We performed a comparison between Cisco Secure Firewall vs Juniper SRX based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: The two solutions are very comparable. Each of them have a good set of features, and the solution you choose will ultimately be dependent on your company’s specific preferences and requirements.
"Fortinet has a very good solution for Secure SD-WAN. One very good feature is that they have robust and simple FortiOS through which they provide all solutions. That's their strength. There's not much complexity involved with the Secure SD-WAN solution of Fortinet as compared to Cisco's solution, which has a lot of flexibility but complexity also comes with that flexibility."
"Fortinet FortiGate appears to be scalable."
"User-friendly and affordable security solution that's recommended for SMB customers. This solution has good technical support."
"The most valuable feature is the FortiManager for centralized management."
"Fortinet FortiGate is a stable solution."
"Fortinet FortiGate is easy to use. Anyone can easily maintain it."
"We can detect any attack of viruses or malware at the first point of contact."
"The payment function for applications is good."
"Basic firewalling is obviously the most valuable. In addition to that, secure access and remote access are also very useful for us."
"The most important feature is the intensive way you can troubleshoot Cisco Firepower Firewalls. You can go to the bit level to see why traffic is not handled in the correct way, and the majority of the time it's a networking issue and not a firewall issue. You can solve any problem without Cisco TAC help, because you can go very deeply under the hood to find out how traffic is flowing and whether it is not flowing as expected. That is something I have never seen with other brands."
"Cisco's engineer helped us with a lot of scripting to see what existed. Previously, we didn't have a proper policy. In fact, we didn't have any policy because we didn't have any firewall for the data center, so generating a policy was a big challenge. Cisco's engineer helped us to do some scripting and find out what kind of policy we can have and organize those policies. That was nice."
"The Firepower+ISE+AMP for endpoint integration is something that really stands it out with other vendor solutions. They have something called pxGrid and i think it is already endorsed by IETF. This allows all devices on the network to communicate."
"It's got the capabilities of amassing a lot of throughput with remote access and VPNs."
"Cisco Secure Firewall is robust and reliable."
"The solution is excellent for enterprise-level networks."
"I think that the firewall feature is the most valuable to me as it is one of the oldest features for this solution. We also appreciate how stable the VPN is."
"There is a lot of flexibility in how you can commit, check, and back out of a configuration."
"You can scale the solution."
"Technical support is perfect."
"The deployment is quite easy and fast."
"What I like the most about Juniper is that they have the same CLI on all routers, switches, and firewalls. If you have worked with any Juniper device, such as a Juniper router, you will be able to work with an SRX, which is really cool. It is a nice experience to work with every device of Juniper, not only firewalls."
"Great as an inter-segmentation firewall or border or arch-firewall."
"vSRX is easy to deploy to any virtual infrastructure, such as OpenStack, VMware, and even Docker (cSRX)."
"It helped us with its routing capabilities which eased the cost, because otherwise I would have had to take a router and firewall, and then integrate it. With this, however, it was an integration of firewall and routing services all together in a single product. That was one thing that I loved about it."
"Scalability for Fortinet FortiGate needs to be improved. SD-WAN security for this solution also needs some improvement."
"Lacks training for new features."
"The pricing could always be better."
"The inability to scale the FortiAnalyzer to match our growth necessitates the purchase of new hardware."
"I would suggest that Fortinet add sandboxing to their solution."
"The improvement is related to logs. Instead of the CLI, we should be able to have more insights into the logs of the firewall in the GUI."
"Fortinet Fortigate could benefit by simplifying some of their processes."
"The initial setup and configuration are not intuitive and require training."
"The throughput highlighted on the datasheet (10Gbps) should be reviewed. This throughput is only for a UDP running environment, which you will never find in the real world. Rather consider a multiprotocol throughput."
"We were also not too thrilled when Cisco announced that in the upcoming new-gen ASA, iOS was not going to be supported, or if you install them, they will not be able to be managed through the Sourcefire. However, it seems like Cisco is moving away from the ASA iOS to the Sourcefire FireSIGHT firmware for the ASA. We haven't had a chance to test it out."
"The content filtering on an application level is not as good as other solutions such as Palo Alto."
"I don't have to see all the object groups that have been created on that firewall. That's just something that I would really appreciate on the CLA, even though it already exists on the GUI."
"I have used Fortinet, Palo Alto, and Check Point previously and I prefer the process of everything working together."
"If I need to download AnyConnect in a rush, it will prompt me for my Cisco login account. Nobody wants to download a client to a firewall that they don't own."
"Cisco makes horrible UIs, so the interface is something that should be improved."
"If the implementation was easier, it would be a lot better for us."
"The Juniper product has to improve in terms of innovation."
"Juniper needs to focus more on their perimeter firewalls."
"The GUI needs to be easier and more helpful for users who don't have security experience."
"The user interface and the GUI need improvement."
"We'd like to improve the stability and the kill rate."
"There are a lot of features that customers do not know about and I think that better documentation would help when it comes to learning how to use the product."
"I would like to have a better web UI for administration. Juniper could simplify the web UI and make it more compatible with mobile devices."
"The big thing is performance. With all the features turned on it slows down."
Cisco Secure Firewall is ranked 4th in Firewalls with 404 reviews while Juniper SRX Series Firewall is ranked 18th in Firewalls with 86 reviews. Cisco Secure Firewall is rated 8.2, while Juniper SRX Series Firewall 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 Juniper SRX Series Firewall writes "Highly scalable, user-friendly UI, and easy to maintain". Cisco Secure Firewall is most compared with Palo Alto Networks WildFire, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX, Sophos XG and Check Point NGFW, whereas Juniper SRX Series Firewall is most compared with Palo Alto Networks WildFire, Netgate pfSense, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Check Point NGFW and Meraki MX. See our Cisco Secure Firewall vs. Juniper SRX Series Firewall report.
See our list of best Firewalls vendors and best Firewalls vendors.
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.