We performed a comparison between Cisco Secure Firewall and KerioControl 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 CLI is robust and powerful, enabling rapid, consistent changes via SSH."
"This is a quality product with ok support, and it is better than the competition we've tried."
"FortiGate is flexible and easy to use."
"The usage in general is pretty good."
"We use a lot of function on the IPS and it works well for us."
"Unified Threat Management (UTM) features."
"One of the nice things about FortiGate is that it can be deployed on the cloud or on-premises. You can actually do both. That's the biggest reason why I stick with this solution as opposed to something like Cisco Meraki. Another nice thing is that I can log directly into a FortiGate or get to it through their FortiCloud access products. They're pretty reliable and consistent. One of the reasons why I started using the product was their single pane of management. I can deploy their line of firewalls in conjunction with their switching and access points, and I can manage the entire network from one interface. I don't have to log into one interface for the firewall, another one for the access points, and another one for the switches. These firewalls have access point controller functionality built right into the system, so I don't even have to purchase additional devices to manage them."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are the rules and quality of service."
"Cisco ASA Firewall is a well known product. They're always updating it, and you know what they're doing and that it works."
"Very good as a stateful inspection firewall."
"The most valuables feature of this product are given by the comprehensive VPN solutions it offers and its tools for troubleshooting and debugging."
"The most valuable feature would be the IP blocking. It gets rid of things that you don't need in your environment."
"Another benefit has been user integration. We try to integrate our policies so that we can create policies based on active users. We can create policies based on who is accessing a resource instead of just IP addresses and ports."
"The VPN feature is the most valuable to us because it accomplishes the task well. We're able to do everything we need to do."
"The traffic inspection and the Firepower engine are the most valuable features. It gives you full details, application details, traffic monitoring, and the threats. It gives you all the containers the user is using, especially at the application level. The solution also provides application visibility and control."
"The configuration was kind of straightforward from the command line and also from the ASDM. It was very easy to manage by using their software in Java."
"I am impressed with the tool's firewall filtering capacity."
"The firewall and the content filtering options are valuable."
"The stability of Kerio Control is good."
"The initial setup is a breeze."
"The product is easy to use."
"The most valuable features of Kerio Control are the IPS and traffic rules. The traffic rules are very user-friendly and the IPS is working well. Additionally, the anti-virus is effective with quick options, such as filtering."
"The firewall and intrusion detection features are good. It has blocked certain things. We have a lot of blocked sites that the staff or anyone using it, the public, etc., can't go on. It works for that. I get quite a few messages every now and again, saying that a virus has been detected and I can go in and block the user who's causing the problem."
"The top features are ones that we're not using yet but we soon will be because we've just had broadband upgraded in Australia. We've got something called the National Broadband Network, which is forced onto you, so you have to take it when it arrives. We'll be trying the high availability out soon. We tried that with some load balancing, it didn't quite work as we expected, but I think that was more of a configuration thing rather than a product thing."
"The initial setup is complex."
"The solution needs to improve its integration with cybersecurity."
"One area for improvement is the performance on bandwidth demands for smaller devices, as well as better web filtering."
"While FortiGate is cheaper than most other solutions, we're seeing increased license renewal costs. Most of our clients are asking for more significant discounts because the price is going up."
"One of the features that I would like to have is to do with endpoint production, it should be integrated. For example, the firewall gets notified of any kind of forensic event that needs to be done, such as if there is a ransomware attack and how it originated, all those records have to be available from the firewall, which is not."
"The initial setup and configuration are not intuitive and require training."
"It should come integrated or have its own type of network monitor tool in a module. There should just be one package, and you are good to go."
"The firmware needs improvement because there are bugs when a new release comes through. Sometimes, the configuration changes, and it's a bit harder to see where the fail is. The first time that you have the firmware, it tends to have some issues, and it's better to wait a bit to update the equipment."
"There may have been one or two incidences of malicious threats."
"I would like it to have faster deployment times. A typical deployment could take two to three minutes. Sometimes, it depends on the situation. It is better than it was in the past, but it could always use improvement."
"I would like it to be easier to work with and have a better user interface. It is not straightforward. You need to know the Cisco command-line interface."
"Initial setup was fairly complex."
"It is not easy to configure."
"Virtual patching would be helpful for servers that are not able to update patches due to compatibility issues."
"I would like to see improvement when you create policies on Snort 3 IPS on Cisco Firepower. On Snort 2, it was more like a UI page where you had some multiple choices where you could tweak your config. On Snort 3, the idea is more to build some rules on the text file or JSON file, then push it. So, I would like to see a lot of improvements here."
"I'm not very familiar with the largest Firepower models, but competitors like Palo Alto seem to have a more capable engine to do, for instance, TLS/SSL decryption. As I understand, Firepower doesn't let you export the decrypted traffic so that, for instance, the security department can look at the traffic or inspect traffic. It's all in the box. I've heard rumors that this is something Cisco is working on, but it isn't yet available."
"The trial duration of the product should be extended."
"There were certain things I didn't know about it, but I've always been able to just contact our IT company. They've been able to walk me through certain things. It was quite a monumental task to set up a public site. Support really had to help me with setting up the VLANs and walk me through it. It was not possible for me to figure that out on my own, but that's what they're here for. That could have been a little bit easier laid out."
"There's also room for improvement in the Traffic Rules. We define networks to use a specific outgoing interface, say VSAT, shore, or marine WiFi, which is okay. But then all we have is a checkbox that says "Use other internet interfaces if this one is unavailable." What we would prefer would be to have a priority list. So if VSAT is unavailable, try to use 4G, etc. We haven't really found a reliable way of doing that in the current release."
"Improvements are needed to the Next Generation Firewall Protection, specifically with user-level protection."
"I would like to see a little improvement in their technical support when you have a problem. I may be a little jaded because I came from Kerio when we could call and get a person on the phone who worked on the product. Every tech had their own demo setup. They had instant messaging capability with the developers. If we found a problem, then we could get a result for it quickly. Now, the product seems to be 24 hours. They have also gone to the model that if you need quicker support, then they now charge you additional for the exact same level of support that they used to give. I am assuming it's the exact same level of support that they say it is. I'm not paying extra for it. That's the biggest flaw with the product."
"The antivirus seemed to be a bit laggy on the connection so I disconnected that. It's definitely good. The only issue we've had with any sort of cyber attack seemed to be coming from a couple of distinct locations, people trying to get into known ports on remote desktops and stuff like that. The fact that we can block all that traffic is just great. It simplifies it."
"Kerio Control has just improved on their biggest problem, which was to introduce better support for high-availability requirements in production."
"The denial of service could also be improved. There recently was a big issue with denial of service attacks and it was a bit laborious."
Cisco Secure Firewall is ranked 4th in Firewalls with 404 reviews while KerioControl is ranked 29th in Firewalls with 54 reviews. Cisco Secure Firewall is rated 8.2, while KerioControl is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of Cisco Secure Firewall writes "Highlights and helps us catch Zero-day vulnerabilities traveling across our network". On the other hand, the top reviewer of KerioControl writes "With VPN, any of our guys can log in to the system and effectively be on board; helps with our customers all over the world". Cisco Secure Firewall is most compared with Palo Alto Networks WildFire, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX, Sophos XG and Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, whereas KerioControl is most compared with Netgate pfSense, OPNsense, Sophos UTM, Sophos XG and WatchGuard Firebox. See our Cisco Secure Firewall vs. KerioControl report.
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