We performed a comparison between Cisco Secure Firewall and SonicWall NSa based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Firewalls solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."The reporting and monitoring are very good."
"The notable features that I have found most valuable are that it includes the antivirus, and also IPS, and even SD-WAN."
"Our security improved from being able to put in rules and close off unwanted traffic."
"A strong point of FortiGate is that the graphical interface is complete and easy to use, especially if we think there is a list of operations that we are able to perform inside."
"The most valuable features are SD-WAN, application control, IPS control, and FortiSandbox."
"The most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiGate is load balancing. It can provide central management and VPNA. Additionally, it has enhanced our security environment."
"The performance is good."
"It's user-friendly and easy to operate."
"The configuration support is very good. You can find a lot of configuration samples and troubleshooting tips on the internet, which is very good."
"The remote VPN and IPsec VPN or site-to-site VPN features are valuable. The clustering feature is also valuable. We have two ISP links. Whenever there is a failover, users don't even get to know. The transition is very smooth, and the users don't notice any latency. So, remote VPN, site-to-site VPN, and failover are three very powerful features of Cisco ASA."
"Cisco tech is always good and helpful. I would rate them as 10 out of 10."
"One of the best features is the ease of use. It's also easy to teach new engineers to use the ASA CLI."
"The firepower sensors have been great; they do a good job of dropping unwanted traffic."
"The most valuable feature of the Firepower solution is FireSIGHT, which can be easily managed and is user-friendly."
"Previously, our customers had to always utilize hand-to-hand delivery. Now, they are able to move completely to a secure digital method. They use a strictly dark fiber optics connection from a central location to the endpoint."
"The most valuable feature for the customers is that they can control what communication is allowed and what is not allowed. That is, they can allow or deny client traffic."
"Content Filtering and sandboxing are valuable features."
"Setup is easy. Anyone with basic firewall experience can do it."
"What I like best about SonicWall NSa is the security it offers compared to other solutions in the market. Its reduction rate is also better than others."
"One of the main features is the built-in storage capacity."
"It's very simple to use and the support is great."
"The firewall feature is most valuable since my work is to analyze if there is any potential attack. SonicWall NSa gives the perfect analysis."
"The most valuable feature is the sandbox."
"We have utilized all the features. The most valuable are the URL filtering by category, DMZ zoning, load balancing and site-to-site VPN."
"It claims it does DLP, but the degree and level of controls are very basic."
"Reporting is limited to providing an external appliance for improving the reporting capabilities of the FortiAnalyzer. It does not offer a central management and is also sold separably as an appliance."
"The customization could be improved. Cisco, for example, is much better at this. They need to work to be at least as good as they are."
"The inability to scale the FortiAnalyzer to match our growth necessitates the purchase of new hardware."
"There are some problems that support cannot give you a logical reason as to why it happened. For example, I had a case where I was dealing with a WhatsApp application that was giving issues. Technical support gave more than one reason it could be giving issues, but none of them solved the problem. Eventually I solved the problem, but it was far from the solutions that support had given."
"Fortinet FortiGate can improve by integrating the web application firewall and the DDoS protection part of the solution. Having a WAF feature, web application firewall, and proxy together would be a good benefit."
"The user interface could be improved."
"I feel that the reporting needs to be improved."
"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."
"If I want to activate IPS features on it, I have to buy another license. If I want Cisco AnyConnect, I have to buy another license. That's where we have challenges."
"It is surprising that you need to have a virtual appliance for the Firepower Management Center. It is not good if you have to setup a VMware server just for it."
"I have a lot of difficulties with the solution's Firewall Management Center (FMC) and the GUI. Neither is responsive enough and should be improved."
"I think that the solution can be improved with the integration of application-centric infrastructure. It could be used to have better solutions in one box."
"<p>If there is old hardware, or appliances, it does not necessarily work with the new Cisco generation firewalls."
"This product is managed using the Firepower Management Center (FMC), but it would be better if it also supported the command-line interface (CLI)."
"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."
"Needs a more detailed reporting feature."
"One issue with the solution is that no authorization or authentication features exist."
"Competitors provide SSL encryption licenses for free, whereas SonicWall only provides two licenses by default, but you have to pay for the rest of the licenses."
"I would like to see better integration."
"We also use the Sophos Firewall for web configuration, which we don't have in SonicWall. Only Sophos has those options. If SonicWall included that feature, that would be a benefit for us."
"The security standards for space and point of view should be improved so that the solution deploys in critical areas."
"The content filter needs to be improved."
"We also need to increase the throughput because the other devices are slower. The throughput will become slow. Since we're using VoIP, it tends to affect the voice quality. Even if you're using a quality service, it tends to decrease."
Cisco Secure Firewall is ranked 4th in Firewalls with 404 reviews while SonicWall NSa is ranked 20th in Firewalls with 77 reviews. Cisco Secure Firewall is rated 8.2, while SonicWall NSa is rated 7.8. 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 SonicWall NSa writes "Great performance and security with reasonable pricing". Cisco Secure Firewall is most compared with Palo Alto Networks WildFire, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX, Sophos XG and Huawei NGFW, whereas SonicWall NSa is most compared with SonicWall TZ, Meraki MX, Sophos XG, Netgate pfSense and WatchGuard Firebox. See our Cisco Secure Firewall vs. SonicWall NSa report.
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