We performed a comparison between Cisco Secure Firewall, Fortinet FortiGate, and Fortinet FortiGate-VM based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Netgate, Fortinet, OPNsense and others in Firewalls."The VPN is our most widely used feature for Cisco Secure Firewall. Since we were forced into a hybrid working situation by COVID a few years back, VPN is the widely used feature because everybody is working remotely for our agency. So it came in very handy."
"AnyConnect has been very helpful, along with the ability to use LDAP for authentication."
"It is one of the fastest solutions, if not the fastest, in the security technology space. This gives us peace of mind knowing that as soon as a new attack comes online that we will be protected in short order. From that perspective, no one really comes close now to Firepower, which is hugely valuable to us from an upcoming new attack prevention perspective."
"The configuration capabilities and the integration with other tools are the most valuable features. I really like this product. Cisco is one of my favorite brands, and I always think Cisco solutions are very reliable, easy to configure, and very secure."
"Beats sophisticated cyber attacks with a superior security appliance."
"With Cisco, there are a lot of features such as the network map. Cisco builds the whole network map of the machines you have behind your firewall and gives you insight into the vulnerabilities and attributes that the host has. Checkpoint and Fortinet don't have that functionality directly on the firewall."
"The most valuable features are the IPsec VPN and web filtering."
"The technical team is always available when we have problems."
"The network security and cloud security are most valuable."
"The stability of the solution is excellent, as it is with other Fortinet products."
"The most valuable feature is the bundled subscription, which is IPS, TV and web filtering."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are the rules and quality of service."
"In terms of security, we have not experienced any security flaws or loopholes, and it has proven to be quite stable."
"All of the features of Fortinet FortiGate are useful and the security protection is good."
"The multi-tenancy feature is most valuable. It integrates very well with FortiManager and FortiAnalyzer."
"The most valuable feature is the ease of configuration."
"The functionality provided is very good."
"The most valuable feature is the UTM, which gives them an advantage over other firewalls."
"Technical support is very helpful."
"It has allowed us to centralize every network service into one appliance."
"I find the simplicity to be most valuable."
"In terms of administration, it's perfect."
"The product is easy to implement."
"FortiGate-VM has many valuable features: it's easy to use, it's intuitive, it's got very good traffic inspection features, it's got comprehensive filtering categories, and it has an extensive threat database, using FortiGuard."
"I don't have any specific improvements to recommend. However, when you compare the throughput of a Cisco firewall to the competitors, especially Fortinet, what you find is that Cisco has lagged a little bit behind in terms of firewall throughput, especially for the price that you pay for that throughput."
"The installation and integration of Cisco ASA with FirePOWER can be improved. The management with Fortigate is easier than Cisco ASA on FirePOWER. The management side of Cisco ASA can be improved so it can be more easily configured and used."
"It needs more tunneling capabilities."
"The user interface for the Firepower management console is a little bit different from traditional Cisco management tools. If you look at products we already use, like Cisco Prime or other products that are cloud-based, they have a more modern user interface for managing the products. For Firepower, the user interface is not very user-friendly. It's a little bit confusing sometimes."
"The only con that I have really seen with it is the reporting structure. FirePOWER is good. It has been a great help because, before that, it was not good at all."
"The product would be improved if the GUI could be brought into the 21st Century."
"The usability of Cisco Firepower Threat Defense is an issue. The product is still under development, and the user interface is very difficult to deal with."
"When you make any changes, irrespective of whether they are big or small, Firepower takes too much time. It is very time-consuming. Even for small changes, you have to wait for 60 seconds or maybe more, which is not good. Similarly, when you have many IPS rules and policies, it slows down, and there is an impact on its performance."
"If they had better integration with security products, such as Cisco ISE or Rapid Threat Containment, then it would be an improvement."
"The room for improvement is about the global delivery time period. Usually I need to wait for almost one month to deliver it overseas. So if you can shorten the deliver time it'd be great."
"When we cluster the two Fortinet FortiGate boxes together we have some issues."
"Palo Alto has a feature called WildFire Analysis that is unavailable in FortiGate. WildFire is better than a sandbox because it can address zero-day threats and vulnerabilities. It can immediately identify zero-day threats from the cloud."
"The inability to scale the FortiAnalyzer to match our growth necessitates the purchase of new hardware."
"In some cases, its initial setup could be hard for customers."
"A couple of things I've seen that need improvement, especially in terms of a hard coding. The driver-level active moment really is out-of-the-box and we have to have contact the customer support and sometimes it is difficult to resolve."
"From a reporting perspective, there's room for improvement. They're providing FortiAnalyzer through which one can get some enhancements, but the visibility and reporting still need slight improvement."
"VM should be more optimized."
"The user interface could be improved."
"There should be more options to use lower-end models in a high availability configuration."
"The tool does not have a good name in the market, consisting of enterprise-class businesses, making it an area where the product lacks and needs to improve."
"Support could be improved a little."
"They should keep us up to date about the latest version. That's the biggest thing. Currently, we have to go looking for the latest version. We should get notified about what's going on with the versions. I would like to see easier dual-factor authentication."
"The stability of the product is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"The reporting is not as good as it is with other firewalls and it should be improved."
