We performed a comparison between Cisco Secure Firewall and WatchGuard Firebox based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: The two solutions are very comparable. WatchGuard Firebox received slightly better ratings because it is easier to deploy than Cisco Secure Firewall.
"The base firewall features are quite valuable to us."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the analytics."
"Fortigate is very scalable to serve our customers' needs. We have scaled already from fifty to more than a hundred instances of Fortinet FortiGate. Around 20 staff are required for deployment and maintenance, mostly engineers."
"It's super reliable. I don't think I've ever had a reliability issue with it."
"It is quite easy to handle."
"It is easy to use. We chose this product for the possibility to have virtual domains (VDOMs). We are building another company in the group, and we would like to split the firewalling rules and policies between these two companies. Each company would be able to manage its own policies and security rules, which is an advantage of Fortinet FortiGate. We can define VDOMs, and every company can manage its own VDOM as if it has its own physical firewall, but in fact, we would be using the same physical appliance because we are also using the same internet lines. So, it allows us to reuse the existing resources without the disadvantage of having to compromise on policies and security. Each company can choose its own way of working."
"Overall, the pricing of the solution is very good. The product offers good value."
"This version is stable. I don't have any issues with this solution, in our environment, it works well."
"Signature-based detection; user-defined signatures with regular expressions; integrated URL and content filtering; custom URL categories filtering."
"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 TAC is always very helpful. We pay for Tier 1 support, so we get whatever we need from them. They always give us a solution. If they can't give us an answer that day, they get back to us within at least 24 hours with a solution or fix. I have never had a problem with the TAC. I would rate them as 10 out of 10."
"The most valuable feature must be AnyConnect. We have quite a few customers who use it. It is easy to use and the stablest thing that we have. We have experienced some issues on all our VPN clients, but AnyConnect has been the stablest one."
"What I found the most valuable about Cisco Secure Firewall is that if a client is educated about the solution, it can help him or her avoid many problems and mistakes."
"It integrates with various Cisco security portfolios and products, and there is an easy and seamless integration for building a complete security framework for our customers."
"Cisco ASA is very strong."
"Cisco's technical support is the best and that's why everybody implements their products."
"The most valuable feature is the NAT-ing, the IP addresses... We can direct the traffic where it needs to go. We can control the traffic."
"If there is any conflict, the reporting feature will kick out all types of information, which is great."
"The most valuable feature of WatchGuard Firebox is its ease of use."
"Easy to change the model if you need more performance, with good cohesion in the whole lineup of devices."
"Two of the functionalities we use most are the traffic monitoring and the full panel dashboard. Those are two things that are very useful for us... In addition, it provides us with layered security. It allows us to determine what types of access, to which networks, we want to allow or deny."
"Simple to move settings between WatchGuard boxes."
"The set up was quite straightforward and we handled it in-house. It took a few hours to deploy the product."
"The most valuable feature for small and medium businesses is the support for various protocol proxies."
"They need to improve their technical support."
"It is very expensive, and their support is not very good. I hope that their technical support will be better in the future."
"The routing capability on the FortiGate devices has room for improvement."
"The central management for the FortiGate Fortinet Firewall needs improvement. They have the manager to do the essential management for both SD-WAN and for the security policy. They should also improve the SD-WAN function."
"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."
"I feel that the reporting needs to be improved."
"Stability and technical support are the two major issues I have found with Fortinet."
"I would like to see a more intuitive dashboard."
"The product would be improved if the GUI could be brought into the 21st Century."
"In terms of functionality, there isn't much to improve. There could be more bandwidth and better interface speed."
"The phishing emails could be improved."
"It is slowly not supported and other vendors are a few years ahead of Cisco in development."
"The interface for monitoring could be improved to allow better views to make troubleshooting easier."
"It is my understanding that they are in the process of discontinuing this device."
"The software was very buggy, to the point it had to be removed."
"In Firepower, there is an ability to search and dig into a search, which is nice. However, I'm not a super fan of the way it scrolls. If you want to look at something live, it's a lot different. You're almost waiting. With the ASDM, where it just flows, you can really see it. The second someone clicks something or does something, you'll see it. The refresh rate on the events in Firepower is not as smooth."
"Setup of this solution is complex, it's not plug and play."
"Cloud-based central administration of all devices from one point would be nice"
"I would like to see the devices made more flexible by adding modules to increase the ports that we can use."
"The VPN aspect of the WatchGuard Firebox is an area that could potentially benefit from improvement. We encountered difficulties while attempting to integrate Windows 11 laptops into the system, which resulted in unreliable connections. After some research, we discovered that this was primarily due to compatibility issues with Windows 11 and required a patch. However, it was still a challenge as it seemed that even when we tried to keep the laptops on Windows 10, they still exhibited the same issues as Windows 11 machines. Despite WatchGuard attributing the problem to Microsoft, we were eventually able to find a solution and all the machines are now functioning seamlessly."
"We use WatchGuard to manage our failover for internet. If a primary internet goes down, it does a failover to the secondary the internet. However, what it doesn't do so well is that if the primary internet has a lot of latency but it's not completely down, it doesn't do a failover to the backup in a timely manner."
"Its documentation could be improved. Sometimes, you need to search a bit longer to find what you are looking for."
"An area for improvement is that when we use a web administration link, there is no security."
"This solution needs the option to add an external hard drive."
Cisco Secure Firewall is ranked 4th in Firewalls with 404 reviews while WatchGuard Firebox is ranked 13th in Firewalls with 78 reviews. Cisco Secure Firewall is rated 8.2, while WatchGuard Firebox is rated 8.6. 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 WatchGuard Firebox writes "Offers a streamlined deployment, intuitive interface and robust security features". Cisco Secure Firewall is most compared with Palo Alto Networks WildFire, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX, Sophos XG and Sophos UTM, whereas WatchGuard Firebox is most compared with Netgate pfSense, Sophos XG, OPNsense, SonicWall TZ and Sophos UTM. See our Cisco Secure Firewall vs. WatchGuard Firebox report.
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