We performed a comparison between Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall 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 most valuable feature of this solution is Quota."
"We are using the FortiGate 100D series. VPN, firewall, anti-malware, OTM, and intrusion prevention are useful features."
"The inspection and web security features are most valuable."
"We use the FortiGate Sandbox to detect zero-day vulnerabilities, such as anomalies or malware, that are unknown and have not yet been discovered."
"It has very easy management and an amazing ETM configuration."
"It's user-friendly and easy to operate."
"Some of the valuable features are the firewall, IPS, web filter, and gateway capabilities. Additionally, it is easy to use and flexible."
"Security, SD-WAN, and Streetscape are valuable features."
"It is a scalable solution."
"When comparing this solution to others this one has better reporting, user management, and is easy to use."
"Forcepoint is a complete package because it has network and systems applications. Other firewalls are only for the network."
"The feature that we like the most about Forcepoint is that we know the technology and have confidence in it. We can have several functionalities to simplify operations and management. We can combine functionalities like log ownership to review the number of devices in the infrastructure."
"Technical support has been quite helpful in the past."
"We like the scalability of Forcepoint because with the Forcepoint NGFW solution, we can scale anything. The solution has central management, so we can manage all the branches and devices centrally in one controller."
"It is stable and scalable. In addition, their support is great. When you ask them for something, they provide support, and if required, they also involve the R&D team to help you to resolve the issues in your configuration."
"The most valuable feature is controlling the traffic and the logging. They have real-time logins for traffic logs. Troubleshooting was very easy for me."
"What I found most valuable is the cost of the platform, the flexibility of the platform, and the fact that the ongoing fees are not there as they are with the competitor. Some people may think you're taking a risk with using Opensource. I think it just provides the end user, specifically for us small, medium business providers of services, the flexibility we need at the right cost to provide them a higher end, almost enterprise type service."
"The performance and functionality are good."
"I like pfSense's security features."
"Easy to deploy and easy to use."
"The plugins or add-ons are most valuable. Sometimes, they are free of charge, and sometimes, you have to pay for them, but you can purchase or download very valuable plugins or add-ons to perform internal testing of your network and simulate a denial-of-service attack or whichever attack you want to simulate. You can also remote and monitor your network and see where the gap is. Did you forget a printer port? Most attacks at the moment are happening through printers, and they can tell you immediately that you forgot to close the port of the printer. There are more than one million printers that are in danger, and everybody knows that hackers are using them to enter the network. So, you can download plugins to protect your network."
"The initial setup was straightforward, therefore I wanted to continue using the product."
"I can manage it easily by myself."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"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."
"The improvement is related to logs. Instead of the CLI, we should be able to have more insights into the logs of the firewall in the GUI."
"It would be a benefit if Fortinet would release a one-stop solution that is better integrated with other products and an automated emergency response system."
"Fortinet should focus on enhancing the capabilities of FortiGate by consolidating its various products, such as FortiGate Cloud, FortiManager, and FortiAnalyzer."
"There are a lot of bugs I have found in the solution and it is difficult to upgrade. These areas need improvement."
"Lacks training for new features."
"The solution's framework needs to be frequently updated in order to have a stable solution."
"Tunnel flapping was one of the major things I had seen wherein your internet link remains but your VPN tunnel is down. However, since I got a fix from the TAC team, I have not noticed it, but the customer complained a few times that they couldn't access the internet because of this problem."
"They need to improve their alerts."
"We feel the product's technical support could be better, as this relates to the solution itself, to the installation of the product, and to having a proper understanding of the case."
"The solution needs to add an antivirus profile and anti-spyware profile, not just policies and VPN."
"The security features need to be improved."
"Its management center should be easier to use. The management interface of Forcepoint is unique and a little bit different from some of the firewall solutions on which people might have worked before. Sometimes, the customers say that it is not very friendly, and we help them with how to use this management interface. It just takes a little bit of time, and after some time, it gets easy to manage or use. It is quite similar to Palo Alto, Fortinet, and legacy Juniper solutions. Their support should be faster. We have received complaints that they are not responding fast, which is not good for the vendor and us."
"Forcepoint is a little difficult to configure compared to its competitors."
"You do need knowledge of the solution in order to set the product up properly."
"The ability to dynamically change policies could be improved."
"I tried pfSense, and it has a big issue with file system consistency, and this is what drove me to OPNsense. The file system stability is quite a big issue for us. We have a lot of outages related to power issues, and OPNsense is much more stable on this side."
"We have not had any problems with it, and we also do not have a need for any new features. If anything, its reporting can be better. Sophos has better reporting than pfSense. Sophos has more detailed information. pfSense is not as detailed. It is summarized."
"Lacks instructional videos."
"Ultimately, we'd like something stronger, and something that can handle threats better in real-time."
"The access control aspect of the product could be improved."
"Other solutions provide more scope for growth. For instance, we can have only 10 to 20 employees on VPN, but other solutions can support more users. We also have more capabilities to increase the performance of the solution."
"The product could offer more integrated plugins."
"The router monitoring needs improvement when compared with Sonicwall."
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Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall is ranked 25th in Firewalls with 40 reviews while Netgate pfSense is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 128 reviews. Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall is rated 7.6, while Netgate pfSense is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall writes "Provides decent protection for the LAN but complicated interface". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Netgate pfSense writes "User-friendly, easy to manage the firewall, rule-wise and interface-wise". Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall is most compared with Palo Alto Networks Advanced Threat Prevention, Check Point NGFW, Cisco Secure Firewall, Sophos XG and Darktrace, whereas Netgate pfSense is most compared with OPNsense, Sophos XG, KerioControl, Sophos UTM and Cisco Secure Firewall. See our Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall vs. Netgate pfSense report.
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