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.
"Valuable features include DMZ segmentation, and IDS and IPS."
"The most valuable feature is the access control list (ACL)."
"It is pretty stable. I haven't seen many issues during the past four years."
"Its Snort 3 IPS has better flexibility as far as being able to write rules. This gives me better granularity."
"Stability is perfect. I haven't had any problems."
"I love the ASDM (Adaptive Security Device Manager) which is the management suite. It's a GUI and you're able to see everything at a glance without using the command line. There are those who love the CLI, but with ASDM it is easier to see where everything is going and where the problems are."
"Valuable features include AnyConnect, double translations, and an independent IPS module."
"The most valuable feature we have found to be the VPN because we use it often."
"Easy to use support and licensing portal as well as activation process."
"The usage in general is pretty good."
"The most valuable features are SD-WAN, application control, IPS control, and FortiSandbox."
"Good anti-malware and web filtering features."
"It has very easy management and an amazing ETM configuration."
"I like Fortinet FortiGate's antispam filter, SPN, and clustering features."
"We are a visual effects company, and there have been a number of high profile security issues in our industry. This has brought us to a higher standard of security, which our clients are very keen on these days."
"You can create multiple Virtual Domains (VDOMs), which are treated as separate firewall instances."
"We're getting support but there's a big delay until we get a response from their technical team. They're in the USA and we're in Africa, so that's the difficulty. When they're in the office, they respond."
"The IPS module is combined with the main operating system."
"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."
"The worst part of the entire solution, and this is kind of trivial at times, is that management of the solution is difficult. You manage FireSIGHT through an internet browser. I've had Cisco tell me to manage it through Firefox because that's how they develop it. The problem is, depending on the page you're on, they don't function in the same way. The pages can be very buggy, or you can't resize columns in this one, or you can't do certain things in that one. It causes a headache in managing it."
"The use of it has really bogged down our response time for certain problems, given we have to go through AT&T for everything."
"Cisco ASA is starting to get old and Firepower is taking over. All the good things happening are with Firepower."
"Firewalls, in general, were not really designed for normal IT personnel, but for firewall and network experts. Therefore, they missed a lot of options and did not provide any good reporting or improvement options."
"The product would be improved if the GUI could be brought into the 21st Century."
"Fortinet Fortigate could benefit by simplifying some of their processes."
"In some cases, its initial setup could be hard for customers."
"There are some complex administration tasks in their administration portal. That needs to be improved."
"I would like to have logs, monitoring, and reporting for a month without extra fees."
"Technical support could be better. You don't always get the level of help you need right away."
"The routing capability on the FortiGate devices has room for improvement."
"It is quite new for us, and we need to go more in-depth into the monitoring tools. It provides different features that we need to do what we want. So far, it is okay for us. In terms of improvement, in the future, they can provide a faster implementation of features. Some of the features are first available in other solutions. Fortinet sometimes takes a little bit longer than other solutions, such as Check Point, to implement new features."
"I would like some automated custom reporting."
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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