall, anti-malware, OTM, and intrusion prevention are useful features."
"I have integrated it for incidence response. If there is a security event, the Cisco firewall will automatically block the traffic, which is valuable."
"We use the solution for deep packet inspection, Internet Edge functionality, IDS, and IDP."
"Management Console and user profiling to define activities."
"So far, it has been very stable."
"The most valuable feature is the Intrusion Prevention System."
"The monitoring dashboard is valuable to us for troubleshooting."
"The primary benefits of using Cisco Secure solutions are time-saving, a robust API, and convenience for the security team."
"There are no issues that we are aware of. It does its job silently in the background."
"It is a better firewall than others and it has better features."
"Great extensibility of the platform."
"A valuable feature is that the solution is open source."
"We can run it on any hardware."
"It has a very nice web interface, and it is very simple to use. The way policies are working is also good."
"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 initial setup was simple and fast."
"The scalability is very good, where you can do an HA configuration and then bring in another box, if necessary."
"The search tool needs improvement. It's very difficult to search for policies right now."
"The visibility of the network can be better. The GUI can be improved for better visibility of the network flow. Other solutions have better GUI in terms of network visibility."
"The solution could be more evenly structured."
"It would be a benefit if Fortinet would release a one-stop solution that is better integrated with other products and an automated emergency response system."
"Its filtering is sometimes too precise or strict. We sometimes have to bypass and authorize some of the sites, but they get blocked. We know that they are trusted sites, but they are blocked, and we don't know why."
"Backup can be improved."
"For the migration, everyone has a firewall in use and I am selling Fortinet. Typically, I am replacing another firewall. Previously, there was a tool available to convert configurations from one firewall, such as Palo Alto, to Fortinet, but this tool is no longer free. If it could be made free again, it would be very beneficial."
"I would like to have logs, monitoring, and reporting for a month without extra fees."
"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."
"The price can be better."
"For what we use it for, it ends up being the perfect product for us, but it would help if they could expand it into some of the other areas and other use cases working with speeding up and the reliability of the pushes from the policy manager."
"Some individuals find the setup and configuration challenging."
"In my experience, a number of engineers get tunnel vision with devices. This is exacerbated by vendors fostering a silo mentality in disciplines."
"One area where the ASA could be improved is that it doesn't have AMP. When you get an ASA with the Firepower model, ASA with FTD, then you have advanced malware protection."
"I don't have to see all the object groups that have been created on that firewall. That's just something that I would really appreciate on the CLA, even though it already exists on the GUI."
"It has poor performance."
"It is not centrally managed, where you log into the website and can see all your services there. We would like to be able to see is all the configurations from a central interface on all our pfSenses."
"The integration of pfSense with EPS and EDS could be better. Also, it should be easier to get reports on how many users are connecting simultaneously and how sections connect in real-time."
"We would like to see ready-made profiles to cover most users' needs."
"Other solutions provide more scope for growth. For instance, we can have only 10 to 20 employees on VPN, but other solutions can support more users. We also have more capabilities to increase the performance of the solution."
"It's just not listed as FIPS compliant for where we're at now in government, which is an issue."
"The main problem with pfSense is that we have to use proxy solutions."
"I would like to see multiple DNS servers running on individual interfaces."
"Layer 7 advanced firewall features are not included in the solution."
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, Juniper SRX Series Firewall and Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, whereas Netgate pfSense is most compared with OPNsense, Sophos XG, Sophos UTM, KerioControl and Untangle NG Firewall. See our Cisco Secure Firewall vs. Netgate pfSense report.
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