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 flexibility and ease of configuration are the most valuable features."
"The simplicity of the configuration and the stability of the product are most valuable. The VPN concentrator is very useful."
"I only deal with it from a security analyst's point of view. I don't really get into the features of the actual FortiGate. From the security point of view, it works, and it does its job."
"The FortiGate controls the user's activities and maximizes my bandwidth use overall."
"It enables our organization to become more productive. Also, it protects our NEtWare from viruses and malware."
"It does a lot for you for intrusion protection and as an antivirus. The threat management bundle is worth the money. You don't need another company to monitor your web traffic for you. You can do everything yourself on the firewall. You restrict your own black list for people on the firewall. You don't need to pay some other company for another product to do that for you. The firewall can do that for you. So, it's an easy-to-use product for people to be independent. They don't need to rely on other vendors to do what the firewall can do. They can do everything."
"What I like the most is the configuration and that it's simple, and straightforward to maintain."
"Good load balancing feature."
"This solution is easy to use if you know how to set it up."
"Netting is one of the best features. We can modify it in different ways. Site-to-site VPN is also an awesome feature of Cisco ASA. The biggest advantage of Cisco products is technical support. They provide the best technical support."
"It's a flexible solution and is well-known in the community."
"The most valuable feature of Cisco Secure Firewall is its ease of configuration and that it's scalable for firewalls and VPNs."
"Cisco Firepower NGFW is really easy to use right now to determine when my file requires a shift from primary to secondary status, and it can be done with automation. Earlier we used to do this with patching."
"It's very stable and mature."
"Network segmentation is the most valuable feature."
"The technical support is excellent. I would rate it as 10 out of 10. When there has been an issue, we have had a good response from them."
"After installing the product, we achieved awareness of our data protection needs and email misuse."
"There is a site-to-site VPN configuration between others people."
"Monitoring of network activity is included in the box."
"Application Control is fantastic with over 2,500 applications and the granularity that we can either allow people to view but not be able to log on to Facebook; or view it and log onto it if they're in the marketing department, but not play Facebook games. There are all sorts of different options like that. So it's highly granular."
"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."
"SNMP status monitoring and the Central Management Software."
"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."
"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."
"Its customer service could be better."
"It can be a little bit more user-friendly in terms of policy definition and implementation. It seems a little bit complicated, and it could be simplified."
"The feature which gives us a lot of pain is ASIC architecture."
"It is very expensive, and their support is not very good. I hope that their technical support will be better in the future."
"Price, of course, can always be more competitive or better."
"There is room for improvement related to the logging and reporting aspect."
"The license renewal process, annual renewal price, and the web application firewall features should be improved."
"Web security solutions can be improved."
"If the implementation was easier, it would be a lot better for us."
"It should have an additional “operating mode”, like a “candidate configuration mode”, where you would have the possibility to test the changes you are going to implement and also the possibility to validate these changes."
"It is a good firewall, though not NextGen."
"It would be nice if you didn't have to configure using a command-line interface. It's a bit technical that way."
"The reporting and other features are nice, but there is an issue with applying the configuration. That part needs some improvement."
"The IPS module is combined with the main operating system."
"I think that the solution can be improved with the integration of application-centric infrastructure. It could be used to have better solutions in one box."
"There may have been one or two incidences of malicious threats."
"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."
"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."
"Syslog (Dimension) is focused on presentation, but needs more focus on utility like SonicWall syslog (GMS/Analyzer)."
"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 VPN errors are not helpful when troubleshooting."
"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."
"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."
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 .
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