Share your experience using Oracle SD-WAN

I can see that I am a consultant at a reseller and I am the architect of Cato SASE Cloud Platform designs. In the baseline, I usually recommend Cato SASE Cloud Platform for international companies that have many different setups spread globally.

I think all of the functionalities, such as the secure web gateway feature, are quite good. I also believe Cato SASE Cloud Platform is one of the only solutions that has not only a software firewall solution but also a physical software solution where you can change the company's firewalls and put in sockets from Cato SASE Cloud Platform, which I see as an advantage for them.

The single-pass architecture has improved user experience with Cato SASE Cloud Platform as it provides security teams in companies a platform where they can easily obtain information if there are breaches or security issues.

I assess the benefit of integrating WAN optimization as good. There is ease in making rules between WAN optimization, especially when it comes to global connections because of all their points of presence that are spread over the world.

I think the real-time threat protection of Cato SASE Cloud Platform is also good. Their points of presence are quite efficient, and I do not see any delays in that area.

To improve Cato SASE Cloud Platform, I think they sometimes need more built-in features for security in larger networks when doing local authentication, as they currently leave that to other vendors.

I would have preferred to see more LT 5G connection built into their sockets in the future, which is coming up now and I think that is positive.

I am quite familiar with Cato SASE Cloud Platform networks and I have been working with Cato SASE Cloud Platform for two to three years.

I find Cato SASE Cloud Platform overall stable.

I think the technical support by Cato SASE Cloud Platform is quite good and I would rate their performance an eight out of ten for that area.

Positive

I do not find it particularly expensive, but for some companies, they may not have the budget to be at that level of security for their networks.

If Cato SASE Cloud Platform does not fit the budget, I usually recommend a more on-site solution, such as FortiGate firewalls, or if they would prefer a cloud solution, I would suggest a full Meraki solution with MX Gateways from Meraki.

It is difficult to find types of companies I would not recommend Cato SASE Cloud Platform to, and I believe you can use Cato SASE Cloud Platform in most environments, although there could be some cases where organizations are really cost-sensitive.

I measure the effectiveness of Cato SASE Cloud Platform using metrics such as milliseconds for connections and bandwidth, comparing it with its efficiency to see if it delivers on their bandwidth choices.

I believe that the centralized cloud-native management helps with policy configuration by allowing users to build their own environment without many issues, which is key to going cloud-based. I would rate this review an overall eight out of ten.

I have worked on multiple products including Fortinet FortiGate VM, Fortinet FortiGate firewalls of different models, FortiSwitch, FortiAP, FortiADC, FortiWeb, FortiAuthenticator, and some other products as well.

I have been working on Fortinet FortiGate and Fortinet FortiGate VM for around five or six years. I have deployed it as a perimeter firewall, as a data center firewall, and as a campus firewall in many banking sectors, commercial sectors, and oil and gas sectors. Most of my clients have deployed Fortinet FortiGate firewall on-premises to protect their services.

The ease of use and the user-friendly interface are the beauty of this firewall. The UI itself and the documentation are completely available on the internet. The UI is very easy, and you can easily understand the implementation. The product itself has very strong deep features and security features including IPS and malware protection to prevent and save against cyber attacks.

I have very good hands-on experience and very good deployment experience with Fortinet FortiGate SD-WAN. Fortinet FortiGate SD-WAN allows you to use multiple internets and multiple interfaces separately to load balance your internet and to load balance your services between multiple service providers. This is a very good feature in this firewall that you cannot get as a free default feature in other brands.

The network performance after enabling SD-WAN is very smooth and very efficient. I recently deployed this in forty commercial sector sites with stores that previously had MPLS circuits. With the MPLS circuit, they had a very high cost for private connectivity between sites and branches. After deploying SD-WAN, the operational cost was cut down around fifty to sixty percent because of this implementation. All MPLS costing was wiped out from their IT budget and is now dependent on internet circuits, which are normally standard internet connections.

SASE is a very good feature. For example, I recently deployed this for a customer with users in remote locations. The issue was that they wanted users to remain connected and keep monitoring systems after office hours with no malware installed on the laptop while staying protected. The use case of SASE involved implementing the POP itself on the cloud. The users, whether remotely at home or anywhere in the world, are connected to and keep connected with POP. They access the internet securely with secure company policies as defined by IT. They are not allowed to go directly to the internet without IT policies as defined on SASE POP. There is very good integration from SASE to Fortinet FortiGate firewall to access private access.

For improving sectors, they need to focus on technical support and work on the technical part. Although it is good, they need to onboard these things and improve the technical part of the support factor. Although it is good, it needs much more improvement to get more business and a bigger footprint in the market. Second, AI in the market and malware detection exist. Fortinet FortiGate already has these features in the Fortinet FortiGate sandbox features with built-in AI features. I prefer that they work on more features that they can provide in Fortinet FortiGate firewall.

I would rate this product ten out of ten. For example, when comparing it with Palo Alto and Fortinet FortiGate, I can provide a very good point. In Palo Alto, some features must be purchased separately. In Fortinet FortiGate, it comes with the Wi-Fi controller built-in. Features that you need to buy a separate license for in Palo Alto do not require additional licenses in Fortinet FortiGate as they are built as complimentary features in this firewall.

The network performance after enabling SD-WAN is very smooth and very efficient.

Scalability is the same, and I would rate it ten out of ten.

Technical support can be marked as ten out of eight. There is some lag, but you can find documentation and all things over the internet. They can provide support, and I would rate it eight point five to nine.

Positive

My technical team are all technically expert in deployment of Fortinet FortiGate firewall.

My team has around five or six people who are all technically sound in Fortinet FortiGate firewalls.

If we are talking about Check Point, Cisco, and Palo Alto, these are the top-tier firewalls and top-tier vendors for providing firewalls. Following the Gartner report, Palo Alto and Fortinet are at the top in the Gartner report. Because of that, Fortinet FortiGate firewall itself does not require management centers as required in Cisco and Check Point. Fortinet FortiGate firewall cannot be managed by a management center. In Fortinet FortiGate case, there is no requirement for these prerequisites to configure or implement Fortinet FortiGate firewall without a management center. We can deploy Fortinet FortiGate firewall without any management center. It is a very web-based firewall and you can access the firewall GUI from the website, and we can easily deploy it without any management center. In Check Point or Cisco cases, a management center is required. In Cisco case, the Firepower Management Center is required to get the advanced features. But in Fortinet case, it does not require these things. This is a very beauty of this firewall.

I suggest buying Fortinet instead of buying Palo Alto, Cisco, or Check Point. I will definitely recommend Fortinet.

Fortinet FortiGate has different models of firewalls which are high capacity and high variant firewalls that you can deploy as data center firewalls to protect your data centers, your server farms, and your services which are hosted inside a data center.

Fortinet FortiGate has embedded services, these FortiGuard services which have machine learning-based and artificial intelligence-based malware analysis. These services analyze malwares and next-generation malwares that are not easily identified by signature-based detection. They have the capability to analyze malware by AI-based methods and can identify zero-day attacks. Before they exploit as a zero-day, they prevent this signature and stop this attack to prevent that this is an attack. Those services are hosted in my data centers, web applications, storage, and SaaS. All are protected by those cyber attacks.

Regarding pricing, we cannot compare it right now because pricing matters based on business size and the business deal. We cannot say whether it is high or low. Sometimes we can easily compete with any brand, and in some cases we cannot compete. For example, if we have a big deal, we can get good discounts from Fortinet team. In some cases, the deal is not big, so we cannot get enough good discount. Deployment from FortiSASE to your Fortinet FortiGate firewall over SD-WAN is very easy. Fortinet gives you multiple connections from SASE POP to your Fortinet FortiGate firewall. They have fully redundant connections on SASE POP if you have the same redundant connections with ISP connection on your Fortinet FortiGate firewalls. They have the secure SPX tunnel from FortiSASE to Fortinet FortiGate firewall. You can easily access from Fortinet FortiGate firewall to SASE applications and SASE users who are connected on SASE POP can access local services from SASE POP to Fortinet FortiGate and access the local services.

My overall rating for this product is nine out of ten.