We performed a comparison between Cisco Secure Firewall and Fortinet Fortigate based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Based on the parameters we compared, Fortinet Fortigate comes out on top. Its ease of deployment combined with its solid set of features and excellent service and support ratings make it a more desirable solution than Cisco Secure Firewall.
"The most valuable feature we have found to be the VPN because we use it often."
"The IPS (In-plane switching) is the most valuable feature."
"The product is easy to manage and simple. It works with the rest of our Cisco products. You can drop in new ones if you need more performance. The training and documentation provided are good."
"The most important features are the intrusion prevention engine and the application visibility and control. The Snort feature in Firepower is also valuable."
"The most stable firewall I’ve ever worked with. Once you get the ASA set up properly, it can run for a whole year without any major issues, apart from the normal daily administration."
"We have been using a 5520 for seven years in our datacenter and we are satisfied by this version."
"Cisco has the best documentation. You can easily find multiple documents by searching the web. Even a child can go online and find the required information."
"The most valuable feature is that it has the ability to divide the network into three parts; internal, external, and DMZ."
"The security fabric is excellent."
"FortiGate Secure SD-WAN includes best-of-breed next-generation firewall (NGFW) security, SD-WAN, advanced routing, and WAN optimization capabilities, delivering a security-driven networking WAN edge transformation in a unified offering."
"The payment function for applications is good."
"LinkGreat firewall capabilities"
"Allows for firewall rules to be programmed and named in a way that makes it “readable”"
"This is a quality product with ok support, and it is better than the competition we've tried."
"The flexibility and ease of configuration are the most valuable features."
"The SD-WAN is the most valuable feature."
"Technical support takes a long time to respond."
"The Cisco Secure Firewall could benefit from enhancements in its API, documentation, and automation tools."
"Most of the time, when I try to run Java, it is not compatible with ASA's current operating systems."
"it is not very user-friendly for the administration."
"Cisco Secure Firewall should be easier to handle. It uses ASDM, which is not easy to understand. It would be better if there was direct access via HTTPS."
"Its interface is sometimes is a little bit slow, and it can be improved. When you need to put your appliance in failover mode, it is a little difficult to do it remotely because you need to turn off the appliance in Cisco mode. In terms of new features, it would be good to have AnyConnect VPN with Firepower. I am not sure if it is available at the moment."
"The annual subscription cost is a bit high. They should try to make it comparable to other offerings. We have a number of Chinese products here in Pakistan, which are already, very cheap and have less annual maintenance costs compared to Cisco."
"It is expensive."
"Quality control on their firmware versions needs improvement. When they introduce new firmware, there tend to be bugs."
"I would like to see better pricing in the next release, as well as a simplification of the installation."
"The debugging and troubleshooting has room for improvement."
"Some configuration elements cannot be easily altered once created."
"Web security solutions can be improved."
"One of the features that I would like to have is to do with endpoint production, it should be integrated. For example, the firewall gets notified of any kind of forensic event that needs to be done, such as if there is a ransomware attack and how it originated, all those records have to be available from the firewall, which is not."
"If I had any criticism that I would give FortiGate, it would be that they need to stop changing their logging format. Every time we do a firmware upgrade, it is a massive issue on the SIM. Parsers have to be rebuilt. Even the FortiGate guys came in and said that they don't play well in the sandbox."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve by having more capabilities for troubleshooting VPN connections. For example, I do get some feedback about the current status, but I could use some history and logging of important events. The information is logged in our Syslog server, but I could use that information from the device. If they could provide a GUI to have some more insight on what's going with my VPN would be useful."
Cisco Secure Firewall is ranked 4th in Firewalls with 404 reviews while Fortinet FortiGate is ranked 2nd in Firewalls with 306 reviews. Cisco Secure Firewall is rated 8.2, while Fortinet FortiGate is rated 8.4. 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 Fortinet FortiGate writes "It's a reliable solution that's easy to install and cheaper than competitors ". Cisco Secure Firewall is most compared with Palo Alto Networks WildFire, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX, Sophos XG and Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, whereas Fortinet FortiGate is most compared with Sophos XG, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX, WatchGuard Firebox and Check Point NGFW. See our Cisco Secure Firewall vs. Fortinet FortiGate report.
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