We performed a comparison between Cisco Secure Firewall and SonicWall NSa 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 secure web gateway module and the application control module are valuable. HA operations are very easy."
"The IPS is good. It protect my network from attackers."
"This is an easy solution to deploy."
"The most valuable feature of FortiGate is FortiView which provides proactive monitoring."
"It is a good source for firewall protection."
"It's inexpensive compared to some of the other technology out there."
"The most valuable feature is the ease of use."
"I like that they have given me a solution at a fair price."
"The initial setup was completely straightforward."
"A stable, reliable solution used to protect the network's perimeter."
"It is one of the fastest solutions, if not the fastest, in the security technology space. This gives us peace of mind knowing that as soon as a new attack comes online that we will be protected in short order. From that perspective, no one really comes close now to Firepower, which is hugely valuable to us from an upcoming new attack prevention perspective."
"To be honest, all of the features that are provided, all the other vendor will also have. One feature we did find valuable was the CLI, it is more accurate. Additionally, I was happy with the customization, dashboards, access lists and interface."
"The GUI is among the most valuable features,"
"The firepower sensors have been great; they do a good job of dropping unwanted traffic."
"The high-availability and remote VPN features are most valuable."
"It is very stable compared to other firewall products."
"Easy to setup and implement"
"The antivirus and items of that nature were quite helpful to have."
"The DPI-SSL is the solution's most valuable aspect. It's handy."
"It is able to fulfill my requirements. It protects our network environment. It has control over IPS, signatures, and it can also manage bandwidth and mapping. It is also stable and has good support."
"It is a brilliant product. It is a Unified Threat Management (UTM) system. It has got about 11 security services that take care of your perimeter security. It takes care of any kind of cyber threats that could come in. It takes care of creating VPNs between two SonicWalls instantly and very easily. It has got spyware in it as well as a firewall. It has also got a gateway antivirus and an application firewall that can block things from outside."
"This product has kept us safe and we haven't had any breaches."
"For me, the most valuable feature of SonicWall NSa is the UTM."
"It has excellent stability."
"We were not able to build a full-mesh VPN; however, I am not sure if this was the fault of Fortinet FortiGate."
"We would like to see better pricing."
"It would be good if they had fewer updates."
"The way everything is set up could be easier. Currently, people need a lot of experience and knowledge to administer it and to link it to devices."
"It should provide better visibility over the network and more information in the form of reports for the end users. Its installation should also be easier."
"The reports are very basic."
"Maybe they could make some features more accessible, such as a way to translate directions between two networks that share the same subnets."
"They need to improve their technical support."
"The cloud does not precisely mimic what is on-premises."
"The use of it has really bogged down our response time for certain problems, given we have to go through AT&T for everything."
"Firewalls, in general, were not really designed for normal IT personnel, but for firewall and network experts. Therefore, they missed a lot of options and did not provide any good reporting or improvement options."
"Most of the features don't work well, and some features are missing as well."
"Virtual patching would be helpful for servers that are not able to update patches due to compatibility issues."
"Licensing is complex, and I'd like it to be simplified. This is an area for improvement."
"It lacks management. For me, it still doesn't have a proper management tool or GUI for configuration, logging, and visualization. Its management is not that easy. It is also not very flexible and easy to configure. They used to have a product called CSM, but it is no longer being developed. FortiGate is better than this solution in terms of GUI, flexibility, and user-friendliness."
"For what we use it for, it ends up being the perfect product for us, but it would help if they could expand it into some of the other areas and other use cases working with speeding up and the reliability of the pushes from the policy manager."
"We have security as a service, and they make recommendations about adding to the denylist and other things. That part could be more accessible and more user-friendly. I'd like to see SonicWall add a user-friendly interface where our internal team can drag and drop everything."
"They are not ready for managed security services. Their Cloud GMS product is weak, barely out of beta (buggy)."
"The product could expand its throughput capacity."
"Potential improvement around the associated VPN cost"
"The content ID needs to be improved."
"Initially, it may be difficult for some people to learn and become acquainted with it."
"There are a few areas that need improvement including the VPN, user management, and reporting."
"We still get phishing emails that manage to come through from time to time."
Cisco Secure Firewall is ranked 4th in Firewalls with 404 reviews while SonicWall NSa is ranked 19th in Firewalls with 80 reviews. Cisco Secure Firewall is rated 8.2, while SonicWall NSa is rated 7.8. 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 NSa writes "Great performance and security with reasonable pricing". Cisco Secure Firewall is most compared with Palo Alto Networks WildFire, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX, Sophos XG and Huawei NGFW, whereas SonicWall NSa is most compared with SonicWall TZ, Meraki MX, Sophos XG, Netgate pfSense and WatchGuard Firebox. See our Cisco Secure Firewall vs. SonicWall NSa report.
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