We performed a comparison between Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall and KerioControl 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."Fortinet FortiGate is a security device. It can optimize security on the networks of a company. It actually protects the company from attacks from outside. With FortiGate, you can categorize the users. You can create a group of users that can access all of the websites for their work. You can limit other users' access."
"I like Fortinet's cloud management. It allows me to manage all my devices in different branches for three cloud accounts. Even though I use on-prem devices, I can manage everything on the cloud."
"The web tutor and automatic rules by schedule are good features."
"Provides good firewall security and has great VPN features."
"The solution is very easy to understand. It's not overly complex."
"You can create multiple Virtual Domains (VDOMs), which are treated as separate firewall instances."
"FortiGate SD-WAN facilitated a smooth transition for our customers between their two internet service providers, ensuring uninterrupted connectivity without any downtime."
"The security features are about the best that I've seen anywhere."
"The central security management center and the content management center are very good."
"They offer templates that provide detailed reports categorized by user, device, and internal network access."
"I have two offices, and I can route the internet of both offices using the same product. The connectivity is great."
"It is a scalable solution."
"Forcepoint is a complete package because it has network and systems applications. Other firewalls are only for the network."
"Next Generation Firewall's best feature is that it can be managed on one platform."
"Forcepoint is a good, stable solution."
"The most valuable feature is controlling the traffic and the logging. They have real-time logins for traffic logs. Troubleshooting was very easy for me."
"The firewall appliance itself is the most valuable feature."
"The most valuable feature is the reliability of VPN capabilities. The VPN has been very reliable and secure. The security has been very good and the VPN connections are reliable in that they stay up. We don't have a lot of problems with downtime and that type of thing."
"One thing we use quite a lot, as well, is the DHCP Server, because we do a lot of work where all our devices need to have static IP addresses. Rather than going around and configuring every box, we do it all through DHCP reservations. It's easier. We've got a record of it. We can manipulate it if we need to change something or change some hardware. It's all easy. Even guys who are not used to using it can pick it up quite quickly."
"One very good thing about the Kerio device is its authentication. I don't have a Windows domain for authentication. Instead, I use the Kerio product because it can separate users by Mac addresses and give them IP addresses based on their usernames, automatically logging them in. This makes for a very simple authentication system."
"I want to have access to my computer from the outside and Kerio Control plays a role because it has a VPN... It is more reliable because it's a smaller group of computers to target for hackers and the like. The VPN works very well. I use it to work remotely very easily and exchange information, both to and from the location where it's deployed, and there have been no problems there."
"Kerio is a lot clearer to set up to do particular things, whereas when I do it on a Cisco or a FortiGate I have to go fight with it per week sometimes to do something I can do in 20 minutes on Kerio."
"The traffic insight page or the administrative portal is really helpful because you can see all the internet usage down to the point where you can see if it's big files or streams. It gives us a good view of what the internet usage is of users who are coupled to an IP address. That way, if there are problems with, for example, a lot of data usage or problems with the connection, we can narrow it down to a single user or server and address the problem. It's really helpful for diagnostic data."
"I love the VPN that we set up. A few of us have it on our computers so that if we leave, we can still access the stores. And we can work from home if needed. When I sign into that Kerio VPN, it links me like I'm sitting in the store. It puts me in our secure network so that I can sign on to each individual store and I can run numbers... If I have to work from home, it's so much faster than the way we used to do it."
"One issue that I have had is that sometimes I need to monitor the traffic, so I need to filter it according to the user and which user is using it the most. I experience a bottleneck most of the time, particularly at the peak time when the number of contracts and users are at maximum."
"The sniffing packets or packet captures, can be simplified and improved because it's a little confusing."
"There is a lot of improvement needed with SSL-VPN."
"They should improve high CPU and memory usage that occurs."
"The logging details need to be improved."
"The user interface could be improved to make it less confusing and easier to set up."
"There can be more security in hybrid implementations. When a customer has a hybrid environment where some parts are in the cloud, we need a consistent security solution for such scenarios."
"To the best of my knowledge, Fortinet does not have a CASB solution and Fortinet does not have a Zero trust solution."
"The optimization is not really ready. If you want very good optimization, you have to add it to the network."
"My team is looking for more throughput and better integration with our security framework."
"Forcepoint would be improved if there were more training available."
"In larger companies with extensive infrastructure, retrieving logs for a longer period of time can sometimes take a bit longer than desired."
"Something that I've noticed that Forcepoint lacks, is the training that they offer to their end-customers"
"The solution needs to build upon its network functionality. It needs to be a bit smarter."
"It's a complicated firewall. Until you come to know the firewall inducers, most people don't like the firewall because the components for the firewall are a little bit complex. User-friendliness is a little bit tough. It needs to be user-friendly when creating policies, and pushing policies. Committing takes more time compared to Palo Alto."
"They should have a GUI on the product itself, not a separate management tool to be used on the management server or on a server to be used to manage the file. It should be all in one device. The device should be controlled through its own GUI. They also have to improve the learning center and the documents as the documents don't really help."
"There were certain things I didn't know about it, but I've always been able to just contact our IT company. They've been able to walk me through certain things. It was quite a monumental task to set up a public site. Support really had to help me with setting up the VLANs and walk me through it. It was not possible for me to figure that out on my own, but that's what they're here for. That could have been a little bit easier laid out."
"The product's technical support is not good as it used to be."
"After the takeover by GFI, one of the things that Kerio built was MyKerio environment. This has not been very reliable because I get many messages that MyKerio is not functioning. For some reason, there are things that they changed and it is not very reliable at this moment, instead I have to connect to the firewall to see what is happening."
"The comprehensiveness of the security features could be improved upon. However, for the most part, it is pretty good. They could add more logs. I would like to see more detailed reporting, custom reporting from the logs, and more of a streamlined interface for certain aspects."
"There's also room for improvement in the Traffic Rules. We define networks to use a specific outgoing interface, say VSAT, shore, or marine WiFi, which is okay. But then all we have is a checkbox that says "Use other internet interfaces if this one is unavailable." What we would prefer would be to have a priority list. So if VSAT is unavailable, try to use 4G, etc. We haven't really found a reliable way of doing that in the current release."
"If I would suggest anything, it would be to expand on its multifactor authentication to be a little bit more user-friendly. They should do multifactor authentications for the client itself perhaps, rather than served on a webpage, in a page hijack, that might be more user-friendly, but I don't have a lot of complaints about it. It's doing its job. You have to have a certain amount of skills to configure these things anyway, the ones that we use on-site doing point-to-point, and we've been tricked up a few times with their interfaces."
"Kerio Control could improve by having higher availability and adding a mobile VPN channel. These additions are needed. The VPN is working fine on the Kerio Control but there needs to be a VPN client on the mobile phones, both for iOS and Android. This would be very good for us."
"One area that confused me a bit when I was building my current network. I use VLANs to have separate functionality on the network, and the appliance I got was the WiFi model, but I discovered that you can't assign WiFi channels to the VLAN. So, you can have WiFi, but its own subnet. You can't run that over the VLAN. Effectively, I can't use the WiFi facility in the appliance and had to purchase a separate web that supports VLANs. In the end, I had to go to GFI support. They confirmed this is just a limited functionality of that device, as it is a low-end device. I don't know if any of their high-end models have a better facility or not."
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Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall is ranked 25th in Firewalls with 40 reviews while KerioControl is ranked 29th in Firewalls with 54 reviews. Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall is rated 7.6, while KerioControl is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall writes "Provides decent protection for the LAN but complicated interface". On the other hand, the top reviewer of KerioControl writes "With VPN, any of our guys can log in to the system and effectively be on board; helps with our customers all over the world". Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall is most compared with Palo Alto Networks Advanced Threat Prevention, Check Point NGFW, Cisco Secure Firewall, Sophos XG and Netgate pfSense, whereas KerioControl is most compared with Netgate pfSense, OPNsense, Sophos UTM, Sophos XG and Cisco Secure Firewall. See our Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall vs. KerioControl report.
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