We performed a comparison between Azure Firewall and Cisco Secure Firewall based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Cisco Secure is the clear winner in this comparison. It is powerful with a larger feature set than Azure Firewall. In addition, Cisco Secure also has excellent customer support and a significant ROI. Azure Firewall does have an edge in the pricing category, however.
"Fortigate represents a really scalable way of delivering perimeter network security, some level of layer 7 security, WAF, and also a way to create a meshed ADVPN solution."
"I only deal with it from a security analyst's point of view. I don't really get into the features of the actual FortiGate. From the security point of view, it works, and it does its job."
"The most valuable features are simplicity, management, and that it's constantly evolving."
"Using this product makes the VPN seamless and almost invisible to me in the sense that I don't have to think about it."
"User-friendly and affordable security solution that's recommended for SMB customers. This solution has good technical support."
"This solution has solid UTM features combined with a nice GUI."
"The IPsec tunnels are very easily created, and quite interoperable with devices from other vendors."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are the rules and quality of service."
"I think that one of the best features is definitely the premium version, along with the IDPs in terms of the intrusion detection and prevention system."
"The firewall policy control, URL content control, and antivirus are all the most valuable aspects. Threat prevention is as well quite good."
"The Layer four features are okay and meet my business needs."
"It's helped us improve our security posture."
"The solution can autoscale."
"Network filtering is valuable. The scalability capability from the cloud-native service helps us a lot because it simplifies our day-to-day maintenance activity."
"The solution is very stable. When comparing it to other environments, it's actually quite impressive."
"The feature that I have found the most valuable is the control over the network permissions and the network."
"Its efficiency and security are the most important. We are more efficient and more secure."
"We have not had to deal with stability issues."
"I like the Cisco ASDM (Adaptive Security Device Manager), which is the configuration interface for the Cisco firewall."
"If you have a solution that is creating a script and you need to deploy many implementations, you can create a script in the device and it will be the same for all. After that, you just have to do the fine tuning."
"The solution is used for the protection of the mobile data network. It is protecting 3G/4G Internet customers and the Private APN."
"Manageability of Cisco ASA. It has a GUI interface, unlike the most of Cisco IOS. For beginners they can "sneak in" and apply the command and see the actual commands that the GUI launches. In addition, Cisco has the reputation regarding security."
"It is much better than most of the other firewalls that I have worked with."
"Protecting our landscape in general and being able to see logging when things aren't going as set out in policies are valuable features. Our security department is keen on seeing the logging."
"The scalability could be better."
"Scalability for Fortinet FortiGate needs to be improved. SD-WAN security for this solution also needs some improvement."
"We were not able to build a full-mesh VPN; however, I am not sure if this was the fault of Fortinet FortiGate."
"Technical support could be better. You don't always get the level of help you need right away."
"The integration with third-party tools may be something that they should work on."
"The routing capability on the FortiGate devices has room for improvement."
"Fortinet Fortigate could benefit by simplifying some of their processes."
"Some configuration elements cannot be easily altered once created."
"There is room for further integration of AI into the system."
"You have to have a defined IP range within your network to associate it with your network. The problem is you have to plan ahead of time if you expect to use the firewall in the future so that you don't have to reconfigure your subnets or that specific IP range. Other than that, I don't any issues. I use it for basic configuration for a single application, so I really don't try to leverage it for multiple applications where I might find some complexity or challenges."
"The solution lacks artificial intelligence and machine learning. It might be in the roadmap. However, currently, it's not available."
"The development area and QA area could be improved. With those improvements, we can improve projects and take even less time to implement them."
"It's a little heavy compared to a FortiGate or other firewalls."
"The product could be made more customizable."
"This solution is not mature when it comes to handling perimeter traffic like internet browsing."
"We find it's different implementing it region-to-region. It might help if it was universal across all regions."
"The ASAs are being replaced with the new Firepowers and they have a different type of structure in the configuration to be able to migrate from one to the other."
"ASDM needs to be able to customize applets."
"Tech support could not answer all of our questions. I had to do research on the web to solve my issues."
"The solution is overcomplicated in some senses. Simplifying it would be an improvement."
"The phishing emails could be improved."
"The service could use a little more web filtering. If I compare it to Cyberoam, Cyberoam has more the web filtering, so if you want to block a website, it's easier in other solutions than in Cisco."
"We are looking for software taxi capabilities."
"It lacks management. For me, it still doesn't have a proper management tool or GUI for configuration, logging, and visualization. Its management is not that easy. It is also not very flexible and easy to configure. They used to have a product called CSM, but it is no longer being developed. FortiGate is better than this solution in terms of GUI, flexibility, and user-friendliness."
Azure Firewall is ranked 17th in Firewalls with 33 reviews while Cisco Secure Firewall is ranked 4th in Firewalls with 404 reviews. Azure Firewall is rated 7.2, while Cisco Secure Firewall is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Azure Firewall writes "Easy to use and configure but could be more robust". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Cisco Secure Firewall writes "Highlights and helps us catch Zero-day vulnerabilities traveling across our network". Azure Firewall is most compared with Fortinet FortiGate-VM, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Palo Alto Networks VM-Series, Microsoft Defender for Cloud and Netgate pfSense, whereas Cisco Secure Firewall is most compared with Palo Alto Networks WildFire, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX, Sophos XG and WatchGuard Firebox. See our Azure Firewall vs. Cisco Secure Firewall report.
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