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 solution can scale well."
"It's an easy solution to set up."
"Fortinet FortiGate's ease of management is the most valuable feature."
"The response is very quick and they can visually resolve our problems in a short period."
"Fortinet FortiGate is user-friendly and affordable."
"The most important features of Fortinet FortiGate are the Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) and firewall control applications."
"SSL-VPN is very useful for us and has been very reliable."
"The customization potential is quite impressive."
"Firepower has been used for quite a few enterprise clients. Most of our clients are Fortune 500 and Firepower is used to improve their end to end firewall functionality."
"Strong in NAT and access-lists."
"It is extremely stable I would say — at least after you deploy it."
"Implementing Cisco Secure Firewall has saved us time because we rely on most of the out-of-the-box signatures. It has reduced the time and effort spent in configuration within the security network."
"Provides good integrations and reporting."
"Previously, our customers had to always utilize hand-to-hand delivery. Now, they are able to move completely to a secure digital method. They use a strictly dark fiber optics connection from a central location to the endpoint."
"This solution has good security, and it's a good product. You can trust Cisco, and there's support as well, which is really good."
"The user interface is easy to navigate."
"It is effective. We have not had any problems."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"The solution is fairly scalable when it comes to integrating with other applications and data sets."
"The features I have found best are ease of use, GUI, and performance."
"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."
"The plugins or add-ons are most valuable. Sometimes, they are free of charge, and sometimes, you have to pay for them, but you can purchase or download very valuable plugins or add-ons to perform internal testing of your network and simulate a denial-of-service attack or whichever attack you want to simulate. You can also remote and monitor your network and see where the gap is. Did you forget a printer port? Most attacks at the moment are happening through printers, and they can tell you immediately that you forgot to close the port of the printer. There are more than one million printers that are in danger, and everybody knows that hackers are using them to enter the network. So, you can download plugins to protect your network."
"Improved service performance and availability through redundancy."
"The concurrent users are perfect for us."
"I would suggest that Fortinet add sandboxing to their solution."
"Quality control on their firmware versions needs improvement. When they introduce new firmware, there tend to be bugs."
"It could use more templates for third-party site-to-site VPN setups other than FortiGate and Cisco."
"It should have a better pricing plan. It is too expensive. It should also have a more granular view of the attack. I don't have FortiAnalyzer, and it is difficult for me to have a complete view when there is an attack on my server."
"The security of Fortinet FortiGate could improve."
"The solution could have licensing fees reduced in the future."
"Fortinet FortiGate needs to improve to be on par with its competitors, such as Palo Alto and Sophos. They are the market leaders. Fortinet FortiGate needs to improve its capabilities. However, we are happy with Fortinet FortiGate."
"Pricing for it is a bit high. It could be cheaper."
"It is surprising that you need to have a virtual appliance for the Firepower Management Center. It is not good if you have to setup a VMware server just for it."
"The Sandbox and the Web Censoring in this solution need to be improved."
"The maturity needs to be better."
"VPNs are weak as this product still does not support route-based VPNs."
"It should be easier for the IT management or the admin to configure products. For example, the firewall products are not very straightforward for many users. They should be easier to configure and should be more straightforward."
"I think the ASA layer is thin. It's always Layer 3 or Layer 4 source controller and doesn't control the Layer 7 traffic. It's important, and you'll need an additional firewall."
"Web filtering needs improvement because sometimes the URL is miscategorized."
"One thing that we really would have loved to have was policy-based routing. We had a lot of connections, and sometimes, we would have liked to change the routing depending on the policies, but it was lacking this capability. We also wanted application filtering and DNS filtering."
"The solution could be more user-friendly, and the graphical interface needs some work so that someone without an IT background can use the application. I would like the ability to manage the on-premise appliance from the cloud. When I'm not in the office, it would be great to connect to the pfSense server and administer the network remotely."
"The product could offer more integrated plugins."
"pfSense could improve by having a sandboxing feature that I have seen in SonicWall. However, maybe it is available I am not aware of it."
"Netgate pfSense needs to improve the configuration for a VPN."
"It's just not listed as FIPS compliant for where we're at now in government, which is an issue."
"Could be simplified for new users."
"It needs better parsing of logs. At the moment, you have to use an external server for this if you want a deeper analysis."
"They could improve their commercial stance and be more agile when it comes to the commercial pricing of enterprise deals."
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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