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 most valuable feature is the SSL VPN, as it allows us to connect and it separates this product from other firewalls."
"It's a firewall that secures our internal network. I have been using it since 2013, and I find that most of the features are advanced, and very user friendly."
"This is an easy solution to deploy."
"It's user-friendly and easy to operate."
"The interface is very user-friendly and I like it very much."
"The initial setup of Fortinet FortiGate was straightforward."
"The pricing is excellent. It's much less expensive than Cisco."
"It's inexpensive compared to some of the other technology out there."
"It is one of the fastest solutions, if not the fastest, in the security technology space. This gives us peace of mind knowing that as soon as a new attack comes online that we will be protected in short order. From that perspective, no one really comes close now to Firepower, which is hugely valuable to us from an upcoming new attack prevention perspective."
"I like the IPS feature, it is the most valuable."
"Its in-depth monitoring and analysis help us to make better decisions and policies."
"It is very stable compared to other firewall products."
"The setup was straightforward. I was happy with the configuration and deployment of the solution, as it was quick."
"Clustering architecture which offers zero downtime upgrades, keeping uptime close to 99.999%."
"A powerful enterprise security solution that is dependible."
"Easy to deploy in a working environment between servers and users."
"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."
"It is stable and does not require you to reboot all the time."
"SNMP status monitoring and the Central Management Software."
"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."
"I like the hostwatch because I can see what traffic uses the most bandwidth and I can block that site."
"After installing the product, we achieved awareness of our data protection needs and email misuse."
"Monitoring of network activity is included in the box."
"It configures in all-in-one place."
"The support is the main thing that needs to be improved."
"In the balance between links feature normally you can just choose one option to balance. It would be better for the solution to have more than one option, preferably three."
"Reporting is limited to providing an external appliance for improving the reporting capabilities of the FortiAnalyzer. It does not offer a central management and is also sold separably as an appliance."
"Some of the web policy reports could be improved."
"Fortinet already improved FortiGate, but in the current market, many brands of security devices have improved together. Fortinet still needs to catch up with market standards. Fortinet is lacking in features in comparison to competitors."
"The pricing could be reduced or include the first year warranty."
"Some of the filtering is not robust, you can escape it with a VPN. Some of the users bypass some of the filters. It catches some but it also misses some, that area could be improved. It's functioning reasonably but there's room for improvement in that area."
"I need user-behavior analytics, to find threat scenarios from inside the organization, insider attacks. That would be very helpful for us. In addition, I would like next-generation features for small and medium businesses. These businesses require UTM, all in one product. Fortinet must include it."
"ASDM needs to be able to customize applets."
"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."
"I'm working on a slightly older version, but what it needs is a better alert management. It's pretty standard, but there's no real advanced features involved around it."
"It could use a web-based portal for VPN. Earlier they had it in the ASA model, but currently they don't have it."
"The scalability is a bit limiting, to be honest. In terms of when you look to changing landscape in terms of threats, I think to me, my personal it's a bit limiting."
"I'm not very familiar with the largest Firepower models, but competitors like Palo Alto seem to have a more capable engine to do, for instance, TLS/SSL decryption. As I understand, Firepower doesn't let you export the decrypted traffic so that, for instance, the security department can look at the traffic or inspect traffic. It's all in the box. I've heard rumors that this is something Cisco is working on, but it isn't yet available."
"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."
"The initial setup was a bit complex. It wasn't a major challenge, but due to our requirements and network, it was not very straightforward but still easy enough."
"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."
"Syslog (Dimension) is focused on presentation, but needs more focus on utility like SonicWall syslog (GMS/Analyzer)."
"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."
"The VPN errors are not helpful when troubleshooting."
"Sometimes we have had issues with stability of the product."
"I would like them to improve the product's overall protections. This would be good for all product users."
"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."
"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."
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.
