We performed a comparison between Cisco IOS Security and Fortinet FortiManager based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Netgate, Fortinet, OPNsense and others in Firewalls."I like several features that this product has, such as antivirus and internet navigation inspection. It is also simple to use."
"A strong point of FortiGate is the graphical interface is complete and easy to use."
"Fortinet FortiGate is stable. It's used across all the countries, this is the way most multinationals run their system."
"Provides good firewall security and has great VPN features."
"It does a lot for you for intrusion protection and as an antivirus. The threat management bundle is worth the money. You don't need another company to monitor your web traffic for you. You can do everything yourself on the firewall. You restrict your own black list for people on the firewall. You don't need to pay some other company for another product to do that for you. The firewall can do that for you. So, it's an easy-to-use product for people to be independent. They don't need to rely on other vendors to do what the firewall can do. They can do everything."
"The most valuable feature is the web filter."
"LinkGreat firewall capabilities"
"It blocks the vulnerabilities that can negatively impact us."
"The hardware is pretty stable. It's also a very good product performance-wise. Initially, it wasn't mature like a firewall and there were other leaders, but now they have included almost all the features of next-generation security. Basically, it's a good product to work with."
"It is less expensive than alternative firewalls."
"You can scale it when you need to."
"Cisco is head-and-shoulders above all of the competition when it comes to technical support."
"Cisco Technical Assistance Center works on a follow-the-sun concept and gives real 24x7 customer support, which is a great advantage when you have a service contract with them."
"In Pakistan, we only use Cisco because they have good local support infrastructure. Huawei and Fortinet don't offer direct support in Pakistan."
"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."
"Cisco IOS Security has many good features, but compared to other solutions, it has a more user-friendly interface with steps to apply and manage rules. Another good part of the solution is that it's more straightforward."
"The capability of centralized management is valuable. We can configure all firewall boxes with the same configuration."
"The main benefit of Fortinet FortiManager is the ability to control all the devices from a central location, view their statuses, and manage their configurations and updates from a single management console."
"The SD-WAN deployment environment, and the SD-WAN templates are particularly useful. Managing the solution is very intuitive. The initial setup of the solution was very straightforward."
"The firewall configuration has more capabilities than the other firewall management systems that I have worked with."
"Fortinet FortiManager allows you to manage multiple FortiGate devices from a single console, and this is a valuable product feature."
"The solution has the best stability for application control and inspections."
"The solution brings device management into one single pane of glass and is a pretty good product."
"It's very easy to install, and it's easy to discover and communicate with your device."
"Stability and technical support are the two major issues I have found with Fortinet."
"The price of FortiGate should be reduced because there are some other leading products that are cheaper."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve by having more storage in the hardware for log data."
"The main aspect of FortiGate that could be improved is load balancing. Our management team does not want to buy another appliance for only load balancing."
"It would be nice if backups could more easily migrate between different models."
"The solution can have more features in a single box that can be multi-applied to integrate everything."
"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."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve the user interface. There should be more functionality and options through the GUI."
"The solution is not user friendly and it is hard to manage the GUI interface."
"Cisco IOS Security should improve its functionalities."
"It would be ideal if the solution had more capacity."
"Most of their features are meant for Cisco. You cannot integrate them with any other vendor."
"An area for improvement in Cisco IOS Security is the performance because it's not as stable sometimes. There's also some latency in the solution, which could be improved. Cisco IOS Security integrates with other solutions, but you'll encounter many errors after integration, so this is another area for improvement. I'd like to see enhanced performance and a simplified setup in the next version of Cisco IOS Security."
"Cisco IOS Security could improve by having more compatibility with other Cisco solutions."
"Signatures and other critical definitions need to be updated more frequently."
"There could be a bit more functions on offer that could make it easier to use."
"The interface could be improved. It is split up into different areas, which makes it more difficult to navigate and get the right section of the correct file. The solution is quite expensive, so it would not be suitable for small to medium sized organizations."
"FortiManager would be improved by putting everything into a single console, including Microsoft O365 integration."
"The reporting details have room for improvement."
"The GUI is not ideal."
"It would be better if it were easier to run a routing protocol. In the next release, I would like them to enhance some features in the GUI rather than CLI or OSP. For example, whenever a customer generates an ISP directly on the firewall, it's complicated to configure the routing protocol."
"The GUI could be updated. It's not as good as it could be and is something the solution should improve in an upcoming release."
"FortiManager could improve by making it easier to port larger policy packages to the FortiGate firewalls. Sometimes, there's an issue when we install a big package of policies. If you have a couple thousand policies for FortiGate firewalls, it can take a few minutes to receive a response from the remote devices. It's only an issue when you're dealing with thousands of policies and installing them on a large number of devices."
"Performance issues should be improved. We have problems when we have more mobile connections than local devices. Most of us have two to three devices."
Cisco IOS Security is ranked 23rd in Firewalls with 47 reviews while Fortinet FortiManager is ranked 3rd in Network Management Applications with 61 reviews. Cisco IOS Security is rated 8.0, while Fortinet FortiManager is rated 8.0. 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 FortiManager writes "Easy to set up with good integration capabilities but we've had troubles when moving devices". Cisco IOS Security is most compared with Cisco Secure Firewall, Fortinet FortiOS, Meraki MX, Netgate pfSense and OPNsense, whereas Fortinet FortiManager is most compared with Fortinet FortiGate Cloud, Fortinet FortiOS, Cisco DNA Center, Zabbix and AlgoSec.
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