We performed a comparison between Fortinet FortiGate and Zscaler Internet Access 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 solution is highly scalable because they have devices that can handle a large amount of traffic."
"It has very easy management and an amazing ETM configuration."
"The features that we have found most valuable are the SSL VPN and the User Portal."
"I like that they have given me a solution at a fair price."
"It works very well. It has a lot of different functionalities. Its cost is also fine for our customers."
"This is an easy solution to deploy."
"Our security improved from being able to put in rules and close off unwanted traffic."
"I like how we can achieve total integration."
"The solution is scalable and stable."
"SSL inspection is a valuable feature."
"The initial setup was straightforward. The biggest thing for us was to build our own policies. The deployment itself was only a few hours."
"The data loss prevention feature is the most valuable. It stops our users from inadvertently leaking our customers' data to the Internet or anywhere else it shouldn't go."
"I like the granularity of the control of all the traffic, including SSL inspection. I also like the fact that the user interface is intuitive. The latencies with Zscaler are minimal compared to those of any other competitor. Other competitors do not really have the global scale that Zscaler has and cannot promise low latencies."
"The policies are very intuitive and easy to configure, with very little possibility of messing things up."
"Whether you are in a hotel somewhere, or in Africa, it does not matter. You will get the Zscaler protection presence anywhere."
"The solution replaces multiple vendor technologies with one which makes it worth the cost."
"The cloud features and integration could be improved."
"The user interface could be improved to make it less confusing and easier to set up."
"FortiGate support could do some improvements on their IPv6 configuration. Right now it's still in the very early stage for utilizing in an enterprise level network environment."
"The pricing could be a bit better, especially when you consider how they have the most basic offering priced."
"Fortinet FortiGate should improve the VPN tokens."
"There is room for improvement related to the logging and reporting aspect."
"The Web-filter in this solution is not very good."
"The reports are very basic."
"Zscaler Internet Access's troubleshooting is very limited, and their textbook logs need to be more informative."
"One thing that needs to be improved is their presence in China. I'm not sure if that's a Zscaler thing or if it's a problem with all vendors in this space, but it would be nice to have better coverage in China. This concern is a common one for vendors across the board when dealing with the Chinese market."
"Zscaler Internet Access could improve by adding a VPN feature."
"Zscaler should provide adjacent services, which would be complementary to their current offering that could to be more pragmatic for a customer. For example, if you take Akamai, you get multiple sets of services, all depending on the customer and the strategy and the complexity and the problems. In some areas, they are more varied in terms of coverage."
"When you have appliances, SSL inspection is always a headache due to poor performance and/or lack of ciphers implemented. "
"One thing that they could improve is the ability to import rules from other platforms."
"The solution is expensive. They recently revised the pricing and packaging. Some of our existing customers have been asking for alternate solutions for a lower price."
"The main issue with Zscaler Internet Access is proxy IP detection, which sometimes makes sites inaccessible."
Fortinet FortiGate is ranked 2nd in Firewalls with 306 reviews while Zscaler Internet Access is ranked 2nd in Secure Web Gateways (SWG) with 46 reviews. Fortinet FortiGate is rated 8.4, while Zscaler Internet Access is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Fortinet FortiGate writes "It's a reliable solution that's easy to install and cheaper than competitors ". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Zscaler Internet Access writes "Provides integrated CASB and file sandboxing but could be less expensive ". Fortinet FortiGate is most compared with Sophos XG, Cisco Secure Firewall, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX and Check Point NGFW, whereas Zscaler Internet Access is most compared with Cisco Umbrella, Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps, Netskope , Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks and Appgate SDP. See our Fortinet FortiGate vs. Zscaler Internet Access report.
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Bluecoat and Forcepoint offer credible solutions. Think through where your users are and what they connect to. A mobile workforce may need an agent and a cloud gateway (unless you force them back to base over VPN) but may give problems if connecting to sites that whitelist you by IP. And not all providers have good global breakout points. Be particularly careful if you work in China.
My recommendation is Cisco Meraki MX84 with advanced security license (its have two kind of license Advanced security and Enterprise licenses).
I recommend Fortigate
All FortiGate appliances are powered by the FortiOS™ operating system with the following features and benefits:
Features. Firewall, Virtual Private Networking (VPN), AntiVirus, Intrusion Prevention, Web Filtering, DLP, and anti-spam; AntiVirus /Antispyware
Answer is , it depends... If you do any web based business with Banks or Governments then get a hardware solution like Bluecoat or Fortinet because web based providers can not provide you with a static source IP and you will fail security checks. I've been involved in corporate moves to the "cloud" using Zscaler and both went very wrong, very fast, a year later and they still have monthly outages because of the "cloud" providing random source IP's. If this is for a public internet access outside of your corporate network then you should be fine otherwise I suggest hardware you control.
This is a "how long is a piece of string?" type question. As the other vendors have said it is hard to recommend something fully without knowing all the background. Your background did stipulate that you had multiple sites and you were growing. Having a traditional deployment scenario will mean that you need to have a "box" at each site and add more boxes as you add more sites. Going with a more modern solution like Zscaler will allow more rapid growth opportunities - just add users, no matter where they are - also this allows you to restrict with a single policy in the cloud rather than on each device.
AS others have said, be mindful of the proximity of the Zscaler because of latency, but they do have >100 POPS which you will probably find pretty local.
Overall, there is a lot more research you can do, but I'm leaning towards a cloud offering from the branches. You might consider an SD-WAN device at each branch that also has FW built in. This would give you connectivity resilience at a much lower price, but perhaps this is a debate for another day :-)
Cisco Meraki is an excellent solution in the cloud, has AMP included and can be integrated with Umbrella and Thread Grid.
We use Fortigates for web filtering and security. We are a global company with > 10,000 users.
This protects all users on our internal network. Remote users can use the Fortinet FortiClient for remote AV and web filtering protection.
We used Zscaler several years ago but we were unhappy with latency for complex websites and managing PAC files was difficult.
Since you are going for a web security. Zscalar web security solution will be my recommendation considering its robust features and vast threat intelligence base. It is best you go for the cloud solution since you are working across sites.