We performed a comparison between Cisco Secure Firewall and McAfee Firewall Enterprise MFE [EOL] based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Netgate, Fortinet, OPNsense and others in Firewalls.
"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."
"I really like the captive portal feature for our guest network. It has nice VLAN features in terms of separating our network. The anti-virus is also good."
"One of the nice things about FortiGate is that it can be deployed on the cloud or on-premises. You can actually do both. That's the biggest reason why I stick with this solution as opposed to something like Cisco Meraki. Another nice thing is that I can log directly into a FortiGate or get to it through their FortiCloud access products. They're pretty reliable and consistent. One of the reasons why I started using the product was their single pane of management. I can deploy their line of firewalls in conjunction with their switching and access points, and I can manage the entire network from one interface. I don't have to log into one interface for the firewall, another one for the access points, and another one for the switches. These firewalls have access point controller functionality built right into the system, so I don't even have to purchase additional devices to manage them."
"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."
"Fortinet FortiGate is scalable for our users. Right now, we have almost 70 users. We do not have any plan to increase our usage of FortiGate. For maintaining the firewall solution, one staff member is enough."
"The initial installation is very straightforward."
"We purchased Fortinet because of the pricing, its functionality, because it met our requirements, and the total cost of ownership over five years was quite reasonable. In the market, Fortinet is rated quite well."
"We've found the solution to be pretty stable."
"Netting is one of the best features. We can modify it in different ways. Site-to-site VPN is also an awesome feature of Cisco ASA. The biggest advantage of Cisco products is technical support. They provide the best technical support."
"The protection and security features, like URL filtering, the inspection, and the IPS feature, are also very valuable for us. We don't have IT staff at most of the sites so for us it's important to have a robust firewall at those sites"
"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."
"The most valuable feature is the Intrusion Prevention System."
"The monitoring dashboard is valuable to us for troubleshooting."
"I like the user interface because the navigation is very easy, straightforward on your left side pane you have all the sites that you need to browse. Unlike any other firewalls, it's pretty straightforward."
"You can also put everything into a nice, neat, little package, as far as configuration goes. I was formerly a command-line guy with the ASA, and I was a little nervous about dealing with a GUI interface versus a command line, but after I did my first deployment, I got a lot more comfortable with doing it GUI based."
"It is a comprehensive suite and complete package."
"It does give certain protection for everything that is well configured on our McAfee server. We have good protection with it. If we could find a feature and make it work, it would work perfectly, there would be no bugs, and it would be really good."
"The logging details need to be improved."
"There are SD-WAN network monitoring, SD-WAN features, Industrial Databases, Internet of Things, Detection, etc., however, we do have not licenses for those features. We thought that if you bought a product, you should have all of the features it offers. Why should you need to make so many extra purchases to enable features? They should have one price for the entire offering."
"Some features of Fortinet FortiGate are actually fee enabled that are inconvenient for deploying in production. Other issues relate to isolation with Cisco products and your server."
"It is stable, but its stability can be improved."
"Currently, without the additional reporting module, we only have access to basic reporting."
"Their software support needs improvement. I would prefer to have better support for bug fixes. Sometimes, we open a ticket, and it is very difficult to get a solution. Specifically, we are not at all happy with their support for load balancing."
"The pricing could be reduced or include the first year warranty."
"Technical support is good but the response time could be faster."
"One big pain point I have is the ASDM interface because it's Java, and sometimes, it's a bit buggy and has low performance. That's something that probably won't be improved because of backward compatibility."
"It's mainly the UI and the management parts that need improvement. The most impactful feature when you're using it is the user interface and the user experience."
"The graphical interface could be improved. From what I have seen, Fortinet, for example, has a nicer GUI."
"I would like for them to develop better integration with other security platforms."
"With the new FTD, there is a little bit of a learning curve."
"Managing various product integrations, such as Umbrella, is challenging."
"Security generally requires integration with many devices, and the management side of that process could be enhanced somewhat. It would help if there was a clear view of the integrations and what the easiest way to do them is."
"FirePOWER does a good job when it comes to providing us with visibility into threats, but I would like to see a more proactive stance to it."
"Customer support and AV are both lacking and are really hard to come to you when the product is installed. Those are the two major points that they need to work on."
Earn 20 points
Cisco Secure Firewall is ranked 4th in Firewalls with 404 reviews while McAfee Firewall Enterprise MFE [EOL] doesn't meet the minimum requirements to be ranked in Firewalls. Cisco Secure Firewall is rated 8.2, while McAfee Firewall Enterprise MFE [EOL] is rated 7.0. 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 McAfee Firewall Enterprise MFE [EOL] writes "For managing multiple MFE firewalls it is incredibly handy but it could be easier for customers to migrate from one version to another. ". Cisco Secure Firewall is most compared with Palo Alto Networks WildFire, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX, Sophos XG and Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, whereas McAfee Firewall Enterprise MFE [EOL] is most compared with .
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