We performed a comparison between Cisco Secure Firewall and Hillstone E-Series 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 license management is very valuable. You can get a new license each year, or you can enroll every two to four years. You can get the logs, and you will get the information on the risk in your network and the entire organization. With this information, you can take action on your actives, computers, or devices. You can bring your own device as an SSE."
"The inspection and web security features are most valuable."
"The Intrusion Prevention System and the web filtering are both working well."
"A strong point of FortiGate is the graphical interface is complete and easy to use."
"You can create multiple Virtual Domains (VDOMs), which are treated as separate firewall instances."
"It is very flexible to use."
"It is a one box solution, which covers most of the edge device’s requirements."
"The most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiGate is security. They are known for efficiency and are on the top of Gartner Quadrant reviews. Fortinet FortiGate has an easy-to-use platform with a good graphical interface. The configuration is simple and the solution provides an overall good layer of security."
"ASA 5505 and ASA 5506 are very powerful tools to use in a business environment, and provide a lot of security."
"The content filtering is good."
"Easy to deploy in a working environment between servers and users."
"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."
"Cisco Secure Firewall is a good solution. In some ways, it is a reactive solution and we have it sitting in a whitelist mode rather than a blacklist mode. It seems to work fairly well for us."
"IPSec Tunnel and AnyConnect (of course), the context awareness was a good feature, but clumsy at the beginning. I think it's better now."
"The solution offers very easy configurations."
"The most valuable feature is the access control list (ACL)."
"The installation is easy, we have not had any complaints from our customers."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"I am impressed with the application filtering feature."
"Very reliable solution with good scalability and straightforward implementation."
"Five out of five ROI."
"The initial setup was straightforward. It only took a few hours to deploy."
"Working with the Hillstone E-Series has, from a remote perspective, allowed me to give my clients a secure connectivity."
"This solution has two main features that we find very valuable; a threat-intelligence option, and a web/application filtering option. The technical support team are very good and very quick."
"Scalability for Fortinet FortiGate needs to be improved. SD-WAN security for this solution also needs some improvement."
"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."
"They can do more tests before they release new versions because I would like to be more assured. We had some experiences where they release something new and great, but some of the old features are disabled or they don't work well, which impacts the product satisfaction. The manufacturer should be able to prove that everything works or not only that it might work. This is applicable to most of the other services, software, and hardware companies. They all should work on this. We cannot trust every new release, such as a beta release, on the first day. We wait for some comments on the forums and from other companies that we know. We always wait a few weeks before we use the updated version. They should also extend the VPN client application, especially for Linux versions. Currently, it has an application for Linux devices, but it doesn't work the way we want to connect to the VPN. They use only the old connection, not the new one. They have VPN client applications for Windows and Mac, but they can add more useful features to better manage the devices and monitor the current health of each device. Such features would be helpful for our company."
"Fortinet FortiGate needs to improve the protection, it did not prevent us from being attacked. Additionally, Fortinet FortiGate could provide more features for WAF devices. I should not have to purchase two solutions, it would be a benefit to combine these features into one solution."
"It would be a benefit if Fortinet would release a one-stop solution that is better integrated with other products and an automated emergency response system."
"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."
"Fortinet FortiGate is a stable solution. However, my issue is the performance only. When I use all the profiles, this affects the performance. From the beginning, I should have had a better sizing of the box."
"Fortinet doesn't provide multiple virtual firewalls which would facilitate end users and customers."
"Deploying configurations takes longer than it should."
"The worst part of the entire solution, and this is kind of trivial at times, is that management of the solution is difficult. You manage FireSIGHT through an internet browser. I've had Cisco tell me to manage it through Firefox because that's how they develop it. The problem is, depending on the page you're on, they don't function in the same way. The pages can be very buggy, or you can't resize columns in this one, or you can't do certain things in that one. It causes a headache in managing it."
"The GUI interface could be improved when compared to other solutions."
"The intelligence has room for improvement. There are some hackers that we haven't seen before and its ability to detect those types of attacks needs to be improved."
"If the implementation was easier, it would be a lot better for us."
"The license system is also good but it's not very impressive. It's a very regular licensing system. They call it a smart license which means that your device will connect to the internet. This is a little bit of a headache for some customers. It doesn't make the customer happy because most of the customers prefer not to connect their firewall or system to the internet."
"Critical bugs need to be addressed before releasing the version."
"Even on a smaller scale, people are finding you need HA pairs, and there's no way that the ASA can do that, at least in the virtual version."
"The tool provides just a general report. It does not provide a granular report. Hence, the tool should work on its reporting feature."
"I am not sure if this solution offers active directory integration. Adding that feature will definitely be an advantage."
"Having frequent live webinars on a monthly basis would really help."
"The current usage reporting is very basic."
"The solution doesn't have a web proxy built into the system like Sophos. This is something they should work to change."
"Support from Hillstone E-Series has a shortcoming that needs improvement."
"SSL VPN license cost is not cheap."
"The tool needs to improve its price."
Cisco Secure Firewall is ranked 4th in Firewalls with 404 reviews while Hillstone E-Series is ranked 33rd in Firewalls with 9 reviews. Cisco Secure Firewall is rated 8.2, while Hillstone E-Series is rated 9.0. 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 Hillstone E-Series writes "A user-friendly and marketable solution with a virtual switching capability". Cisco Secure Firewall is most compared with Palo Alto Networks WildFire, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX, Sophos XG and Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, whereas Hillstone E-Series is most compared with Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Sophos XG, OpenVPN Access Server, Netgate pfSense and Fortinet FortiClient. See our Cisco Secure Firewall vs. Hillstone E-Series report.
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