We performed a comparison between Cisco IOS Security and Fortinet FortiManager based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Netgate, Fortinet, OPNsense and others in Firewalls."FortiGate SD-WAN facilitated a smooth transition for our customers between their two internet service providers, ensuring uninterrupted connectivity without any downtime."
"FortiGate has a very strong unified threat management system."
"The CLI and GUI do a good job of putting a lot at your fingertips."
"You can create multiple Virtual Domains (VDOMs), which are treated as separate firewall instances."
"The main reason why I purchased the particular unit was that it had good reviews and what other people were saying as far as its completeness and its leading capabilities in terms of endpoint security was very good."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are remote access, web filtering, and IPS."
"Its administrative panel is very intuitive and simple. It is simpler than the other solutions that we had. As an administrator, we are always looking for the easiest solution to manage network policies. We are able to filter everything on our network and also use the VPN feature, which is important these days when people are working remotely during COVID."
"The reporting you receive out of this appliance is excellent. You will not need an external management system."
"The solution is very user-friendly and easy to deal with."
"The most valuable features are DNS service and shell self-service within a network."
"The stability of this solution is excellent."
"The VPN is the most valuable feature."
"You can scale it when you need to."
"The Intrusion Firewall is a valuable feature."
"The VPN connection portal scan works flawlessly, which was a big plus for us."
"In Pakistan, we only use Cisco because they have good local support infrastructure. Huawei and Fortinet don't offer direct support in Pakistan."
"The solution is very stable."
"It can scale well."
"Fortinet has the option of synchronization in the cloud, so you can manage everything if you have a cloud account."
"Technical support is great. When we have sent urgent tickets and they do reply back within fifteen minutes."
"It's very easy to install, and it's easy to discover and communicate with your device."
"It is stable."
"The firewall configuration has more capabilities than the other firewall management systems that I have worked with."
"FortiManager offers a full zero-touch provisioning feature that allows us to create a template of our devices and onboard them remotely without visiting the site."
"I don't really have anything negative to say as far as Fortinet firewalls are concerned. If anything, they can support a user a little bit better. They can stop being so time-sensitive about how much time the support call has taken, and they can help you do it yourself."
"Vulnerability scanning could be improved."
"The support system could be improved."
"It should be more stable. There should be full integration within Fortinet products themselves as well as with other third-party products. Especially when you're not dealing with SIEM and the correlation of the security box, we want Fortinet to be able to share that information with as many other products as it can."
"I have to say that the initial setup was complex. The deployment took a few days to get set up. Initially, we were using an IPVanish. We switched to this tool since we thought it would be easier. But it turns out it wasn't easier to set up and run."
"Fortinet FortiGate is a stable solution. However, my issue is the performance only. When I use all the profiles, this affects the performance. From the beginning, I should have had a better sizing of the box."
"The graphical user interface of Fortinet's FortiGate product does not function well with text-based interfaces."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve by having better visibility. Palo Alto has better visibility."
"An area for improvement in Cisco IOS Security is the performance because it's not as stable sometimes. There's also some latency in the solution, which could be improved. Cisco IOS Security integrates with other solutions, but you'll encounter many errors after integration, so this is another area for improvement. I'd like to see enhanced performance and a simplified setup in the next version of Cisco IOS Security."
"The initial setup is complicated."
"The company needs to make its solution more affordable to make it more accessible to larger markets. Otherwise, it's seen as an enterprise-level solution that small or medium-sized organizations can't afford and therefore they won't even look at it."
"The user interface needs to be improved."
"It would be ideal if the solution had more capacity."
"The graphical user interface or the GUI could be better. Beginners can use some devices with the GUI, but some security devices are configured using CLI. It would also be better if it had its own Intrusion Protection Service and Intrusion Detection Service on the server."
"If they could increase the performance a little better because the device sometimes gets slow."
"We faced significant challenges related to licensing issues, particularly when licenses expire."
"The solution has some bugs."
"We have some visibility issues with the reporting."
"If you have more than one FortiMail device, you can't manage it then with FortiManager on FortiGate."
"FortiManager could improve by making it easier to port larger policy packages to the FortiGate firewalls. Sometimes, there's an issue when we install a big package of policies. If you have a couple thousand policies for FortiGate firewalls, it can take a few minutes to receive a response from the remote devices. It's only an issue when you're dealing with thousands of policies and installing them on a large number of devices."
"The compatibility with legacy products should be better. It would also be nice if the software could manage other devices from Fortinet and third parties."
"The product is not very stable."
"I would like to be able to manage other products such as Endpoint and FortiAnalyzer through FortiManager. That is, the integration with other solutions needs to be improved."
"Their EDR products could be better. They need to dedicate more R&D to that area."
Cisco IOS Security is ranked 22nd in Firewalls with 47 reviews while Fortinet FortiManager is ranked 3rd in Network Management Applications with 61 reviews. Cisco IOS Security is rated 8.0, while Fortinet FortiManager is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of Cisco IOS Security writes "User-friendly and excels in documentation, making it easier to resolve issues". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Fortinet FortiManager writes "Easy to set up with good integration capabilities but we've had troubles when moving devices". Cisco IOS Security is most compared with Cisco Secure Firewall, Meraki MX, Fortinet FortiOS, Netgate pfSense and OPNsense, whereas Fortinet FortiManager is most compared with Fortinet FortiGate Cloud, Fortinet FortiOS, Cisco DNA Center, Zabbix and AlgoSec.
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