We performed a comparison between Cisco IOS Security and Cisco Secure Firewall 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."Fortinet offers the latest versions to cater to the needs of enterprises."
"Whenever we raise a complaint with FortiGate, their response and resolution times are minimal."
"The interface is very user-friendly and I like it very much."
"The scalability of Fortinet FortiGate is good."
"The most valuable feature of FortiGate is FortiView which provides proactive monitoring."
"The usage in general is pretty good."
"FortiGate has a very strong unified threat management system."
"The solution is easy to configure and maintain remotely."
"I've found their network routing to be very good."
"The technical support is good."
"Completely integrates branch offices with perimeter security."
"The most valuable feature of Cisco IOS Security is posturing."
"What I have used the most and received the most benefit from is the IPsec technology."
"Cisco products are very secure and integrate easily with other devices."
"The hardware is pretty stable. It's also a very good product performance-wise. Initially, it wasn't mature like a firewall and there were other leaders, but now they have included almost all the features of next-generation security. Basically, it's a good product to work with."
"We are able to filter a lot of traffic especially when a lot of the traffic is in layer 7."
"The dashboard is the most important thing. It provides good visibility and makes management easy. Firepower also provides us with good application visibility and control."
"I have access to the web version of Cisco Talos to see the reputation of IP addresses. I find this very helpful. It provides important information for my company to obtain the reputation of IP addresses. The information in Talos is quite complete."
"The management aspect of the product is very straightforward."
"In v9.8 you are able to do active/backup HA with ASAv (Adaptive Security Virtual Appliance) deployed on MS Azure."
"With Cisco, there are a lot of features such as the network map. Cisco builds the whole network map of the machines you have behind your firewall and gives you insight into the vulnerabilities and attributes that the host has. Checkpoint and Fortinet don't have that functionality directly on the firewall."
"Logging is great. It will show when it reaches its capacity before it is too late, unless you have bursts of traffic."
"I have found the most valuable feature to be the access control and IPsec VPN."
"The most valuable features are the IPsec VPN and web filtering."
"We would like to see an upgrade to the VPN feature, we are using the VPN from outside of our office and there is a limitation to 10 connections, more connections would be suitable."
"I would like to see improvements in the product's application rules."
"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."
"Price, of course, can always be more competitive or better."
"The cloud management and automation capability could be improved."
"The customization could be improved. Cisco, for example, is much better at this. They need to work to be at least as good as they are."
"Its filtering is sometimes too precise or strict. We sometimes have to bypass and authorize some of the sites, but they get blocked. We know that they are trusted sites, but they are blocked, and we don't know why."
"In some cases, its initial setup could be hard for customers."
"Most of their features are meant for Cisco. You cannot integrate them with any other vendor."
"It takes too much time to deploy a policy to FMC. It takes around eight minutes. You can't afford any downtime when you're changing policies."
"It would be ideal if the solution had more capacity."
"The solution is complex and can be more user-friendly."
"The product's technical support services need improvement."
"The pricing is the only con for this product."
"We faced significant challenges related to licensing issues, particularly when licenses expire."
"The routers, don't have like long-term tendency features, or higher availability features available for the IOS. It could also use a better user interface."
"The Cisco ASA device needs overall improvement, as configurations alone do not completely secure my network."
"FMC could be improved because management with FMC is quite difficult compared to using Firepower web-based management."
"The service could use a little more web filtering. If I compare it to Cyberoam, Cyberoam has more the web filtering, so if you want to block a website, it's easier in other solutions than in Cisco."
"I would say that in inexperienced hands, the interface can be kind of overwhelming. There are just a lot of options. Too much, if you don't know what you are looking for or trying to do."
"The configuration is an area that needs improvement."
"More intuitive support for SIP services are needed. This took a long time to configure properly for the user."
"It integrates with other security products from Cisco, but sometimes, there can be glitches or errors."
"The ability to better integrate with other tools would be an improvement."
Cisco IOS Security is ranked 22nd in Firewalls with 47 reviews while Cisco Secure Firewall is ranked 4th in Firewalls with 404 reviews. Cisco IOS Security is rated 8.0, while Cisco Secure Firewall is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Cisco IOS Security writes "User-friendly and excels in documentation, making it easier to resolve issues". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Cisco Secure Firewall writes "Highlights and helps us catch Zero-day vulnerabilities traveling across our network". Cisco IOS Security is most compared with Meraki MX, Fortinet FortiOS, Netgate pfSense, OPNsense and Palo Alto Networks URL Filtering with PAN-DB, whereas Cisco Secure Firewall is most compared with Palo Alto Networks WildFire, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX, Sophos XG and Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls. See our Cisco IOS Security vs. Cisco Secure Firewall report.
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