We performed a comparison between Huawei NGFW and WatchGuard Firebox 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 most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiGate is load balancing. It can provide central management and VPNA. Additionally, it has enhanced our security environment."
"Good anti-malware and web filtering features."
"Reliability is the best feature. We faced some issues when we were setting it up, but the service, portal, and administration are good."
"We use the FortiGate Sandbox to detect zero-day vulnerabilities, such as anomalies or malware, that are unknown and have not yet been discovered."
"We were looking for the VPN feature and controlling the inflow and outflow of all the traffic within the site and across the sites. We are also using it for the VPN and VLANs."
"The most valuable feature is the SSL VPN, as it allows us to connect and it separates this product from other firewalls."
"The solution can scale well."
"It is a safe product."
"I like that the initial setup is straighforward. It's also a scalable solution."
"It enables us to configure different policies and restrictions for specific users within the same subnet."
"I am impressed with the product's antivirus features, strong encryption, policy implementation and easier installation."
"The solution's performance is good with IPSec."
"I had no difficulty using the Huawei NGFW."
"The solution's initial setup process is easy."
"The mapping features and traffic logging are good."
"We have found the initial setup to be straightforward."
"The solution has increased productivity with our outside salespeople being able to connect into their computers and use those remotely."
"After conducting several tests I found the antivirus is working very well. Additionally, they have a very interesting feature, DNS WatchGuard, which is checking DNS requests for phishing, among other things, and it has caught a lot of unwanted attempts and attacks."
"All of the features have been valuable. There's nothing on my M270 that I'm not using. If you have remote access, you can see how many users are coming from the outside world to be connected to the systems, through the virus systems that we have behind the firewall, in order to gain access to their files and do their work. We can also see how long they stay online and whether these connections are closed forcefully or for any other reasons, such as a glitch or some kind of misbehavior, to see if internet traffic is optimized and if that particular traffic is under company policies, concerning which websites were visited."
"The most valuable features are the VPN and web blocker security."
"The most valuable feature is the ease of use of the interface."
"They've done a lot of work with their SD-WAN, which we do use, to have our old internet service with our new internet service. If anything goes down on a particular interface, I can have different rules applied. Most of my users don't even know when our primary internet goes down anymore... I don't have to be here to do anything to switch it to our backup internet or to switch it back."
"If there is any conflict, the reporting feature will kick out all types of information, which is great."
"From my experience with their customer service team, I would say that they seem quite knowledgeable and fairly quick to respond."
"We sometimes have issues with FortiGate's routing table in the latest firmware update. We had to downgrade the device because our customers complained about bugs."
"Technical support needs to be improved."
"Technical support is good but the response time could be faster."
"Stability and technical support are the two major issues I have found with Fortinet."
"Monitoring and reporting could be better."
"Fortinet FortiGate can improve the integration with Active Directory. Additionally, I would like to have a Cloud Controller, such as they do in the Cisco Meraki solution."
"The central management for the FortiGate Fortinet Firewall needs improvement. They have the manager to do the essential management for both SD-WAN and for the security policy. They should also improve the SD-WAN function."
"The solution could have licensing fees reduced in the future."
"There needs to be more security equipment for the solution."
"The solution could be more secure and have better integration."
"Huawei NGFW should have better reporting and a dashboard for the visibility of traffic."
"The solution doesn't seem to be very mature. Our networking team says they are experiencing a lot of issues in the firewalls and some routers."
"The IPS feature must be improved."
"The solution does not have sandboxing features."
"The user interface could be more user-friendly."
"With the Huawei firewall, none of the features comes at the top. We found out later that customer support is really not good. For this firewall, because of our customers' routine, for example, every six months they'll do a penetration test to find weaknesses. So whenever they came up with VAPT reports, they are looking to Huawei for help. I think that's basically because it's a different culture. Chinese culture and our culture is different. They have always tried to help find some excuses or say some other things that cannot help you solve the problem immediately."
"The way Secure Sign-On authentication is happening needs to be improved. When the Secure Sign-On portal is turned on, anybody who comes into the campus, whether he or she is a staff member or a guest, has to go past the initial portal. One of the shortcomings is the username. It shouldn't allow permutations or combinations with upper or lower cases. For example, when there is a username abc, it shouldn't allow ABC or Abc. It should not allow the same username, but currently, two separate people can go in. Therefore, its authentication or validation should be improved, and the case sensitiveness should be picked up. If I have restricted someone to two devices, they shouldn't be able to use different combinations of the same username and get into the third or fourth device. It shouldn't allow different combinations of alphabets to be used to log in."
"Due to their lack of investment in marketing, channel development, and certifications, WatchGuard faces challenges in gaining visibility and market share, especially in regions like Pakistan."
"The data loss protection works well, but it could be easier to configure. The complexity of data loss protection makes it a more difficult feature to fully leverage. Better integration with third-party, two-factor authentication would be advantageous."
"I would like to see the devices made more flexible by adding modules to increase the ports that we can use."
"The VPN aspect of the WatchGuard Firebox is an area that could potentially benefit from improvement. We encountered difficulties while attempting to integrate Windows 11 laptops into the system, which resulted in unreliable connections. After some research, we discovered that this was primarily due to compatibility issues with Windows 11 and required a patch. However, it was still a challenge as it seemed that even when we tried to keep the laptops on Windows 10, they still exhibited the same issues as Windows 11 machines. Despite WatchGuard attributing the problem to Microsoft, we were eventually able to find a solution and all the machines are now functioning seamlessly."
"There should be better integration and a way to configure multiple vendors into the same data center in order to offer more flexibility."
"There is a slight learning curve."
"I don't think I can get a full-blown DNS client from it. I've been trying to have DNS services. It has forwarding, but I don't get the services of a full DNS client. My main difficulty with it is that I can't run a complete service. I need NTP. I need DNS. I need DHCP for my domain, but I only get forwarding. As far as I can tell, I don't get caching and the kinds of reporting and registration needed to host a DNS for a domain. I have to have a separate solution for that."
Huawei NGFW is ranked 31st in Firewalls with 19 reviews while WatchGuard Firebox is ranked 13th in Firewalls with 79 reviews. Huawei NGFW is rated 7.2, while WatchGuard Firebox is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Huawei NGFW writes "A scalable and easy-to-setup product that can be used to configure different policies for specific users". On the other hand, the top reviewer of WatchGuard Firebox writes "Offers a streamlined deployment, intuitive interface and robust security features". Huawei NGFW is most compared with Cisco Secure Firewall, Netgate pfSense, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Meraki MX and Sophos XG, whereas WatchGuard Firebox is most compared with Netgate pfSense, Sophos XG, OPNsense, SonicWall TZ and Meraki MX. See our Huawei NGFW vs. WatchGuard Firebox report.
See our list of best Firewalls vendors, best Unified Threat Management (UTM) vendors, and best Firewalls vendors.
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