We performed a comparison between WatchGuard Firebox and Zscaler Internet Access 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 most valuable feature of this solution is Quota."
"The dashboard I have found the most valuable in Fortinet FortiGate."
"Whenever we raise a complaint with FortiGate, their response and resolution times are minimal."
"The most valuable features are simplicity, management, and that it's constantly evolving."
"It works very well. It has a lot of different functionalities. Its cost is also fine for our customers."
"Virtual Domains (VDOMs) are a feature that we found valuable."
"We use the FortiGate Sandbox to detect zero-day vulnerabilities, such as anomalies or malware, that are unknown and have not yet been discovered."
"We purchased Fortinet because of the pricing, its functionality, because it met our requirements, and the total cost of ownership over five years was quite reasonable. In the market, Fortinet is rated quite well."
"It also provides us with layered security. It has onboard virus scanning features that allow it to scan before something gets to the host. It will also stop a person from going to a site that is known to be bad."
"The firewall aspect and the branch office VPNs are the most valuable features... We don't have any issues with it. We don't have to spend a lot of time maintaining it."
"We experienced that WatchGuard is easy to setup regarding VPN compared to other firewalls of other brands."
"The most valuable feature is the GUI, especially the real-time bandwidth usage report. Also, its integration with WiFi access points is nice."
"It is a scalable solution."
"The ports that I have assigned appear to be unattainable to outside 'mal-actors,' unless they have an address registered on the internet that this thing is expecting. That's a layer of security."
"The most valuable feature of WatchGuard Firebox is its ease of use."
"The tool's most valuable feature is the dashboard."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to drop packets."
"One on the main benefits is protection all time from anywhere."
"The most valuable features I found in Zscaler Internet Access are the restriction of users for a particular URL, the security feature related to stopping DDoS, and the VPN."
"The initial setup was straightforward. The biggest thing for us was to build our own policies. The deployment itself was only a few hours."
"We use ZIA for outbound internet connectivity. The internet traffic of on-prem users will be directed to the ZIA cloud for security checks and web filtering."
"Zscaler Internet Access protects using data loss prevention. If you have a CASB exposing your cloud out into the network, then Zscaler Internet Access will go ahead and control that unknown cloud application in the CASB, protecting it. There is also data detection with exact data match. This improves the data coming into your cloud so you are protecting it."
"There is no lag in service when accessing the internet."
"The most valuable features of Zscaler Internet Access are it's on the cloud, high network performance, and the interception of users is very easy."
"It should come integrated or have its own type of network monitor tool in a module. There should just be one package, and you are good to go."
"With the reports, you can see it, and you can get good feelings so upper management can go, "Oh, wow. That looks pretty." However, it's very basic."
"The stability could be a bit better."
"The graphical user interface of Fortinet's FortiGate product does not function well with text-based interfaces."
"Due to its higher cost, Fortinet FortiGate can lead to increased operational expenses."
"The logging details need to be improved."
"They need faster serviceability and more security features."
"The support we receive when we need to upgrade is not satisfactory and has room for improvement."
"I would like to see more training become available for us."
"One other shortcoming is that there is no backup for it. We really haven't figured out how we might solve that problem. We may want to put a duplicate in... With WatchGuard, we just have the one box. If that were to fail, we'd probably be really hurting."
"The software base, the management piece that goes onto a server, is not as user-friendly as I would like. There are three different pieces that you have to manage, so it's a little bit convoluted, in my opinion."
"The few issues that we have had, such as not knowing where to go, they have been answered quickly."
"I believe there is a need for additional measures to connect mobile devices securely to the Firebox router."
"Sometimes I would like to copy a rule set from one box to another box in a direct way. This is a feature that is not present at the moment in WatchGuard."
"Last year, I had an issue with one of the Fireboxes going down. It was overheated, because my server room became overheated and this fried it."
"The documentation for the System Manager/Dimension configuration, could be a little bit clearer... The use case where you have multiple sites with multiple firewalls, and one site that has the System Manager server and the Dimension server, wasn't really well defined. It took me a little bit of digging to get that to actually work."
"One thing that they could improve is the ability to import rules from other platforms."
"In every cloud service in the world, you have multiple upstream internet providers to create diversity so that if one of your providers fails, your network just continues. In South Africa, there is only one upstream provider, and that's not right. That that's a problem."
"It needs better integration with other applications. It takes a fair amount of regular activity to apply the by-passes because it is very strict in its restrictions and frequently you have to go in and open things up to allow the workforce to work."
"There are some performance issues when we add on additional controls."
"Sometimes it's not easy to use during large deployments of workstations."
"The reporting functionality could be a bit easier to use. There is a reporting function, but it's quite hard to do any good reporting, from a user-management perspective. For example, if a department manager wants to know how his department is using the web, there is a way to get the data, but it's quite cumbersome to get it and show it well. And that's true for comparing between departments."
"Technical support could be better."
"Sometimes, support isn't available."
WatchGuard Firebox is ranked 13th in Firewalls with 78 reviews while Zscaler Internet Access is ranked 2nd in Secure Web Gateways (SWG) with 46 reviews. WatchGuard Firebox is rated 8.6, while Zscaler Internet Access is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of WatchGuard Firebox writes "Offers a streamlined deployment, intuitive interface and robust security features". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Zscaler Internet Access writes "Provides integrated CASB and file sandboxing but could be less expensive ". WatchGuard Firebox is most compared with Netgate pfSense, Sophos XG, OPNsense, SonicWall TZ and Meraki MX, whereas Zscaler Internet Access is most compared with Cisco Umbrella, Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps, Netskope , Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks and Appgate SDP. See our WatchGuard Firebox vs. Zscaler Internet Access report.
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