We performed a comparison between Cisco IOS Security and Fortinet FortiGate 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 solution effectively integrates with Umbrella."
"The most valuable features are DNS service and shell self-service within a network."
"It covers everything we need it to without looking to secondary solutions."
"The stability of this solution is excellent."
"The technical support is good."
"Cisco is head-and-shoulders above all of the competition when it comes to technical support."
"Completely integrates branch offices with perimeter security."
"The most valuable feature of Cisco IOS Security is posturing."
"The stability and scalability of this solution are satisfactory. Its SD-WAN, VPN, and URL filtering features are very useful."
"FortiGate's web and URL filtering are unlike any other firewall I've used. The functionality of URL filtering in those solutions is problematic because everything is encrypted, and firewalls can't break that encryption protocol. Fortinet has an SSL proxy, so the encryption is done before the packet ever leaves the FortiGate. The URL filter is definitely one of the most helpful features."
"All of the features of Fortinet FortiGate are useful and the security protection is good."
"FortiGate firewalls are user-friendly, and I like the security profiling features."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the analytics."
"We have found it to be very reliable and that's why our teams and various users in our company use it as our main firewall every day."
"The IPS is good. It protect my network from attackers."
"Fortinet FortiGate's reliability is valuable."
"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."
"I would love it if it has a link-by-link feature, integration with Unified Threat Management (UTM), and load balancers. They haven't got any link-by-link feature right now, which can be a very attractive option. This link-by-link feature can also be made available for Cisco's UTM firewalls. The link-by-link feature is available in some of the other firewalls. Currently, integration with UTM is missing. Cisco IOS Security also doesn't have the load balancers and a few things that need to be done to get a good UTM firewall. Normally, other firewalls have UTM. As a next-generation firewall, it's good, but as a UTM, it has to do some work."
"There's a technology called SD-WAN that we would like to see. We are unable to handle multiple connections or to automatically load balance. I would like to have a feature that enables us to automatically prepare for load balancing."
"There are the usual bugs that are inherent to some software upgrades. Sometimes this provides some unexpected issues, however, it happens with all brands all the time."
"The product's technical support services need improvement."
"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."
"Cisco is an expensive firewall, so the pricing can be improved."
"Scalability is one of the disadvantages. When it comes to scalability, you have to actually change the box. If you want to upgrade it, you need to actually change the existing box and probably you take the system off to other sites."
"There are some problems that support cannot give you a logical reason as to why it happened. For example, I had a case where I was dealing with a WhatsApp application that was giving issues. Technical support gave more than one reason it could be giving issues, but none of them solved the problem. Eventually I solved the problem, but it was far from the solutions that support had given."
"Compared to some other products, the DLP is not at par for the moment."
"They need faster serviceability and more security features."
"It would be ideal if they had some sort of GUI interface for troubleshooting and diagnostics."
"I would prefer to have more detailed logs within the FortiGate products themselves rather than relying on a separate tool."
"There are problems with the custom reporting of the unique traffic. The data is there, but it is too difficult for us to extract."
"The ease of use could be improved."
Cisco IOS Security is ranked 22nd in Firewalls with 47 reviews while Fortinet FortiGate is ranked 2nd in Firewalls with 306 reviews. Cisco IOS Security is rated 8.0, while Fortinet FortiGate is rated 8.4. 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 FortiGate writes "It's a reliable solution that's easy to install and cheaper than competitors ". Cisco IOS Security is most compared with Cisco Secure Firewall, Meraki MX, Fortinet FortiOS, Netgate pfSense and OPNsense, whereas Fortinet FortiGate is most compared with Sophos XG, Cisco Secure Firewall, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX and WatchGuard Firebox. See our Cisco IOS Security vs. Fortinet FortiGate report.
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