We performed a comparison between Cisco Secure Firewall and Fortinet Fortigate based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Based on the parameters we compared, Fortinet Fortigate comes out on top. Its ease of deployment combined with its solid set of features and excellent service and support ratings make it a more desirable solution than Cisco Secure Firewall.
"The most valuable features for my client are the ASDM and monitoring."
"Ease of configuration: It has gotten a lot easier to configure compared to the original Cisco Pix."
"Since the product is stable, we do not have to spend additional money to buy other firewalls. Once deployed, we can use the product for a long time. Thus, it is cost effective."
"The VPN is our most widely used feature for Cisco Secure Firewall. Since we were forced into a hybrid working situation by COVID a few years back, VPN is the widely used feature because everybody is working remotely for our agency. So it came in very handy."
"At this point, we find that this product has high productivity and high availability and there is no need for improvement."
"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."
"Valuable features include AnyConnect, double translations, and an independent IPS module."
"One of the most valuable features is the GUI front end, which is very easy to use. But I'm also a command-line guy, and being able to access the device via command-line for advanced troubleshooting is quite important."
"Our project needs to link two sides through the internet. One of these was in Cairo and the other in another city. We used FortiGate as the integrating solution between the two locations, i.e. the Fortinet 30E & 100E."
"In terms of security, we have not experienced any security flaws or loopholes, and it has proven to be quite stable."
"Fortinet FortiGate protects against internet-based threats, both internal and external. It is scalable, stable, easy to use, and easy to install."
"I like how we can achieve total integration."
"The IPS is good. It protect my network from attackers."
"Provides good firewall security and has great VPN features."
"This version is stable. I don't have any issues with this solution, in our environment, it works well."
"You can create multiple Virtual Domains (VDOMs), which are treated as separate firewall instances."
"One of the challenges we've had with the Cisco ASA is the lack of a strong controller or central management console that is dependable and reliable all the time."
"The Firepower FTD code is missing some old ASA firewalls codes. It's a small thing. But Firepower software isn't missing things that are essential, anymore."
"I would like to see them add more next-generation features so that you don't need a lot of appliances to do just one task. It should be a single solution."
"They need a user-friendly interface that we could easily configure."
"The SSL VPN is, and always has been, painful to configure and the Java plugin does not guarantee a uniform deployment."
"You need to have a little bit of knowledge to be able to configure it. Otherwise, it would be very difficult to configure because there is no GUI. The latest software available in the market has a GUI and probably zero-touch provisioning and auto-configuration. All these things are not available in our version. You need to manually go and configure everything in the switch. In terms of new features, we would definitely want to have URL-based filtering, traffic steering, and probably a little bit steering in the bandwidth based on the per-user level and per-user group. We will definitely need some of these features in the near future."
"The IPS module is combined with the main operating system."
"The configuration in Firepower Management Center is very slow. Deployment takes two to three minutes. You spend a lot of time on modifications. Whereas, in FortiGate, you press a button, and it takes one second."
"The firewall engine is not so strong as of now, in my opinion... My second concern is that, while they have Zero-day vulnerability and anti-malware features, the threat engine needs to be strengthened, its efficiency can be increased."
"Fortinet should focus on enhancing the capabilities of FortiGate by consolidating its various products, such as FortiGate Cloud, FortiManager, and FortiAnalyzer."
"Quality control on their firmware versions needs improvement. When they introduce new firmware, there tend to be bugs."
"A lack of integration between our data centers."
"Fortinet FortiGate can improve the integration with Active Directory. Additionally, I would like to have a Cloud Controller, such as they do in the Cisco Meraki solution."
"The cloud features can be improved."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve the user interface. There should be more functionality and options through the GUI."
"We would like to have the ability to disable some of the security functionalities."
Cisco Secure Firewall is ranked 4th in Firewalls with 404 reviews while Fortinet FortiGate is ranked 2nd in Firewalls with 306 reviews. Cisco Secure Firewall is rated 8.2, while Fortinet FortiGate 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 FortiGate writes "It's a reliable solution that's easy to install and cheaper than competitors ". 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 FortiGate is most compared with Sophos XG, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX, Check Point NGFW and WatchGuard Firebox. See our Cisco Secure Firewall vs. Fortinet FortiGate report.
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