We performed a comparison between Cisco Secure Firewall and Sonicwall TZ based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Of the two solutions, Sonicwall TZ seems to be the more desirable product because of its easy deployment, great set of features, and affordable price.
"It increases security posture and is helpful for firewall reporting, intrusion protection, web filtering, and SD-WAN implementation."
"It has improved our organization with control data."
"It is simple to manage, and there are a lot of functionalities in the same box."
"The most valuable features are SD-WAN, application control, IPS control, and FortiSandbox."
"The solution is highly scalable because they have devices that can handle a large amount of traffic."
"Anti-Spam web content filterinG."
"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."
"FortiGate firewalls are easy to manage through a user-friendly web interface. They also have advanced features like DDoS and DLP. However, I wouldn't recommend enabling all of these features on one device because it can cause performance issues."
"It is extremely stable I would say — at least after you deploy it."
"The stability is very good; there's no vagueness. Either it works or it doesn't, and it's also very easy to find out why."
"The IP filter configuration for specific political and Static NAT has been most valuable."
"It helped us a lot with our VPNs for the home office during COVID. There has been more security and flexibility for VPNs and other applications."
"This solution made our organization more secure and gave us better control."
"The most valuable features of Cisco firewalls are the IPS and IDS items. We find them very helpful. Those are the biggest things because we have some odd, custom-made products in our environment. What we've found through their IPS and IDS is that their vulnerability engines have caught things that are near-Zero-day items, inside of our network."
"It is much better than most of the other firewalls that I have worked with."
"Technical support services are excellent."
"Its user interface and simplicity are the most favorite parts for our clients. They find it stable and easy to use. Its performance is also good."
"SonicWall TZ think it's a good, solid, and stable product."
"I like the firewall product, the security server, and the content filter."
"The most valuable feature of SonicWall TZ is the double authentication, where it asks for one password and again asks for a four-digit code, which changes every 30 seconds."
"SonicWall TZ is a stable product."
"We like the unified threat management for defense-in-depth. We can terminate our site-to-site and remote access VPNs with it."
"Once it's configured properly, the solution is unbreakable."
"It does what it says it is going to do."
"The feedback that I have received is that the performance could be better, and the user experience is not as good compared to a previous solution we used. It could be more user-friendly. Of course, it still works fine for our operations."
"To the best of my knowledge, Fortinet does not have a CASB solution and Fortinet does not have a Zero trust solution."
"The user interface could be improved to make it less confusing and easier to set up."
"There are some license issues. Not every feature must have a separate license. There must be some of kind synergy between the license so we don't have to pay for every individual license that we would like to have."
"Application management can be improved."
"Some of the web policy reports could be improved."
"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."
"We would like to see a better training platform implemented."
"Setting it up is not as intuitive as other more modern NGFWs."
"We would like to see improvement in recovery. If there is an issue that forces us to do recovery, we have to restart or reboot. In addition, sometimes we have downtime during the maintenance windows. If Cisco could enhance this, so that upgrades would not necessarily require downtime, that would be helpful."
"I would like to see them add more next-generation features so that you don't need a lot of appliances to do just one task. It should be a single solution."
"Cisco wasn't first-to-market with NGFWs... they should look at what other vendors are doing and try not only to be on the same wavelength but a little bit better."
"The solution’s GUI could be better."
"The only con that I have really seen with it is the reporting structure. FirePOWER is good. It has been a great help because, before that, it was not good at all."
"Initial setup was fairly complex."
"<p>If there is old hardware, or appliances, it does not necessarily work with the new Cisco generation firewalls."
"The technical support has room for improvement."
"In an upcoming release, SonicWall could improve by adding cloud management for all devices for free or at a nominal cost. Currently, they have a cloud management platform but is not free. We have the MySonicWall portal for purchasing from them for software updates and renewals."
"The log sections could be done more clearly."
"There is still room for improvement, and it's not advisable even if the organization has grown."
"From a support perspective, if we're talking tech support I think Silver Partners, Gold Partners, Platinum, whatever level, should have a different number to call. End users can call tech support over at SonicWall if they've paid for support as part of their AGSS or whatever services they bought. The end-user can call, or we can call, however, I don't want to be calling the same line that an end user's calling. I don't want the same response time. I need a different level of expertise."
"I would like to see a SonicWall integration with the DLP tool, this would be interesting. Data Loss Prevention integration."
"GUI interface could be improved."
"We would like to improve the rules configuration in SonicWall TZ. Sometimes the rules don't work."
Cisco Secure Firewall is ranked 4th in Firewalls with 404 reviews while SonicWall TZ is ranked 12th in Firewalls with 78 reviews. Cisco Secure Firewall is rated 8.2, while SonicWall TZ 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 SonicWall TZ writes "Has efficient user access control feature and good technical support services ". Cisco Secure Firewall is most compared with Palo Alto Networks WildFire, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX, Sophos XG and Azure Firewall, whereas SonicWall TZ is most compared with Sophos XG, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX, SonicWall NSa and WatchGuard Firebox. See our Cisco Secure Firewall vs. SonicWall TZ report.
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