We performed a comparison between Cisco IOS Security and Netgate pfSense 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 dashboard I have found the most valuable in Fortinet FortiGate."
"Fortinet FortiGate is a stable solution."
"What I like the most is the configuration and that it's simple, and straightforward to maintain."
"Offers good security and filtering."
"The CLI is robust and powerful, enabling rapid, consistent changes via SSH."
"Fortigate's most valuable feature is that it doesn't need a push policy when writing rules."
"The most important feature, normally for small business customers, is link load balancing."
"Fortinet FortiGate is a security device. It can optimize security on the networks of a company. It actually protects the company from attacks from outside. With FortiGate, you can categorize the users. You can create a group of users that can access all of the websites for their work. You can limit other users' access."
"We use the product for firewalls."
"You can scale it when you need to."
"The Intrusion Firewall is a valuable feature."
"The security is very good."
"The VPN was valuable for us because more people are working from home. It has a lot of reporting and easy-to-use management tools."
"The most valuable features are DNS service and shell self-service within a network."
"Cisco IOS Security is very robust and works very well."
"The stability of this solution is excellent."
"The concurrent users are perfect for us."
"An incomparable stability is achieved with other firewall systems."
"Its features rival many of the high cost solutions out there."
"Some of the terminologies were more familiar to me than it was when I first encountered Cisco."
"I have found the most valuable features to be antivirus and malware protection."
"The most valuable features of pfSense are the reports, monitoring, filtration, and blocking incoming and outgoing traffic."
"It is much simpler than other solutions such as Fortinet."
"What I like about pfSense is that it works well and runs on an inexpensive appliance."
"They have to just improve its performance when we enable all UTM features. When you enable all the features, the performance of FortiGate, as well as of Sophos and SonicWall, goes down."
"One of the problems I was having was with user mapping, and it is an issue for which I have escalated tickets with Fortinet support."
"Some of the software stability could improve."
"With the reports, you can see it, and you can get good feelings so upper management can go, "Oh, wow. That looks pretty." However, it's very basic."
"We sometimes have issues with FortiGate's routing table in the latest firmware update. We had to downgrade the device because our customers complained about bugs."
"For the migration, everyone has a firewall in use and I am selling Fortinet. Typically, I am replacing another firewall. Previously, there was a tool available to convert configurations from one firewall, such as Palo Alto, to Fortinet, but this tool is no longer free. If it could be made free again, it would be very beneficial."
"Performance and technical support are the main issues with this solution."
"I would like to see better pricing in the next release, as well as a simplification of the installation."
"Cisco IOS Security should improve its functionalities."
"I wish it would be more like the next generation firewall technology. There should be more selection between the application and filtering."
"There could be a bit more functions on offer that could make it easier to use."
"The configuration should be easier in the solution."
"I think they should bring back remote VPN for users."
"The configuration and reporting interfaces need a lot of improvement. It needs to be more accessible forsolide without a strong technical background. If you had a simplified dashboard, the lower-level techs could manage the solution and provide services. Cisco IOS Security requires someone who is highly trained to operate it."
"Most of their features are meant for Cisco. You cannot integrate them with any other vendor."
"In the next release of this solution, we would like to see support for the 100BT and 7000 models."
"If a user doesn't have a large amount of experience in Linux systems, they will have problems using this solution. Users need to be highly skilled in troubleshooting competency. Users who do not have such skills will find the product difficult to use."
"The solution could use better reporting. They need to offer more of it in general. Right now, the graphics aren't the best. If you need to provide a report to a manager, for example, it doesn't look great. They need to make it easier to understand and give users the ability to customize them."
"There are several levels of firewall configuration such as beginner, advanced, and expert configurations. At each level, it becomes more complex and more tricky to set up the firewall. For example, if you want to install the firewall on your computer system, it would be a lot easier if it just tells you that this is the internet NIC and this is the Wi-Fi NIC."
"Lacks instructional videos."
"Network monitoring and device inventory could use some improvements. I'm using SpiceWorks for this because it never really worked in pfSense."
"In terms of areas of improvement, the interface seemed like it had a lot. The GUI interface that I had gotten into was rather elaborate. I don't know if they could zero in on some markets and potentially for small, medium businesses specifically, give them a stripped-down version of the GUI for pfSense."
"I would like to see different graphs available in the reporting."
"I'd like to find something in pfSense that is more specific to URL filtering. We have customers who would like to filter their web traffic. They would like to be able to say to their employees, "You can surf the web, but you cannot get access to Facebook or other social media," or "You can surf the web, but you're not allowed to gamble or watch porn on the web." My technicians say that doing this kind of stuff with pfSense nowadays is not easy. They can implement some filters using IP addresses but not by using the names of the domains and categories. So, we are not able to exclude some categories from the allowed traffic, such as porn, gambling, etc. To do that, we have to use another product and another web filter that uses DNS. I know that there are some third-party products that could work with pfSense, but I'd like the native pfSense solution to do that."
Cisco IOS Security is ranked 22nd in Firewalls with 47 reviews while Netgate pfSense is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 128 reviews. Cisco IOS Security is rated 8.0, while Netgate pfSense is rated 8.6. 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 Netgate pfSense writes "User-friendly, easy to manage the firewall, rule-wise and interface-wise". Cisco IOS Security is most compared with Cisco Secure Firewall, Meraki MX, Fortinet FortiOS, OPNsense and Palo Alto Networks URL Filtering with PAN-DB, whereas Netgate pfSense is most compared with OPNsense, Sophos XG, KerioControl, Sophos UTM and Cisco Secure Firewall. See our Cisco IOS Security vs. Netgate pfSense report.
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