We performed a comparison between Cisco Secure Firewall and Fortinet FortiGate-VM based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Features: Cisco Secure Firewall provides important functionalities like protection against threats, visibility into applications, efficient problem-solving, compatibility with other Cisco offerings, and impressive data transfer rates. Fortinet FortiGate-VM stands out for its robust security features, geofencing capabilities, user-friendly interface, and ability to adapt to varying needs.
The reviews highlight various areas where both the Cisco Secure Firewall and the Fortinet FortiGate-VM need improvement, including network performance, policy administration, customization options, centralized management, logging functionality, public cloud functionality, cloud management, technical support, MFA offerings, web filtering options, application inspection, GUI features, availability and delivery, setup process, data center clustering, throughput enhancement, web application firewall integration, integration simplicity, policy customization, and web-filtering configuration improvement.
Service and Support: The opinions on customer service for Cisco Secure Firewall are divided, with some customers appreciating their technical support, while others express concerns about delays and difficulties. Fortinet FortiGate-VM receives mixed reviews, with some satisfied customers and others suggesting that their support could be improved.
Ease of Deployment: The setup process for Cisco Secure Firewall can be more complex depending on the user's familiarity and environment, while Fortinet FortiGate-VM offers a generally straightforward and easy initial setup, with assistance provided by Fortinet.
Pricing: The cost of setting up Cisco Secure Firewall can vary, and some reviewers find it pricey due to additional expenses for licensing, support, and hardware. Fortinet FortiGate-VM is seen as competitive and more affordable than certain alternatives. It provides flexible pricing options and includes support for entitlement in the licensing fees. However, costs may rise when scaling or adding extra features.
ROI: Cisco Secure Firewall offers different levels of ROI depending on how it is used and the overall system design, whereas Fortinet FortiGate-VM delivers enhanced security and stability, potentially resulting in ROI.
Comparison Results: Fortinet FortiGate-VM is the preferred choice when comparing it to Cisco Secure Firewall. Users find the initial setup of Fortinet FortiGate-VM to be straightforward and easy. Fortinet FortiGate-VM is highly praised for its strong security features, user-friendly interface, and easy deployment.
"The integration with Active Directory is one of the good features. Most of the customers are now looking for the Single Sign-on feature. So, being able to integrate Active Directory with the firewall is useful. It is also easy."
"FortiGate is flexible and easy to use."
"The solution is highly scalable because they have devices that can handle a large amount of traffic."
"Fortinet FortiGate is scalable for our users. Right now, we have almost 70 users. We do not have any plan to increase our usage of FortiGate. For maintaining the firewall solution, one staff member is enough."
"The features that I have found most valuable are that it is good to use, and most importantly, the pricing. The customer especially likes the discount when they trade up or something like that."
"Its performance in fulfilling our requirements has been satisfactory."
"It has very easy management and an amazing ETM configuration."
"Provides good firewall security and has great VPN features."
"The most important feature is the intensive way you can troubleshoot Cisco Firepower Firewalls. You can go to the bit level to see why traffic is not handled in the correct way, and the majority of the time it's a networking issue and not a firewall issue. You can solve any problem without Cisco TAC help, because you can go very deeply under the hood to find out how traffic is flowing and whether it is not flowing as expected. That is something I have never seen with other brands."
"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."
"I haven't had any major problems so I haven't had to open a ticket with technical support."
"The stability is very good; there's no vagueness. Either it works or it doesn't, and it's also very easy to find out why."
"It's got the capabilities of amassing a lot of throughput with remote access and VPNs."
"It is a highly stable product. We rarely receive any serious outdates, so it works quite well."
"For companies prioritizing security, the optimal choice is one that offers a range of feeds to cater to diverse needs. This is particularly crucial for organizations implementing DDoS mitigation. The preferred solutions typically align with the top server vendors, with Cisco, Forti, and Barracuda consistently ranking among the top three vendors we collaborate with."
"Application inspection, network segmentation, and encrypted traffic detection or encrypted traffic analysis (ETA) are valuable for our customers."
"High network throughput while providing leading edge network security technology for a competitive price."
"It provides an ease of management and configuration as well."
"Web filtering and the IPS functionality."
"The configuration, graphical interface and command line are easy to use."
"In spite of the solution being inexpensive, it has everything one would need."
"The performance overall is very good."
"The ease of access and user-friendly setup is a valuable feature. Fortinet proves to be particularly straightforward to configure, offering simplicity without complexity. Moreover, visibility is easily attainable due to certain factors. Price, implementation, and budget considerations play a role. When it comes to Cisco implementation, the process tends to be more intricate, which many customers find unfavourable for their business needs."
"The solution is very easy to set up. It doesn't take a lot of time and offers a quick deployment, so you can start using it almost right away."
"If I had any criticism that I would give FortiGate, it would be that they need to stop changing their logging format. Every time we do a firmware upgrade, it is a massive issue on the SIM. Parsers have to be rebuilt. Even the FortiGate guys came in and said that they don't play well in the sandbox."
"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."
"The stability of Fortinet FortiGate could improve."
"I haven't had a single issue since using Fortinet."
"It should be more stable. There should be full integration within Fortinet products themselves as well as with other third-party products. Especially when you're not dealing with SIEM and the correlation of the security box, we want Fortinet to be able to share that information with as many other products as it can."
"We would like to see better pricing."
"We would like to have the ability to disable some of the security functionalities."
"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."
"It integrates with other security products from Cisco, but sometimes, there can be glitches or errors."
"It can be improved when it comes to monitoring. Today, the logs from the firewalls could be improved a bit more without integrating with other devices."
"It would be nice if you didn't have to configure using a command-line interface. It's a bit technical that way."
"The user interface isn't as good as it could be. They should work to improve it. It would make it easier for customer management if it was easier to use."
"Cisco wasn't first-to-market with NGFWs... they should look at what other vendors are doing and try not only to be on the same wavelength but a little bit better."
"There is huge scope for improvement in URL filtering. The database that they have is not accurate. Their content awareness and categorization for URL filtering are not that great. We faced many challenges with their categorization and content awareness. They should improve these categorization issues."
"I would like it to be easier to work with and have a better user interface. It is not straightforward. You need to know the Cisco command-line interface."
"We would like to be able to manage a set of firewalls rather than individual firewalls. We haven't really looked into it or yet implemented it, but a single pane of glass would be helpful. We also use another vendor's firewalls, and they have a centralized management infrastructure that we have implemented, which makes it a little bit easier when you're managing lots of firewalls."
"The product's initial setup phase is a bit complex."
"Their offering for MFA isn't the cleanest."
"In the first two releases of FortiOS 5.6, we had some trouble with the SSL VPN service. Sometimes it stopped working, and the IPS daemon too."
"FortiGate should be more customer friendly and budgeted better."
"The user interface could be improved."
"The one thing that could be improved is the integration with the exchange. The gateway level controls can be enhanced a bit more. For example, it's still little here and there. You do get malicious attacks and suspicious emails like spam. It's not like Sophos where we got a lot of spam email, and yet, it's still relatively vulnerable. It can be upgraded, maybe with a fifth-generation firmware that it is ready for unknown threats."
"In the next release, we would like to see full integration with VMware NSX virtualized networks."
"Customization needs improvement."
Cisco Secure Firewall is ranked 4th in Firewalls with 404 reviews while Fortinet FortiGate-VM is ranked 9th in Firewalls with 113 reviews. Cisco Secure Firewall is rated 8.2, while Fortinet FortiGate-VM is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Cisco Secure Firewall writes "Highlights and helps us catch Zero-day vulnerabilities traveling across our network". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Fortinet FortiGate-VM writes "An easy-to-manage and configure tool that provides ample documentation to help with the setup phase". Cisco Secure Firewall is most compared with Palo Alto Networks WildFire, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX, Sophos XG and Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, whereas Fortinet FortiGate-VM is most compared with Azure Firewall, Palo Alto Networks VM-Series, Fortinet FortiOS, OPNsense and Zyxel Unified Security Gateway. See our Cisco Secure Firewall vs. Fortinet FortiGate-VM report.
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