We performed a comparison between Fortinet FortiGate 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."Consolidated our network environment at all locations, but mainly at our datacenter."
"Provides good firewall security and has great VPN features."
"The scalability is good in Fortinet FortiGate."
"The threat prevention is the solution's most valuable aspect."
"Fortinet FortiGate is easy to use. Anyone can easily maintain it."
"UTM/NGFW features and FortiCloud for logs and backups are awesome."
"Fortinet FortiGate appears to be scalable."
"The most valuable feature of FortiGate is FortiView which provides proactive monitoring."
"Whether you are in a hotel somewhere, or in Africa, it does not matter. You will get the Zscaler protection presence anywhere."
"We enjoy all of the proxy capabilities and the capability to integrate into the SIEM/SOC solution."
"After a proper implementation, the maintenance is very low."
"The initial setup was straightforward. The biggest thing for us was to build our own policies. The deployment itself was only a few hours."
"There is no lag in service when accessing the internet."
"The best thing about Zscaler Internet Access is the website filtering. In the UAE it's quite an important feature because most of the malware comes through the SQL injection and through downloads from websites. Zscaler helps protect against that."
"The solution offers a distributed organization to master and to control all of the endpoints."
"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."
"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."
"The routing capability on the FortiGate devices has room for improvement."
"Some configuration elements cannot be easily altered once created."
"I think there could be more QoS features"
"In some cases, its initial setup could be hard for customers."
"I need user-behavior analytics, to find threat scenarios from inside the organization, insider attacks. That would be very helpful for us. In addition, I would like next-generation features for small and medium businesses. These businesses require UTM, all in one product. Fortinet must include it."
"The solution could be more secure and stable."
"The inability to scale the FortiAnalyzer to match our growth necessitates the purchase of new hardware."
"Zscaler Internet Access's troubleshooting is very limited, and their textbook logs need to be more informative."
"In terms of usage, here in the GCC, it's still growing a growing market, so the combination of DLP, data leak prevention, to a certain extent is fine. But what it requires is user-based access or role-based access. The solution needs to grow into that, which definitely takes time. There's not an easy way to integrate it, when you have a cloud-based solution."
"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."
"An improvement would be if they could provide an out-of-the-box experience, like 20 to 30 features all ready to go. In comparison, LogRhythm offers out-of-the-box features. With Zscaler Internet Access, there is firewall IPS, multiple security services, filtering, DLP, and CASB browser isolation. These are things that all users are going to be using. However, when an administrator or architect would start building this, I would definitely need to engage professional services to help clients do it."
"I would like to see more training and video documentation."
"Currently, the solution's interface is not that user-friendly."
"What could be improved in Zscaler Internet Access is its price. It could be cheaper."
"There are some performance issues when we add on additional controls."
Fortinet FortiGate is ranked 2nd in Firewalls with 306 reviews while Zscaler Internet Access is ranked 2nd in Secure Web Gateways (SWG) with 46 reviews. Fortinet FortiGate is rated 8.4, while Zscaler Internet Access is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Fortinet FortiGate writes "It's a reliable solution that's easy to install and cheaper than competitors ". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Zscaler Internet Access writes "Provides integrated CASB and file sandboxing but could be less expensive ". Fortinet FortiGate is most compared with Sophos XG, Cisco Secure Firewall, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX and WatchGuard Firebox, 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 Fortinet FortiGate vs. Zscaler Internet Access report.
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Bluecoat and Forcepoint offer credible solutions. Think through where your users are and what they connect to. A mobile workforce may need an agent and a cloud gateway (unless you force them back to base over VPN) but may give problems if connecting to sites that whitelist you by IP. And not all providers have good global breakout points. Be particularly careful if you work in China.
My recommendation is Cisco Meraki MX84 with advanced security license (its have two kind of license Advanced security and Enterprise licenses).
I recommend Fortigate
All FortiGate appliances are powered by the FortiOS™ operating system with the following features and benefits:
Features. Firewall, Virtual Private Networking (VPN), AntiVirus, Intrusion Prevention, Web Filtering, DLP, and anti-spam; AntiVirus /Antispyware
Answer is , it depends... If you do any web based business with Banks or Governments then get a hardware solution like Bluecoat or Fortinet because web based providers can not provide you with a static source IP and you will fail security checks. I've been involved in corporate moves to the "cloud" using Zscaler and both went very wrong, very fast, a year later and they still have monthly outages because of the "cloud" providing random source IP's. If this is for a public internet access outside of your corporate network then you should be fine otherwise I suggest hardware you control.
This is a "how long is a piece of string?" type question. As the other vendors have said it is hard to recommend something fully without knowing all the background. Your background did stipulate that you had multiple sites and you were growing. Having a traditional deployment scenario will mean that you need to have a "box" at each site and add more boxes as you add more sites. Going with a more modern solution like Zscaler will allow more rapid growth opportunities - just add users, no matter where they are - also this allows you to restrict with a single policy in the cloud rather than on each device.
AS others have said, be mindful of the proximity of the Zscaler because of latency, but they do have >100 POPS which you will probably find pretty local.
Overall, there is a lot more research you can do, but I'm leaning towards a cloud offering from the branches. You might consider an SD-WAN device at each branch that also has FW built in. This would give you connectivity resilience at a much lower price, but perhaps this is a debate for another day :-)
Cisco Meraki is an excellent solution in the cloud, has AMP included and can be integrated with Umbrella and Thread Grid.
We use Fortigates for web filtering and security. We are a global company with > 10,000 users.
This protects all users on our internal network. Remote users can use the Fortinet FortiClient for remote AV and web filtering protection.
We used Zscaler several years ago but we were unhappy with latency for complex websites and managing PAC files was difficult.
Since you are going for a web security. Zscalar web security solution will be my recommendation considering its robust features and vast threat intelligence base. It is best you go for the cloud solution since you are working across sites.