We performed a comparison between Cisco IOS Security and Meraki MX 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 interface, which is very user friendly. We are utilizing most of the features, like content filtering. The firewall is powerful."
"Customers are more inclined towards FortiGate because of application control, web filtering, and anti-spam features. The support from the FortiGate team is good, and price-wise, it is affordable."
"The most valuable feature is the ease of configuration."
"The threat prevention is the solution's most valuable aspect."
"You can purchase switches and you don't need to do anything with them. You just put in the firewall and the switches get all the policies and rules that you already have in the firewall. With Fortinet, you just connect the FortiSwitch to the Fortinet and that's it."
"The most valuable features are the enterprise modeling and the simple interface."
"The main benefit is the grouping of our security monitoring."
"The usage in general is pretty good."
"The technical is excellent."
"One of the valuable features of the solution is its flexibility and it performs great."
"In Pakistan, we only use Cisco because they have good local support infrastructure. Huawei and Fortinet don't offer direct support in Pakistan."
"The capabilities for scalability with this product are huge"
"Cisco products are very secure and integrate easily with other devices."
"The product is easy to use."
"Cisco IOS allows us to keep the same security features as our principal offices."
"The most valuable features are DNS service and shell self-service within a network."
"Deployment takes no more than one working day."
"In general, Meraki MX is easy to work with."
"Its ease of configuration and management is very useful for us and for other companies that don't have an onsite IT person. It is easy to configure and easy to manage. It is easy to configure the VPN with the Auto VPN feature."
"Easy to deploy with a simple configuration."
"Managed centrally over the web: You can manages all your Meraki devices in a single account."
"I love the simplicity of Meraki MX — specifically, the simplicity of the dashboard."
"Traffic Shaping: The device lets you decide how you want to use your internet services. Due to the fact that Meraki can accept dual WAN, you can decide the way you balance the data traffic."
"The simplicity of configuration is the most valuable feature of the solution."
"They are doing good, but they can improve the distributor assignment. The availability of the product and the timeline of delivery are the main things. The distribution should be swift, and the distributor should not reach out to end customers directly. They should work as a distributor. There should also be one more local distributor. Currently, there is only one distributor in Pakistan, and the rest of them are in UAE. It is difficult to work with only one distributor. Sometimes, you don't get along with the same distributor, and that's why they should have one more distributor. Their licensing should also be improved. The activation or renewal of the product should be done from the date of renewal, not from the date on which the license expired."
"I don't really have anything negative to say as far as Fortinet firewalls are concerned. If anything, they can support a user a little bit better. They can stop being so time-sensitive about how much time the support call has taken, and they can help you do it yourself."
"Fortinet FortiGate needs to improve to be on par with its competitors, such as Palo Alto and Sophos. They are the market leaders. Fortinet FortiGate needs to improve its capabilities. However, we are happy with Fortinet FortiGate."
"Reporting is limited to providing an external appliance for improving the reporting capabilities of the FortiAnalyzer. It does not offer a central management and is also sold separably as an appliance."
"In the future, I would like to see improvements made to cloud-based management."
"They should improve high CPU and memory usage that occurs."
"Its price could be better."
"The logs need to be better. They need to be more visible and easier to access."
"If they could increase the performance a little better because the device sometimes gets slow."
"In the next release of this solution, we would like to see support for the 100BT and 7000 models."
"Cisco is a scalable product, but it is expensive compared to other vendors."
"I would like to see much more embedded security that works and that isn't a bolt-on."
"I wish it would be more like the next generation firewall technology. There should be more selection between the application and filtering."
"Sometimes I find it difficult to manage. Some configurations are difficult for new engineers, for example."
"The initial setup is complicated."
"There are the usual bugs that are inherent to some software upgrades. Sometimes this provides some unexpected issues, however, it happens with all brands all the time."
"The whole Cisco Meraki range requires easier access for cameras. For a security center, it would be helpful to have easier access to cameras through the portal. Its licensing cost could also be better."
"The IPS, the Intrusion Prevention System, can be improved."
"We feel that Cisco provides smaller features, with fewer possibilities versus other solutions out there."
"The product doesn't support route summarization and BGP dynamic routing protocol."
"As far as what needs to be improved — nothing really comes to mind. It does what we need it to do."
"Load balancing options and ability to manage a couple of Internet connections."
"From the improvement perspective, we need more monitoring capabilities. We want to have full-based access visibility, such as, what is happening when something is trying to reach and it is denying. We cannot see some parts of it. The integration of active directory with this product is not very fruitful. It has some bugs or lacks in the functionality of active directory integration. We are unable to identify where exactly and whether it has really applied our policy."
"They're very complacent and I find the rule set to be a little arcane."
Cisco IOS Security is ranked 22nd in Firewalls with 47 reviews while Meraki MX is ranked 2nd in Unified Threat Management (UTM) with 57 reviews. Cisco IOS Security is rated 8.0, while Meraki MX 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 Meraki MX writes "Cost-effective, simplified, easy to manage, and reliable with advanced security features and granular visibility". Cisco IOS Security is most compared with Cisco Secure Firewall, Fortinet FortiOS, Netgate pfSense, OPNsense and Palo Alto Networks URL Filtering with PAN-DB, whereas Meraki MX is most compared with Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Cisco Secure Firewall, Sophos XG, SonicWall TZ and Netgate pfSense. See our Cisco IOS Security vs. Meraki MX report.
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