We performed a comparison between Cisco Umbrella and Fortinet FortiGate SWG based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Cisco Umbrella is the winner in this comparison. It is a powerful and reliable tool with a proven ROI. It also received higher marks in the Support category.
"The most valuable features are the antivirus as a whole, the anti-malware, and all of the protection features that scan our enterprise devices."
"The protection offered by the product is the most valuable feature. It detects vulnerabilities or traps on our users' phones and then prompts them to clean up their devices. Tools we used previously would only discover, which required us to gather information on the backend, so Lookout is a welcome upgrade."
"The solution is stable."
"On the outside, the main differentiation is because Lookout ingest. They have ingested basically all of the apps for the last ten years and all the versions of all the apps, and we have that in a corporate database that allows us to do very large-scale machine learning and analysis on that data set. That's not something that any of the competitors really have the capability to do because they don't have access to the data set. A lot of the apps you can no longer get them because that version of the app is five or six years old, and it just doesn't exist anywhere anymore, except within our infrastructure. So, the ability to have that very rich dataset and learn from that dataset is a real differentiator."
"The most valuable features are the dashboard, visibility, and reporting capabilities. Our customers can see how much Umbrella is protecting their organization. If you don't know what you've got, you can't protect it. With Umbrella, you get the visibility and see the protection that it's providing. We can get PDF reports on a weekly basis of any malware activities and any denial of service or command-and-control-type activities."
"The reports and notifications are the most useful part of the platform. As soon as you deploy the security layers, the reporting is very comprehensive. It helps you to have, at a glance, a clear view of what's going on."
"The user interface is great. It's very easy to tailor to our client's environment and needs."
"We like Cisco Umbrella because of DNS security. It's one step ahead of whatever we are using for regular web filtering. In that way, it's more secure than other web filtering products."
"Any time someone went off the network, the AnyConnect client had the Umbrella agent built in, and it would realize when their computer connected that they were not on the corporate network. It would monitor and they would have pretty close to the same rules that they had to follow when they were in the office, regarding what kind of website browsing they could do."
"The most valuable thing is how easy it is to deploy. We did it with 9,000 users at my last job, and it took a week to get to all the endpoints. Doing that without having to physically touch all those endpoints was very simple."
"Meraki features and cloud-based functionality are advanced and easy to manage centrally."
"The agent that gets installed on the endpoints or on people's laptops and devices is a Cisco AnyConnect Umbrella module. It's one of the most impressive things because you are able to protect your users anywhere they are."
"FortiGate SWG's most valuable feature is integration with vulnerability management."
"Customers keep on improving their licenses. The solution remains scalable and flexible. On-premises deployments may have some limitations. However, cloud deployments offer a high degree of flexibility."
"FortiGate also makes GRE tunneling possible."
"The product is highly stable."
"The product has the most valuable configuration, offloading, and security features."
"I would rate the scalability of this product a nine out of ten because it is highly scalable. We have not had problems with customers in terms of scalability."
"One of the features I appreciate the most is application control which offers great flexibility."
"The solution is superior to Cisco in terms of security."
"From the analysis that we've done, they do seem to be maybe a step behind in trying to enter the market with a new solution. But when they do pick up, they do come out with some good products."
"We just submitted an enhancement request reflecting the main area we want to see improvement in; the APIs. Currently, we're able to build dashboards, but it's somewhat backward because we use our MDM API to create them. Lookout should provide API to customers so we can query our data and use it in our cloud, and this is the only outstanding area for improvement with the product right now."
"The stability depends on the service from where you access it. Because sometimes, the place you are in, you have Gateway. You don't have Gateway. The gateway is overutilized. At the end, you need to go through their gateways. And this is the key point here. You have a tracking point. If it's not well orchestrated, and it scales up as you add more to the existing team, you will suffer"
"Lookout was moving into the SSE space. And so their work on SecureWeb Gateway and SD-WAN is still sort of evolving."
"The product can be pretty expensive."
"Some countries don't have a DNS server leading to a domain resolution IP, not at a local level."
"If I want to see which users access a website, I need an Active Directory registered on Umbrella's cloud."
"I am unsure if Cisco Umbrella offers a Windows option for running the server."
"iOS devices and mobiles are huge in my environment right now, and I cannot run them on Cisco Umbrella 24/7."
"There should be a way to monitor traffic at the user level."
"Looking at the full umbrella suite in the light of SASE, Secure Access Service Edge, they are clearly lacking in the inline CASB."
"It should have more integrations with multiple end user OEMs."
"Fortinet's support team consists of a huge networking team, because of which there is a delay in response at times."
"The solution’s stability could be improved."
"FortiGate's reporting features could provide a better picture of what is happening in the box."
"Fortinet FortiGate SWG can be expensive for some customers."
"They have not yet extended to the cloud."
"Fortinet needs to continue to improve network traceability. Other than that, we haven't run into anything that would give me any concern."
"It could always be more secure."
"The solution has many heightened points which we cannot get to without working on CLI."
Cisco Umbrella is ranked 1st in Secure Web Gateways (SWG) with 108 reviews while Fortinet FortiGate SWG is ranked 4th in Secure Web Gateways (SWG) with 39 reviews. Cisco Umbrella is rated 8.8, while Fortinet FortiGate SWG is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Cisco Umbrella writes "Protects endpoints wherever they are, always pushing people to the right locations to avoid malicious intent". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Fortinet FortiGate SWG writes "Non-IT people could plug it in, connect it to the fiber, and get it running without IT help. ". Cisco Umbrella is most compared with Zscaler Internet Access, Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps, Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks, Palo Alto Networks DNS Security and Infoblox Advanced DNS Protection, whereas Fortinet FortiGate SWG is most compared with Fortinet FortiProxy, Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway, Sangfor Internet Access Gateway (IAG), Netskope Next Gen Secure Web Gateway and Axis Security. See our Cisco Umbrella vs. Fortinet FortiGate SWG report.
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