We performed a comparison between Cisco Secure Firewall and WatchGuard XTM [EOL] based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Netgate, Fortinet, OPNsense and others in Firewalls."The features that we have found most valuable are the SSL VPN and the User Portal."
"The signature database and zero-day detection are Fortinet FortiGate's most valuable features."
"Security solution with a straightforward and quick setup. It's a stable and scalable product."
"It is simple to manage, and there are a lot of functionalities in the same box."
"It's quite comfortable to handle the FortiGate firewall."
"Fortigate's most valuable feature is that it doesn't need a push policy when writing rules."
"The SD-WAN is the most valuable feature."
"Easy to implement, and it is also reliable."
"We moved from a legacy firewall to the ASA with FirePOWER, increasing our Internet Edge defense dramatically."
"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."
"I have found the stability of this solution really good. This is why I use it."
"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 user interface is easy to navigate."
"The feature set is fine and is rarely a problem."
"The solution's dashboard is fine, and in terms of support, Cisco is better than other OEMs in the market."
"Another benefit has been user integration. We try to integrate our policies so that we can create policies based on active users. We can create policies based on who is accessing a resource instead of just IP addresses and ports."
"SNMP status monitoring and the Central Management Software."
"It is stable and does not require you to reboot all the time."
"Reputation Enabled Defense indicates that some websites are so infested that it's not even worth visiting them, and therefore saving the bandwidth of going through the detection process."
"We have used technical support for WatchGuard many times and overall, we are satisfied with it. They are always listening and there is a good reaction time to our findings. When there are issues, they really try to resolve them."
"After installing the product, we achieved awareness of our data protection needs and email misuse."
"WatchGuard XTM is fairly basic. We use it as the perimeter firewall. The main point is to protect from attack software and hacking."
"There is a site-to-site VPN configuration between others people."
"They have a reporting system which can store data over a very long period of time. Not many other firewall vendors provide a reporting system, but if they do, like Fortinet does, then you've got buy that as an additional product and that can be more than twice as expensive as the initial investment in the firewall. And without reporting over a long-term period, you're just about wasting your time."
"When we cluster the two Fortinet FortiGate boxes together we have some issues."
"As far as wanting more scalability or things in the network diagram, it's going to cost you."
"The sniffing packets or packet captures, can be simplified and improved because it's a little confusing."
"It's my understanding that more of the current generation features could be brought in. There could be more integration with EDRs, for example."
"The non-error conserve mode has room for improvement."
"The logs need to be better. They need to be more visible and easier to access."
"I don't like that anything more than very basic reporting is not included."
"The solution's framework needs to be frequently updated in order to have a stable solution."
"HTTPs inspection and higher throughput/spec would be good."
"With the new FTD, there is a little bit of a learning curve."
"Cisco is still catching up with its Firepower Next-Generation firewalls."
"Firewalls, in general, were not really designed for normal IT personnel, but for firewall and network experts. Therefore, they missed a lot of options and did not provide any good reporting or improvement options."
"At times the product is sluggish and slow"
"If you need to reschedule a call with the support team when you face a new issue with the product, then it may get a bit of a problem to get a hold of someone from the support team of Cisco."
"We would like to be able to manage a set of firewalls rather than individual firewalls. We haven't really looked into it or yet implemented it, but a single pane of glass would be helpful. We also use another vendor's firewalls, and they have a centralized management infrastructure that we have implemented, which makes it a little bit easier when you're managing lots of firewalls."
"There are always vulnerabilities that come up and there was one in early 2018 but this was patched with software updates."
"Syslog (Dimension) is focused on presentation, but needs more focus on utility like SonicWall syslog (GMS/Analyzer)."
"One huge issue with WatchGuard XTM is that I'm not getting reports in a readable format. Readable means, I don't want Excel online. We repeat auditing when we trigger the report or setup calendar. That functionality is what we are looking for from WatchGuard XTM here."
"WatchGuard doesn't have a product that allows them to get into the data center. And that's just because there is no hardware to do the job. The software could do it, but there's no hardware that allows that to happen at the moment. So it doesn't scale as well as some other products, that's for sure."
"I would like them to improve the product's overall protections. This would be good for all product users."
"The VPN errors are not helpful when troubleshooting."
"Sometimes we have had issues with stability of the product."
"The setting policies need improvement. It needs an easier way to do static NAT and check on what policy is being used for that specific traffic."
"The initial setup is neither simple nor complex. If you know the base in networking and how the firewall works, you will be able to figure it out."
Earn 20 points
Cisco Secure Firewall is ranked 4th in Firewalls with 404 reviews while WatchGuard XTM [EOL] doesn't meet the minimum requirements to be ranked in Firewalls. Cisco Secure Firewall is rated 8.2, while WatchGuard XTM [EOL] is rated 8.0. 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 WatchGuard XTM [EOL] writes "The multi-layer security of the products are the primary reason we use these appliances, however, the gateway wireless functionality for managing access points leaves much to be desired". Cisco Secure Firewall is most compared with Palo Alto Networks WildFire, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX, Sophos XG and Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, whereas WatchGuard XTM [EOL] is most compared with .
See our list of best Firewalls vendors.
We monitor all Firewalls reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.