We performed a comparison between Azure Firewall and Fortinet FortiOS 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 features are SD-WAN, application control, IPS control, and FortiSandbox."
"I only deal with it from a security analyst's point of view. I don't really get into the features of the actual FortiGate. From the security point of view, it works, and it does its job."
"A strong point of FortiGate is that the graphical interface is complete and easy to use, especially if we think there is a list of operations that we are able to perform inside."
"I like how we can achieve total integration."
"The product is easy to use and is stable. The SV1 functionality is a benefit."
"It enables our organization to become more productive. Also, it protects our NEtWare from viruses and malware."
"The next-generation firewall is great."
"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."
"One of the notable advantages of Azure Firewall is its user-friendly interface, which closely resembles or shares similarities with other Azure components."
"It is easy for me to protect certain ports or even the IP addresses, as well as do whitelisting, blacklisting, and the FQDN when we want virtual machines connected and to protect certain websites."
"The solution is very stable. When comparing it to other environments, it's actually quite impressive."
"The SIEM that Azure Firewall provides us is very robust."
"One of the best features is that it natively integrates with Azure Services and tools. When you have a third-party offering, that is not the case. But Azure Firewall provides a comprehensive and seamless security solution for your Azure resources."
"Azure Firewall is a cloud-native solution that removes the pain of load balancers."
"The solution can autoscale."
"Network filtering is valuable. The scalability capability from the cloud-native service helps us a lot because it simplifies our day-to-day maintenance activity."
"The solution is extremely scalable."
"FortiGate as a product is very easy to configure."
"The product is scalable and easily expands."
"A good network security system for medium-sized businesses with an excellent GUI interface that gives a graphic view of network status."
"Fortinet has optimized the WAN environment for connecting users to the application."
"We found the initial setup to be straightforward."
"FortiOS' most valuable features are management, security, and easy updates with no downtime."
"Compared to other firewalls, the segmentation is much easier in FortiGate."
"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."
"The solution could be more evenly structured."
"In the future, I would like to see improvements made to cloud-based management."
"The pricing could always be better."
"They've become quite expensive."
"You do need some IT knowledge in order to effectively work with the solution."
"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."
"There are some license issues. Not every feature must have a separate license. There must be some of kind synergy between the license so we don't have to pay for every individual license that we would like to have."
"There are a number of things that need to be simplified, but it's mostly costs. It needs to be simplified because it's pretty expensive."
"The reporting, logging, and monitoring features, as well as the flexibility of the policies, need to be improved."
"It would be nice to be able to create groupings for servers and offer groups of IP addresses."
"Right now, with Azure Firewall, we cannot have a normal inbound traffic flow. For inbound, Microsoft suggests using application gateways, so the options are very limited. I cannot use this firewall as an intermediate firewall because of the limitations, and I cannot point routing to another firewall. So if I want to use back-to-back firewall architecture in my environment, I cannot use Azure Firewall for that type of configuration either."
"This solution is not mature when it comes to handling perimeter traffic like internet browsing."
"The solution doesn't offer the same capabilities of Fortinet. It should offer intrusion prevention and advance filtering. These are two very useful features offered on Fortinet that Azure lacks."
"They can improve the pricing of Azure Firewall."
"It would be much easier if the on-premises, firewall rules, had some kind of export-import possibility in place, which is not the case right now."
"The implementation could be simplified."
"There is some room for improvement in the support."
"It would be better if AWS instances were available. If I want to upgrade from T2.small to T2.medium, it should be available rather than having a big instance and paying a lot of money for that. The issue is that we had deployed in AWS Cloud, and we were using a very small instance. Recently we wanted to move in-house and deploy it on the big instance because it was struggling with the RAM. If we use T2.small, we cannot upgrade it to the T2.medium. It has predefined instances in the marketplace with a lot of cost differences. If I can increase the RAM, I have to choose the T3.large instance. If I'm paying $270 for the small instance, I have to pay more than double the cost for T3.large. It is about $850, and this is not good. So, it would be better if it was cheaper. I think both AWS and Fortinet should think about that. They should provide it on lower instances as well. If I want to upgrade it from T2.small to T2.medium, it should be available, but it's a problem."
"FortiOS doesn't work well with all browsers. I think they need to do a better job of making it compatible with the various browsers that are out there."
"SD-WAN configuration could be easier."
"Could be improved by supporting an allocation of quota base management regarding user data."
"Lacks flexibility for different scenario configurations."
"Fortinet's central management needs to be improved. FortiManager's technical tool provider ability should manage all Fortinet security products. Right now, FortiManager only manages the configuration of FortiGate."
Azure Firewall is ranked 17th in Firewalls with 33 reviews while Fortinet FortiOS is ranked 15th in Firewalls with 73 reviews. Azure Firewall is rated 7.2, while Fortinet FortiOS is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Azure Firewall writes "Easy to use and configure but could be more robust". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Fortinet FortiOS writes "Provides effective filtering features, good stability but initial setup is moderately challenging". Azure Firewall is most compared with Fortinet FortiGate-VM, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Palo Alto Networks VM-Series, Microsoft Defender for Cloud and Cisco Secure Firewall, whereas Fortinet FortiOS is most compared with Fortinet FortiManager, Fortinet FortiWeb, Fortinet FortiGate-VM, Infoblox Advanced DNS Protection and Darktrace. See our Azure Firewall vs. Fortinet FortiOS report.
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