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.
"The customization potential is quite impressive."
"The CLI is robust and powerful, enabling rapid, consistent changes via SSH."
"The most valuable features are that it is very simple to configure and to manage."
"FortiGate is very simple to manage and easy to use."
"We use a southern institution that's audited for IT security and the reporting that automatically comes off the unit makes it much easier to meet compliance standards and makes it easier as far as the amount of time that has to be spent to compile that information. If you get your reporting set up correctly when you initially set it up, you just select the one you want and hit print. The auditing trail on it is the best feature."
"The initial installation is very straightforward."
"The pipe filter application is an outstanding feature."
"The signature database and zero-day detection are Fortinet FortiGate's most valuable features."
"One of the best features is that it natively integrates with Azure Services and tools. When you have a third-party offering, that is not the case. But Azure Firewall provides a comprehensive and seamless security solution for your Azure resources."
"The solution should be capable of self-scaling, which is one of the features we like about it."
"The feature that I have found the most valuable is the control over the network permissions and the network."
"Azure Firewall's feature that I have found most valuable is its scalability."
"I like its order management feature. It doesn't have the kind of threat intelligence that Palo Alto has, but the order management makes it much simpler to know the difference."
"Among the most valuable features are the DDoS protection that protects your virtual machines, the threat intelligence, and traffic filtering."
"It's helped us improve our security posture."
"The solution has many useful features. For example, the solution allows users to create virtual IP addresses."
"The IPS (In-plane switching) is the most valuable feature."
"For our very specific use case, for remote access for VPN, ASAs are very good."
"When I was managing these firewalls, I found them easy to understand, easy to deploy, and easy to maintain as compared to some of the other firewalls I have been involved with earlier. The opinion of my coworkers is that it's easy and quick to establish new zones, expand, and maintain."
"Cisco's engineer helped us with a lot of scripting to see what existed. Previously, we didn't have a proper policy. In fact, we didn't have any policy because we didn't have any firewall for the data center, so generating a policy was a big challenge. Cisco's engineer helped us to do some scripting and find out what kind of policy we can have and organize those policies. That was nice."
"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 Inline Mode configuration works really well, and ASA works very impressively."
"The most important feature is the VPN connection."
"The most valuable features of Cisco firewalls are the IPS and IDS items. We find them very helpful. Those are the biggest things because we have some odd, custom-made products in our environment. What we've found through their IPS and IDS is that their vulnerability engines have caught things that are near-Zero-day items, inside of our network."
"The solution could be more secure and stable."
"I'm not sure if it's something that they already have or are developing something, however, we need some dedicated features for container security."
"It would be nice if FortiGate incorporated some built-in endpoint protection features. I would also like a built-in SOC dashboard for managing multiple Fortinet firewalls."
"The monitor and the visibility, in this proxy, is very weak."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve the user interface. There should be more functionality and options through the GUI."
"The setup is pretty complex and not easy to implement."
"Monitoring and reporting could be better."
"To some degree, it's almost a question as to why some of this stuff isn't simpler. For example, for an AP deployment, while it's integrated, the number of steps that you have to go through in order to get the AP up, seems like a lot."
"It's a little heavy compared to a FortiGate or other firewalls."
"There should be better monitoring and logging. Currently, it is put in Sentinel. It should be more seamless and from the interface."
"This solution is not mature when it comes to handling perimeter traffic like internet browsing."
"They can improve the pricing of Azure Firewall."
"It would be much easier if the on-premises, firewall rules, had some kind of export-import possibility in place, which is not the case right now."
"The solution lacks artificial intelligence and machine learning. It might be in the roadmap. However, currently, it's not available."
"Azure Firewall has limited visibility for IDPS, no TLS inspection, no app ID, no user ID, no content ID, no device ID. There is no antivirus or anti-spyware. Azure Firewall doesn't scan traffic for malware unless it triggers an IDPS signature. There is no sandbox or machine learning functionality, meaning we are not protected from Zero-day threats. There is no DNS security and limited web categories."
"Currently, it only supports IP addresses, so you have to be specific about the IPs that are in your environment."
"It integrates with other security products from Cisco, but sometimes, there can be glitches or errors."
"I would like more features in conjunction with other solutions, like Fortinet."
"Maybe the dashboard could be a bit better."
"I would like to see an IE version of the solution where it is ruggedized."
"Cisco ASA is not a next-generation firewall product."
"The price and SD-WAN capabilities are the areas that need improvement."
"The product crashes. We have a cluster of firewalls and we regularly get failovers."
"We have to rely on Cisco ASDM to access the firewall interface. This needs improvement. Because we have a web-based interface, and it is a lot more user-friendly."
Azure Firewall is ranked 17th in Firewalls with 11 reviews while Cisco Secure Firewall is ranked 4th in Firewalls with 112 reviews. Azure Firewall is rated 7.2, while Cisco Secure Firewall is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Azure Firewall writes "Made our solution safer, more scalable, but manual configuration for deployment could be better". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Cisco Secure Firewall writes "Includes multiple tools that help manage and troubleshoot, but needs SD-WAN for load balancing". 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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