We performed a comparison between Cisco Secure Firewall and Perimeter 81 based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Features: Cisco Secure Firewall offers strong threat defense capabilities, allows for application visibility, seamlessly integrates with other Cisco products, and provides high throughput. Perimeter 81 excels in offering a convenient single sign-on feature, easy configuration options, the ability to manage multiple networks, and efficient customer service.
Cisco Secure Firewall could enhance its network performance, policy administration, customization options, advanced features, management interface, deployment time, integration with other tools, and logging functionality. Perimeter 81 has room for improvement in defining different locations, login instances, user interface customization, tutorials, session timeouts, login/logout process, dashboards, QoS, traffic shaping, network traffic balancing, redundancy, security capabilities, and speed of upload and download.
Service and Support: Cisco Secure Firewall's customer service has received both positive and negative feedback. Some customers have commended the technical support provided, but others have encountered delays and challenges. Perimeter 81's customer service has garnered mostly favorable reviews, as customers have found their support to be prompt and beneficial.
Ease of Deployment: Users had varying experiences with the initial setup of Cisco Secure Firewall, with opinions being divided on its ease of use. Perimeter 81 was widely regarded as user-friendly and straightforward during the initial setup process, offering an intuitive interface and effortless connectivity.
Pricing: Reviewers have different opinions on the setup cost of Cisco Secure Firewall. Some consider it expensive because of additional expenses for licensing, support, and hardware. Users find Perimeter 81 to be reasonably priced and beneficial, offering various pricing options tailored to individual requirements.
ROI: The effectiveness of Cisco Secure Firewall in terms of return on investment depends on the specific use case and architecture of the organization. Some customers have reported positive outcomes while others have expressed dissatisfaction. Perimeter 81 has the capability to deliver a favorable ROI. Reviewers have mentioned the quick implementation process and the potential for cost savings.
Comparison Results: Perimeter 81 is the preferred option when compared to Cisco Secure Firewall. Users find the initial setup of Perimeter 81 to be easy and user-friendly, in contrast to mixed reviews regarding Cisco Secure Firewall's initial setup, with some users finding it difficult. Perimeter 81 stands out for its single sign-on feature, easy configuration, and user-friendly interface.
"The most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiGate is URL filtering."
"The most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiGate is load balancing. It can provide central management and VPNA. Additionally, it has enhanced our security environment."
"It's very fast and easy to configure."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"This is a quality product with ok support, and it is better than the competition we've tried."
"Secure, user-friendly, stable, and scalable network security solution. Installation is straightforward."
"The simplicity of the product is great. It's very easy to use, which is a compliment we get all the time in terms of feedback."
"The technical support is great."
"They wanted to leverage something which is equivalent that can give them the next gen features like application awareness and intrusion protection. So that is a major reason they were looking forward to this. The original ASA firewall did not have these features. This was the major reason the customer moved on to Cisco Firepower Threat Defense (FTD). Now they can go ahead and leverage those functionalities."
"Being able to determine our active users vs inactive users has led us to increased productivity through visibility. Also, if an issue was happening with our throughput, then we wouldn't know without research. Now, notifications are more proactively happening."
"I have integrated it for incidence response. If there is a security event, the Cisco firewall will automatically block the traffic, which is valuable."
"The feature that I found most valuable is the overall stability of the product."
"Firepower has been used for quite a few enterprise clients. Most of our clients are Fortune 500 and Firepower is used to improve their end to end firewall functionality."
"Its ability to work with the traffic."
"We feel that we can trust the security, and our assets and business are well protected. We need to have trust in it, but we also see that it works. We have a security company that has tested that it works."
"Cisco Secure Firewall is robust and reliable."
"It has provided a seamless gateway to much-needed platforms."
"The feature that I have found to be most valuable is the reputation that the company has regarding privacy. Nowadays, this is critical, especially when you do all of your work online."
"Logging back into Perimeter 81 is relatively user-friendly as I just need to re-type my Windows credentials in to access the VPN."
"The benefits are really built into the underlying protocol, however, Perimeter81 makes these available in a user-friendly way."
"Scaling Perimeter 81 was easy to do."
"Even after restarting, it tries to quickly reestablish connection which is very helpful."
"The ease of use not only translates to quick adoption rates - it also ensures that our employees remain compliant with our cybersecurity protocols, enhancing the overall security posture of our organization."
"It keeps us all accountable and ensures secure internet connections while we all work remotely."
"One of the problems I was having was with user mapping, and it is an issue for which I have escalated tickets with Fortinet support."
"The ease of use could be improved."
"I would like Fortinet to add more automation to FortiGate."
"Lacks training for new features."
"The support system could be improved."
"While FortiGate is cheaper than most other solutions, we're seeing increased license renewal costs. Most of our clients are asking for more significant discounts because the price is going up."
"I would like some automated custom reporting."
"A couple of things I've seen that need improvement, especially in terms of a hard coding. The driver-level active moment really is out-of-the-box and we have to have contact the customer support and sometimes it is difficult to resolve."
"On the VPN side, Firepower could be better. It needs more monitoring on VPNs. Right now, it's not that good. You can set up a VPN in Firepower, but you can't monitor it."
"When we talk about data centers, we are talking about 100 gig capacity or 400 gig capacity. When it comes to active-active solution clustering and resilience and performance, Cisco should look into these a little bit more."
"It needs to provide the next-generation firewall features that other vendors provide, like data analytics, telemetry, and deep packet inspection."
"I would like for them to develop better integration with other security platforms."
"They could improve by having more skilled, high-level engineers that are available around the clock. I know that's an easy thing to say and a hard thing to do."
"It doesn't have Layer 7 security."
"It needs more tunneling capabilities."
"More intuitive support for SIP services are needed. This took a long time to configure properly for the user."
"Perimeter 81 could enhance its reporting and analytics capabilities to provide more detailed insights into network activity."
"It would be nice to have a notification sound when Perimeter81 disconnects, as I sometimes don't notice when the icon shows that it's disconnected, and I end up wasting time waiting for my browser to load a page that shows an error, usually error 404."
"I don't know if it is technically feasible, however, if the Desktop App could be used as a Web App or a Chrome Extension it would be very nice."
"There are a few areas where the solution could be improved. For instance, we sometimes encounter connectivity issues, which can be problematic. Recently, I experienced a connectivity issue while trying to move to Azure. Connectivity issues can be quite frustrating."
"What would be useful would be a notification/warning that a session is due to timeout after exceeding the default connection limit."
"Currently, I am not able to define a different country or location, which can result in negative experiences as the tool is being recognized by websites and this can make it difficult to access them or force me to disable the program temporarily."
"I have found that the log-in/out process takes quite some time."
"One of our challenges is ensuring the security of our cloud-based operations."
Cisco Secure Firewall is ranked 4th in Firewalls with 404 reviews while Perimeter 81 is ranked 11th in Firewalls with 22 reviews. Cisco Secure Firewall is rated 8.2, while Perimeter 81 is rated 9.2. 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 Perimeter 81 writes "Great SAML and SCIM support with the ability to deploy site-2-site tunnels with specific IP restrictions". Cisco Secure Firewall is most compared with Palo Alto Networks WildFire, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX, Sophos XG and Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, whereas Perimeter 81 is most compared with Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange, Cato SASE Cloud Platform, Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks, Cloudflare Access and Tailscale. See our Cisco Secure Firewall vs. Perimeter 81 report.
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We monitor all Firewalls reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.