We performed a comparison between Cisco IOS Security and Cisco Secure Firewall 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 most valuable feature is the ease of use."
"It's a user-friendly firewall. Most of the tasks are very simple. It's simple to configure and troubleshoot this firewall."
"The multi-tenancy feature is most valuable. It integrates very well with FortiManager and FortiAnalyzer."
"FortiGate firewalls are easy to manage through a user-friendly web interface. They also have advanced features like DDoS and DLP. However, I wouldn't recommend enabling all of these features on one device because it can cause performance issues."
"The scalability is good in Fortinet FortiGate."
"I like that you are able to manage FortiGate from the FortiManager to create a more centralized environment."
"I like several features that this product has, such as antivirus and internet navigation inspection. It is also simple to use."
"Good performance, stability, and virtual domain ability."
"The security is very good."
"The hardware is pretty stable. It's also a very good product performance-wise. Initially, it wasn't mature like a firewall and there were other leaders, but now they have included almost all the features of next-generation security. Basically, it's a good product to work with."
"You can scale it when you need to."
"The Intrusion Firewall is a valuable feature."
"The stability of this solution is excellent."
"The solution is very user-friendly and easy to deal with."
"We use Cisco IOS Security mostly for routers to route off the firewall. It's a next-generation device."
"The VPN is the most valuable feature."
"The solution is excellent for enterprise-level networks."
"The product offers good scalability."
"Being able to use it as a policy-based VPN is valuable. It's very easy to understand. It's very easy to troubleshoot."
"Once you add Firepower onto to it and you start enabling some of its features, you get some IDS/IPS involved with it and you can even do web filtering."
"The most valuable features are the IPsec VPN and web filtering."
"The features I found most valuable in this solution, are the overall security features."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is its ability to integrate vertically."
"They provide DDoS protection and multi-factor authentication. That is a good option as it enables work-from-home functionality."
"The firmware needs improvement because there are bugs when a new release comes through. Sometimes, the configuration changes, and it's a bit harder to see where the fail is. The first time that you have the firmware, it tends to have some issues, and it's better to wait a bit to update the equipment."
"The reports are very basic."
"FortiGate should have a better way of detecting and managing the system memory because otherwise if the memory is too low, a system restart is required."
"It is stable, but its stability can be improved."
"The logging details need to be improved."
"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."
"One issue that I have had is that sometimes I need to monitor the traffic, so I need to filter it according to the user and which user is using it the most. I experience a bottleneck most of the time, particularly at the peak time when the number of contracts and users are at maximum."
"Some of the software stability could improve."
"The configuration and reporting interfaces need a lot of improvement. It needs to be more accessible forsolide without a strong technical background. If you had a simplified dashboard, the lower-level techs could manage the solution and provide services. Cisco IOS Security requires someone who is highly trained to operate it."
"Cisco IOS Security should improve its functionalities."
"I would like upgrading iOS to be a bit easier."
"Cisco IOS Security could improve by having more compatibility with other Cisco solutions."
"The solution’s setup process could be better."
"Cisco is a scalable product, but it is expensive compared to other vendors."
"It takes too much time to deploy a policy to FMC. It takes around eight minutes. You can't afford any downtime when you're changing policies."
"We cannot directly upgrade the system. The tool's deployment is also very difficult in legacy environments. The tool needs to have bigger ports as well."
"Antivirus features must be integrated for end user security."
"I see room for improvement when it comes to integrating all the devices into a central management system. Cisco doesn't provide this, but there are some good products in the market that can provide it."
"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 performance should be improved."
"Most of the features don't work well, and some features are missing as well."
"Changes you make in the GUI sometimes do not reflect in the command line and vice versa."
"The process of procuring modern-day technology within the DOD needs to improve."
"I would like it to have faster deployment times. A typical deployment could take two to three minutes. Sometimes, it depends on the situation. It is better than it was in the past, but it could always use improvement."
Cisco IOS Security is ranked 22nd in Firewalls with 47 reviews while Cisco Secure Firewall is ranked 4th in Firewalls with 404 reviews. Cisco IOS Security is rated 8.0, while Cisco Secure Firewall is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Cisco IOS Security writes "User-friendly and excels in documentation, making it easier to resolve issues". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Cisco Secure Firewall writes "Highlights and helps us catch Zero-day vulnerabilities traveling across our network". Cisco IOS Security is most compared with Meraki MX, Fortinet FortiOS, Netgate pfSense, OPNsense and Palo Alto Networks URL Filtering with PAN-DB, whereas Cisco Secure Firewall is most compared with Palo Alto Networks WildFire, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX, Sophos XG and Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls. See our Cisco IOS Security vs. Cisco Secure Firewall report.
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