We performed a comparison between Cisco IOS Security and Fortinet FortiOS based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Firewalls solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."The solution is very, very easy to use."
"The technical support in our region is excellent."
"FortiGate has a strong security topic which allows all of the Fortinet devices to communicate and share information which makes their security more powerful."
"Security, SD-WAN, and Streetscape are valuable features."
"I like several features that this product has, such as antivirus and internet navigation inspection. It is also simple to use."
"Some of the valuable features are the firewall, IPS, web filter, and gateway capabilities. Additionally, it is easy to use and flexible."
"We were looking for the VPN feature and controlling the inflow and outflow of all the traffic within the site and across the sites. We are also using it for the VPN and VLANs."
"The flexibility and ease of configuration are the most valuable features."
"You can scale it when you need to."
"The hardware is pretty stable. It's also a very good product performance-wise. Initially, it wasn't mature like a firewall and there were other leaders, but now they have included almost all the features of next-generation security. Basically, it's a good product to work with."
"The capabilities for scalability with this product are huge"
"The most valuable feature is the scalability. The nice thing with the bigger vendors is that they're very good at scale."
"Cisco IOS Security is a mature product with extensive capabilities, serving as the base for the defense layer. It offers good network visibility, which helps in rapid response through the Rapid Threat Containment feature. Its deployment and configuration are straightforward."
"The security is very good."
"Cisco has always been a premium product. There's a lot of other entry-level solutions. This is more robust."
"The solution effectively integrates with Umbrella."
"I find filtering traffic, filtering web traffic, session traffic, and managing the network as valuable features."
"Firewall and overall management are valuable features."
"It has a lot of scalability abilities which makes it easy to scale."
"We have expanded the wireless access point and switches using Fortinet FortiOS."
"Fortinet has optimized the WAN environment for connecting users to the application."
"The solution is very user friendly."
"The classification of the websites is helpful."
"The initial setup is straightforward, and it is very customer friendly."
"Their software support needs improvement. I would prefer to have better support for bug fixes. Sometimes, we open a ticket, and it is very difficult to get a solution. Specifically, we are not at all happy with their support for load balancing."
"We'd like more management across other integrations."
"Technical support is good but the response time could be faster."
"The UTM filtering needs improvement."
"It should be more stable. There should be full integration within Fortinet products themselves as well as with other third-party products. Especially when you're not dealing with SIEM and the correlation of the security box, we want Fortinet to be able to share that information with as many other products as it can."
"The support structure needs to be improved because every time we contact them, there is a delay in the response."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve by having a frequent ask questions(FAQ) area for people to receive quick answers to popular questions. Additionally, it would be beneficial to have an SMS notification feature. For example, if you cannot access your email you could receive an SMS message."
"The reports are very basic."
"We need to pay for the license and it is expensive."
"The product's technical support services need improvement."
"It takes too much time to deploy a policy to FMC. It takes around eight minutes. You can't afford any downtime when you're changing policies."
"I think they should bring back remote VPN for users."
"The solution is complex and can be more user-friendly."
"Sometimes I find it difficult to manage. Some configurations are difficult for new engineers, for example."
"The pricing is the only con for this product."
"Cisco IOS Security could improve its security features. There are competitors that have some additional security features, such as Fortinet FortiGate. Additionally, there should be better synchronization with Cisco IOS Security and other vendors, and improved AI features would be beneficial."
"Real-time threat monitoring is not there."
"They're using a lot of application-specific IC, so that may be causing some performance issues. And whenever a Fortinet adds new features, it can affect performance."
"The report and policy optimization tools can be improved in the next release."
"I would like to see more statistics in the monitoring part."
"We had assistance from one person from our local vendor for the implementation."
"The threat time interval lags a little, especially if there's a heavy load on the firewall."
"SD-WAN configuration could be easier."
"Lacks flexibility for different scenario configurations."
Cisco IOS Security is ranked 22nd in Firewalls with 47 reviews while Fortinet FortiOS is ranked 15th in Firewalls with 73 reviews. Cisco IOS Security is rated 8.0, while Fortinet FortiOS is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Cisco IOS Security writes "User-friendly and excels in documentation, making it easier to resolve issues". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Fortinet FortiOS writes "Provides effective filtering features, good stability but initial setup is moderately challenging". Cisco IOS Security is most compared with Cisco Secure Firewall, Meraki MX, Netgate pfSense, OPNsense and Palo Alto Networks URL Filtering with PAN-DB, whereas Fortinet FortiOS is most compared with Fortinet FortiManager, Fortinet FortiWeb, Fortinet FortiGate-VM, Infoblox Advanced DNS Protection and Vectra AI. See our Cisco IOS Security vs. Fortinet FortiOS report.
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