We performed a comparison between Cisco Secure Firewall and Fortinet FortiOS 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."Good load balancing feature."
"The application control features, such as Facebook blocking and Spotify blocking, are the most valuable."
"It has improved our security capabilities."
"Anti-Spam web content filterinG."
"I like Fortinet's cloud management. It allows me to manage all my devices in different branches for three cloud accounts. Even though I use on-prem devices, I can manage everything on the cloud."
"The most important features of Fortinet FortiGate are the Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) and firewall control applications."
"FortiGate firewalls are user-friendly, and I like the security profiling features."
"Fortinet FortiGate is a scalable solution."
"They provide DDoS protection and multi-factor authentication. That is a good option as it enables work-from-home functionality."
"The product offers good scalability."
"The Packet Tracer is a really good tool. If someone calls because they're having problems, you can easily create fake traffic without having to do an extended packet capture. You can see, straight away, if there's a firewall rule allowing that traffic in the direction you're trying to troubleshoot."
"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."
"The most valuable features are the provision of internet access, AnyConnect, and VPN capabilities."
"The web interface was easy for me. The configuration is logical, so it's easy to use and easy to understand how to protect, how to open a port, how to manage and how to route a device. That's why I prefer Cisco. It's robust and I never have issues with the hardware. That's why I choose Cisco and not another vendor."
"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 feature set is fine and is rarely a problem."
"The pricing is excellent."
"The solution provides good firewall and antivirus protection."
"Firewall and overall management are valuable features."
"The initial setup is easy. It's the easiest firewall installation process on the market. I work with three or four other products and this one is the easiest."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiOS are the granular control and their interoperability is good."
"The interface is easy to understand, so when there are threats you get alerts. It's quite intuitive, but if you are ever confused they have instructional videos. For example, if you don't understand a graph there's a link to a video that explains what the graph means. It makes it very user-friendly."
"The most valuable features are the ease of use, and the overall simplicity, everyone can use it with a small introduction."
"Has a very simple OS and a good price point."
"The monitor and the visibility, in this proxy, is very weak."
"Its reporting and pricing need improvement."
"Currently, without the additional reporting module, we only have access to basic reporting."
"One of the features that I would like to have is to do with endpoint production, it should be integrated. For example, the firewall gets notified of any kind of forensic event that needs to be done, such as if there is a ransomware attack and how it originated, all those records have to be available from the firewall, which is not."
"The cloud features can be improved."
"Application management can be improved."
"The product does need better support in the cloud environment. It's not exactly cloud-native right now."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve by having more storage in the hardware for log data."
"Cisco's inspection visibility could be better."
"There's a little bit of a disconnect between Firepower’s management and the rest of the products, like DNA and Prime. The solution should have fewer admin portals for network, security, and firewalls."
"One of my colleagues is using the firewall as an IPS, but he is worried about Firepower's performance... With the 10 Gb devices, when it gets to 5 Gbps, the CPU usage goes up a lot and he cannot manage the IPS."
"I have found that Cisco reporting capabilities are not as rich as other products, so the reporting could be improved."
"I'm working on a slightly older version, but what it needs is a better alert management. It's pretty standard, but there's no real advanced features involved around it."
"Nowadays, nobody is in the office, so I need to figure out how to put the firewall outside. If I could have a centralized firewall that also receives information from external locations, like peoples' home offices, that would help us consolidate everything into one appliance."
"In the next release, I would like to see the VPN and UTM features included."
"I don't have to see all the object groups that have been created on that firewall. That's just something that I would really appreciate on the CLA, even though it already exists on the GUI."
"Lacks flexibility for different scenario configurations."
"The solution is good, but they have poor marketing in Nigeria. They need to market their product better."
"Fortinet FortiOS can improve by limiting the need for the CLI and GUI combination. The more functions they can have on the GUI and less on CLI would be helpful."
"The pricing of the product is too high."
"Their technical support needs improvement."
"A switch should be introduced."
"The solution needs to adjust its pricing models. With the way they are structured, everything is very disparate and sold separately, and, depending on the solution, it can get quite pricey."
"Real-time threat monitoring is not there."
Cisco Secure Firewall is ranked 4th in Firewalls with 404 reviews while Fortinet FortiOS is ranked 15th in Firewalls with 73 reviews. Cisco Secure Firewall is rated 8.2, while Fortinet FortiOS 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 FortiOS writes "Provides effective filtering features, good stability but initial setup is moderately challenging". 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 FortiOS is most compared with Fortinet FortiManager, Fortinet FortiWeb, Fortinet FortiGate-VM, Infoblox Advanced DNS Protection and Zyxel Unified Security Gateway. See our Cisco Secure Firewall vs. Fortinet FortiOS report.
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