We performed a comparison between Cisco IOS Security and Cisco Secure Firewall 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 features that prevent internet connections, the filtering are the most valuable because we did not have any internet protection before."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are remote access, web filtering, and IPS."
"Security management tool that's easy to integrate and easy to work with. No issues found with its stability and scalability."
"One of the valuable features is a standardized OS."
"The SD-WAN feature is the most valuable. This feature evolved from link load balancing. It has helped us in terms of our uptime and privatizing applications whenever we experience an outage. The SD-WAN feature has been a plus for us. Two-factor authentication has allowed us to add more users in terms of remote working. We have two-factor authentication for remote workers to authenticate them before they get on the network."
"The scalability is good in Fortinet FortiGate."
"It works very well. It has a lot of different functionalities. Its cost is also fine for our customers."
"The solution is very user-friendly."
"Cisco IOS allows us to keep the same security features as our principal offices."
"Previously, anyone in the organization would see any data point in the wall. They could just go and connect their machine with that data point and could access the network. But now, even if someone came and tried that, they will not be given access."
"One of the main features is that the hardware is extremely reliable."
"You can scale it when you need to."
"The Intrusion Firewall is a valuable feature."
"I've found their network routing to be very good."
"The solution is very user-friendly and easy to deal with."
"Cisco products are very secure and integrate easily with other devices."
"An eight because it's a good security solution. It's more mature than its competitors."
"What I like about Cisco is the security zone. By default when you configure it, it gives you a security zone, which other firewalls don't have."
"It's got the capabilities of amassing a lot of throughput with remote access and VPNs."
"VPN, firewall, and IDS/IPS allow us to deliver services to meet client needs across various industry verticals."
"The most valuable feature would be the IP blocking. It gets rid of things that you don't need in your environment."
"For our very specific use case, for remote access for VPN, ASAs are very good."
"The most valuable features are the IPsec VPN and web filtering."
"This solution made our organization more secure and gave us better control."
"It should have a better pricing plan. It is too expensive. It should also have a more granular view of the attack. I don't have FortiAnalyzer, and it is difficult for me to have a complete view when there is an attack on my server."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve by having a frequent ask questions(FAQ) area for people to receive quick answers to popular questions. Additionally, it would be beneficial to have an SMS notification feature. For example, if you cannot access your email you could receive an SMS message."
"There can be more security in hybrid implementations. When a customer has a hybrid environment where some parts are in the cloud, we need a consistent security solution for such scenarios."
"The platform's interface could improve."
"I would like reporting to be improved and should offer a lot more tools to monitor the products."
"The biggest "gotcha" is that if the client purchases what they call the UTM shared bundle, which has unified threat management on both, it's not as easy to manage if you have more than one firewall."
"Fortinet needs to overhaul its documentation."
"Price, of course, can always be more competitive or better."
"The pricing is the only con for this product."
"The routers, don't have like long-term tendency features, or higher availability features available for the IOS. It could also use a better user interface."
"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."
"While Cisco IOS Security is stable and scalable, I would like to see it improved to be even better."
"In the next release of this solution, we would like to see support for the 100BT and 7000 models."
"The solution is not user friendly and it is hard to manage the GUI interface."
"It takes too much time to deploy a policy to FMC. It takes around eight minutes. You can't afford any downtime when you're changing policies."
"Cisco is still catching up with its Firepower Next-Generation firewalls."
"It should have packets, deep level inspections and controls, like the features which other IPS solutions used to have."
"In my experience, a number of engineers get tunnel vision with devices. This is exacerbated by vendors fostering a silo mentality in disciplines."
"The interface for monitoring could be improved to allow better views to make troubleshooting easier."
"Cisco should work on ASDM. One of the biggest drawbacks of Cisco ASA is ASDM GUI. Cisco should improve the ASDM GUI. The configuration through ASDM is really difficult as compared to CLI. Sometimes when you are doing the configuration in ASDM, it suddenly crashes. It also crashes while pushing a policy. Cisco should really work on this."
"One issue with Firepower Management Center is deployment time. It takes seven to 10 minutes and that's a long time for deployment. In that amount of time, management or someone else can ask me to change something or to provide permissions, but during that time, doing so is not possible. It's a drawback with Cisco. Other vendors, like Palo Alto or Fortinet do not have this deployment time issue."
"One of the problems that we have had is the solution requires Java to work. This has caused some problems with the application visibility and control. When the Java works, it is good, but Java wasn't a good choice. I don't like the Java implementation. It can be difficult to work with sometimes."
"Cisco wasn't first-to-market with NGFWs... they should look at what other vendors are doing and try not only to be on the same wavelength but a little bit better."
Cisco IOS Security is ranked 23rd in Firewalls with 47 reviews while Cisco Secure Firewall is ranked 4th in Firewalls with 404 reviews. Cisco IOS Security is rated 8.0, while Cisco Secure Firewall is rated 8.2. 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 Cisco Secure Firewall writes "Highlights and helps us catch Zero-day vulnerabilities traveling across our network". Cisco IOS Security is most compared with Fortinet FortiOS, Meraki MX, Netgate pfSense, OPNsense and Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, whereas Cisco Secure Firewall is most compared with Palo Alto Networks WildFire, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX, Sophos XG and Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls. See our Cisco IOS Security vs. Cisco Secure Firewall report.
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