Fortinet FortiClient vs Symantec Endpoint Security comparison

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Fortinet FortiClient and Symantec Endpoint Security based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.
To learn more, read our detailed Fortinet FortiClient vs. Symantec Endpoint Security Report (Updated: March 2024).
767,667 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"The solution was relatively easy to deploy.""Fortinet is very user-friendly for customers.""Exceptions are easy to create and the interface is easy to follow with a nice appearance.""The product detects and blocks threats and is more proactive than firewalls.""It notifies us if there's any suspicious file on any PC. If any execution or similar kind of thing is happening, it just alerts us. It doesn't only alert. It also blocks the execution until we allow it. We check whether the execution is legitimate or not, and then approve it or keep it blocked. This gives us a little bit of control over this mechanism. Fortinet FortiEDR is also very straightforward and easy to maintain.""I like FortiClient EMS. FortiEDR has a lot of great features like lockdown mode, remote wipes, and encryption. I can set malware outbreak policies and controls for detecting abnormalities. You can also simulate phishing attacks.""The price is low and quite competitive with others.""This is stable and scalable."

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"FortiClient's most valuable features are that it's fast and safe.""It is very easy and useful. A normal user with basic information can easily connect to any environment.""From an application perspective, this solution is stable.""The return on investment was very reasonable. It was low cost and it functioned, so the return on investment was excellent.""Compared to other similar solutions, it is faster in connecting.""Having a centralized console is a valuable feature. The Fortinet fabric is also very valuable where all different pieces talk together to secure our network and track the North, South, East, and West movement of files and data through our network.""It is a feature-rich product that is easy to use and install without sacrificing security.""It is a fantastic product. Its overall security is valuable. We are very impressed with the web filtering and the application firewall it provides."

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"The features are very nice. We are getting updates continuously from the Symantec side regarding any attacks, such as zero-day attacks. Symantec helps us in mitigating any attacks or threats early.""SEP, the entire suite of components, provides good endpoint protection.""With a single console, you get control over Mac, Windows, iOS, and Android. This control is most valuable.""No maintenance is required after a successful installation phase.""It is a stable solution...It is a very scalable solution.""Stability-wise, it is very good and we have had no trouble.""It's a robust product.""Great security and very user friendly."

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Cons
"The EDR console should have more extensive reporting. You shouldn't need to purchase FortiAnalyzer. It should be included in the EDR part. The security adviser cloud platform could be improved with more options for exclusive or intensive rules for devices.""FortiEDR could add a separate scanning dashboard. In incident management, we prefer to remove the endpoint system from the environment and scan the system. We typically use Symantec for that, but if we want to use FortiEDR for that, then we need a scanning tab to clarify things.""Detections could be improved.""Integration with Azure and SaaS provisioning tools could improve Fortinet FortiEDR.""The SIEM could be improved.""I would like the solution to extend beyond endpoint protection and include other attack surfaces such as other network components.""ZTNA can improve latency.""The solution's installation from a central installation server could be improved because the engineers had a little bit of trouble getting it installed from a central location."

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"The solution could improve by providing analytics or detailed reports.""The solution should have faster turnaround when it comes to new technology.""The quality and response time of the support team must be improved.""The initial setup was probably more complex. The configuration was somewhat unclear.""The tool needs to improve its web filtering feature. Its support quality needs improvement. We speak different languages, and this can create misunderstandings.""Everybody else is doing AI, machine learning, self-healing, next-generation features. It needs more next-generation features. Everybody else is doing AI, machine learning, self-healing, next-generation features. It needs more next-generation features.""One area that could be improved is cost, but you've got to pay for what you get.""Working with Distribution sometimes comes at a cost due to a lack of knowledge of the current status of your licensing and products."

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"Symantec needs to develop some reporting features and notifications. For instance, if the server is not on or it's shut down. There should also be time-based USB control.""Every time an OS comes out, I have to upgrade the Symantec product. They don't know how to patch it. If they would produce a patch instead of uninstalling or installing over the current version and rebooting I'd be a lot happier with the product.""They need to develop a multi-language interface.""Overall, the price could be reduced.""They lack the visibility you get in a heuristical, artificial, AI type of product, like a next-gen antivirus.""This solution needs better compatibility with services and applications.""Symantec has not properly promoted Symantec Endpoint Security in the market. In my opinion, the product should be properly promoted.""SONAR could be improved. The false/positive rate is a little high."

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Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "I know it is tough to get big budget additions up front, but I highly recommend deploying environment wide and adding the forensic service."
  • "There are no issues with the pricing."
  • "The price is comprable to other endpoint security solutions."
  • "The pricing is typical for enterprises and fairly priced."
  • "I'm not familiar with pricing, but it looks a bit costly compared to other vendors I think."
  • "The pricing is good."
  • "I would rate the solution's pricing an eight out of ten."
  • "The hardware costs about €100,000 and about €20,000 annually for access."
  • More Fortinet FortiEDR Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "Licensing was free up to ten users and after that, it was pretty reasonable."
  • "Anyone can download this product for free, but you have to have a FortiGate gateway that you are connecting to."
  • "An annual license costs about 1.5 to 3,000 US dollars. There are no additional costs."
  • "The price is okay and competitive."
  • "Fortinet requires you to buy a lot of product in order for you to have proper protection."
  • "FortiClient is quite reasonably priced."
  • "The pricing is reasonable."
  • "The pricing is good because you get and end-to-end security solution in one package price."
  • More Fortinet FortiClient Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "I’d say SEP deserves the money."
  • "Regarding the licensing, it was important negotiate a long contract to get a more attractive price, including advanced support in case of crisis."
  • "What we have paid for this product is good value for the work and the services that they are providing to us."
  • "Licensing is per user. Therefore, it makes it easy to do licensing."
  • "It is the better product, even if it is a little on the higher side."
  • "It's not cheap."
  • "Pricing and licensing are important to us when choosing a product."
  • "Pricing and licensing for our country is very good. It's not that expensive and the endpoint security is very good. It's not as cheap as some others, but they are not as good."
  • More Symantec Endpoint Security Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:I suggest Fortinet’s FortiEDR over FortiClient for several reasons. For starters, FortiEDR guarantees solid protection… more »
    Top Answer: Having all monitoring, response, tracking, and mitigation tools in one dashboard provides our analysts and SOC team… more »
    Top Answer:The pricing is significantly high. The implementation of this solution required us to allocate additional funds beyond… more »
    Top Answer:Fortinet FortiClient is a feature-rich solution that is easy to use and deploy without sacrificing safety and security… more »
    Top Answer:Aqua Security is easy to use and very manageable. Its main focus is on Kubernetes and Docker. Security is a very… more »
    Top Answer:We use Symantec because we do not use MS Enterprise products, but in my opinion, Microsoft Defender is a superior… more »
    Top Answer:The solution's application control feature is very, very powerful.
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    enSilo, FortiEDR
    FortiClient
    Symantec EPP, Symantec Endpoint Protection (SEP)
    Learn More
    Overview

    Fortinet FortiEDR is a real-time endpoint protection, detection, and automated response solution. Its primary purpose is to detect advanced threats to stop breaches and ransomware damage. It is designed to do so in real time, even on an already compromised device, allowing you to respond and remediate incidents automatically so your data can remain protected.

    Fortinet FortiEDR Features

    Fortinet FortiEDR has many valuable key features, including:

    • Easily customizable
    • Real-time proactive risk mitigation & IoT security
    • Pre-infection protection
    • Post-infection protection
    • Track applications and ratings
    • Reduce the attack surface with risk-based proactive policies
    • Achieve analysis of entire log history
    • Optional managed detection and response (MDR) service

    Fortinet FortiEDR Benefits

    Some of the key benefits of using Fortinet FortiEDR include:

    • Protection: Fortinet FortiEDR provides proactive, real-time, automated endpoint protection with the orchestrated incident response across platforms. It stops the breach with real-time postinfection blocking to protect data from exfiltration and ransomware encryption.

    • Single unified console: Fortinet FortiEDR has a single unified console with an intuitive interface, which makes management easier. The solution automates mundane endpoint security tasks so your employees don’t need to do it.

    • Cost savings: With Fortinet FortiEDR you can eliminate post-breach operational expenses and breach damage costs.

    • Flexibility: Fortinet FortiEDR can be deployed on premises or on a secure cloud instance. With Fortinet FortiEDR, endpoints are protected both on- and off-line.

    • Scalability: Because Fortinet can be deployed quickly and has a small footprint, it is easy to scale up to protect hundreds of thousand endpoints.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by Fortinet FortiEDR users.

    An Owner at a security firm says, "The features that I have found most valuable are the ability to customize it and to reduce its size. It lets you run in a very small window in terms of memory and resources on legacy cash registers. The customer has literally about 800 cash registers. That was the use case for Fortinet FortiEDR - to get that down into a tiny space. The only way to do that was to use this product because it had that ability to unbundle services that were a surplus.”

    Chandan M., Chief Technical Officer at Provision Technologies LLP, mentions, “The ease of deployment and configuration is valuable. It's very easy compared to other vendors like Sophos. Sophos' configuration is complex. Fortinet is a lot easier to understand. You don't need a lot of admin knowledge to do the configuration.” He also adds, “The security is also very good and the firewall response is good.”

    Harpreet S., Information Technology Support Specialist at Chemtrade Logistics, explains, "It notifies us if there's any suspicious file on any PC. If any execution or similar kind of thing is happening, it just alerts us. It doesn't only alert. It also blocks the execution until we allow it. We check whether the execution is legitimate or not, and then approve it or keep it blocked. This gives us a little bit of control over this mechanism. Fortinet FortiEDR is also very straightforward and easy to maintain."

    DeAndre V., Senior Network Administrator at a financial services firm, states, “The dashboard is easy to follow and use. The deployment and uninstalling were easy. I like the detailed information about the path of a file that might be suspicious. Being able to check that out was easy to follow. Exceptions are easy to create and the interface is easy to follow with a nice appearance.

    FortiClient is a fabric agent that delivers endpoint protection, endpoint compliance, and secure access in a single, lightweight, lightweight client, providing visibility, information, and control to your endpoints. In addition, it enables secure, remote connectivity to the security fabric. It also integrates network and endpoint with segmentation and automation. FortiClient enables unified endpoint awareness by sharing endpoint telemetry with the security fabric. It is compatible with third-party EDR (endpoint detection and response and anti-malware solutions.

    The FortiClient fabric agent can:

    • Report on the status of a device, including firmware version and applications running.
    • Send all suspicious files to a fabric sandbox.
    • Enforce USB control, application control, URL filtering, and firmware upgrade policies.
    • Provide application firewall service and malware protection.
    • Enable devices to connect securely to the security fabric over either ZTNA tunnels or VPN (IPsec or SSL), both encrypted. The connection to the security fabric can be either a SASE service or a FortiGate next-generation firewall.

    You can purchase FortiClient with one of three levels of capability:

    Zero Trust security - The ZTNA edition enables both VPN and ZTNA encrypted tunnels, as well as USB device control and URL filtering.
    Endpoint security - The EPP/APT edition adds AI-based NGAV (next-generation antivirus), application firewall, endpoint quarantine, and support for cloud sandbox.
    Cloud-based endpoint security

    Benefits and Features

    • Fabric agent leverages integrations and provides telemetry information to the rest of the Fortinet security fabric.
    • SAAS control and web/content filtering
    • Dynamic access control helps with automation and simplifies compliance.
    • Software inventory management enables visibility as well as management of licenses.
    • Automated response detects and isolates any endpoints that may be compromised.
    • ZTNA delivers better remote access and consistent application access policies
    • Managed endpoint security services remotely assist with setup, configuration, deployment, vulnerability monitoring, and overall monitoring of endpoint security.

    Reviews from Real Users:

    PeerSpot users like that FortiClient is easy to use and integrates well with other solutions. They also appreciate the richness of its features and find it to be inexpensive in comparison to other products that require separate purchases for separate features.

    Symantec Endpoint Security is a robust and reliable product that provides complete protection against viruses, malware, Trojans, and malicious files. It offers application and device control, ease of use in deploying and updating, a central control console, stability, scalability, auto-discovery capabilities, patch management, endpoint detection and response capabilities, intrusion detection module. 

    The Symantec Global Intelligence Network (GIN) provides threat intelligence and detection across endpoints, email, and web traffic. It has helped organizations reduce downtime, increase productivity, and improve security posture. Symantec Endpoint Security is easy to use, has a flexible administration, and offers more value than expected.

    Sample Customers
    Financial, Healthcare, Legal, Technology, Enterprise, Manufacturing ... 
    Black Gold Regional Schools, Amadeus Hospitality, Jefferson County, Chunghwa Telecom, City of Boroondara, Dimension Data
    Audio Visual Dynamics, Red Deer Advocate, Asia Pacific Telecom Co. Ltd., Kibbutz Ein Gedi, and AMETEK, Inc.
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm21%
    Comms Service Provider11%
    Manufacturing Company11%
    Educational Organization5%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company16%
    Government8%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    Financial Services Firm8%
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company23%
    Financial Services Firm15%
    Comms Service Provider15%
    Retailer6%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization35%
    Computer Software Company12%
    Comms Service Provider6%
    Government5%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm17%
    Computer Software Company12%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    University6%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company15%
    Financial Services Firm12%
    Manufacturing Company9%
    Government8%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business50%
    Midsize Enterprise16%
    Large Enterprise34%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business31%
    Midsize Enterprise19%
    Large Enterprise50%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business52%
    Midsize Enterprise22%
    Large Enterprise26%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business22%
    Midsize Enterprise46%
    Large Enterprise33%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business43%
    Midsize Enterprise20%
    Large Enterprise38%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business25%
    Midsize Enterprise16%
    Large Enterprise60%
    Buyer's Guide
    Fortinet FortiClient vs. Symantec Endpoint Security
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Fortinet FortiClient vs. Symantec Endpoint Security and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
    767,667 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Fortinet FortiClient is ranked 16th in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) with 85 reviews while Symantec Endpoint Security is ranked 5th in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) with 138 reviews. Fortinet FortiClient is rated 8.0, while Symantec Endpoint Security is rated 7.6. The top reviewer of Fortinet FortiClient writes "Easy to set up and user-friendly with good support ". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Symantec Endpoint Security writes "The solution has given us visibility into compliance within our whole system and helped us ensure everything is updated". Fortinet FortiClient is most compared with OpenVPN Access Server, Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, Microsoft Azure VPN Gateway, Kaspersky Endpoint Security for Business and Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks, whereas Symantec Endpoint Security is most compared with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, CrowdStrike Falcon, Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks and Trend Micro Deep Security. See our Fortinet FortiClient vs. Symantec Endpoint Security report.

    See our list of best Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) vendors.

    We monitor all Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.