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Catalyst 8000 Edge Platforms vs Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 1, 2026

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Catalyst 8000 Edge Platforms
Ranking in Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions
12th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Forcepoint Next Generation ...
Ranking in Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions
11th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
52
Ranking in other categories
Firewalls (23rd), WAN Edge (11th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions category, the mindshare of Catalyst 8000 Edge Platforms is 0.5%, up from 0.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall is 2.4%, up from 2.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall2.4%
Catalyst 8000 Edge Platforms0.5%
Other97.1%
Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions
 

Featured Reviews

IgnitiusMolepo - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior IP Network Defense at MTN
Network operations have become intelligent, secure, and efficient for large-scale growth
The only improvement I can suggest for Catalyst 8000 Edge Platforms is that in the AI era, it will be important to embed machine learning capabilities. It will be important to embed some agencies within that technology and ensure that the technology is able to manage the traffic coming from the agent and also from the robots. Nowadays, companies are starting to adopt new technology with robot agents. I believe that there will be a lot of traffic coming from those agencies. We need to understand the capabilities on how we can onboard them on our technology, on our network on Catalyst 8000 Edge Platforms.
Ajit Pratap Kundan - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager Solution Consulting at Accops Systems Pvt Ltd
Unified security management has improved traffic control and simplified remote workforce access
Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall does help in vulnerability identification and response by providing a single unified console through which I am able to monitor and manage infrastructure. The URL filtering capability of Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall helps in blocking malicious sites. We have to take care of both known threats and unknown threats. The firewall takes care of known threats, and we protect ourselves from unknown threats such as malicious code and malware that we cannot create firewall rules for. With these routing capabilities and policies, only whitelisted things get processed or passed. The biggest advantages of Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall, especially as a partner, service provider, and integrator, are that it is very easy to integrate these APIs with our solution, and most of the features I am getting in the clientless mode. Even with the client mode, it is easy to integrate with our client, allowing the customer to get a single client to address all the features of the firewall as well as the GTNA perspective. The flexibility of deployment, especially for the government and defense sectors, is that they want an on-premises solution, while the rest of the PSUs or enterprise segment are comfortable with the cloud offering, which is the SaaS offering and the way to go in the future.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The flexibility of the models in Catalyst 8000 Edge Platforms helps my organization because it is easier to add any Catalyst 8000 series to Catalyst Center for management, and it is also easy to add to the SD-WAN manager if needed, which makes operations very easy from both an intuitive and operational handling perspective."
"Catalyst 8000 Edge Platforms is a very good product, and with this, we can do so many things, including integrating with the firewall, URL filtering, VPN, IPsec segmentation, and other capabilities."
"Overall, it is a solid platform that ensures reliability and scalability for network edge connectivity."
"The great thing about Cisco Catalyst is the performance and how it can handle so much traffic and information at the same time, forwarding using CEF technology compared with other brands."
"Compared to other vendors, such as Huawei and others, Cisco switches are more powerful and very intelligent."
"Catalyst 8000 Edge Platforms positively impacts my organization because, although we were using Meraki MX for a long time with no new model from them, we were concerned about supporting the increasing bandwidth requirement for our sites, and Catalyst 8000 Edge Platforms helps with this, as we understand it is a newer platform with many optimizations under the hood that can be done to make it more powerful and able to support larger bandwidth requirements."
"As a customer, the biggest advantage of Catalyst 8000 Edge Platforms that I think of is its reliability, which makes me really confident to use it."
"Everything is good, and I very much enjoy this product."
"I like the IPS; IPS is the master feature and I depend on the firewall and sandbox."
"The Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall is a scalable product."
"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 from Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall is great."
"The solution offers sandboxing, which can be integrated at any time."
"This is a good product and I have already recommended it to one of my friends that is now implementing it in the educational sector."
"Forcepoint is a very big company with a very good product line, and it fulfills most of the needs of the customers, especially enterprise customers in the financial sector."
"One of the most valuable features is having the ability to cluster multiple firewalls even if they are different versions."
 

Cons

"The price for Catalyst 8000 Edge Platforms is somewhat higher compared to Chinese brands, though the difference is not huge."
"I believe Catalyst 8000 Edge Platforms could improve the overall management and troubleshooting experience."
"Sometimes it takes a little bit, and sometimes they do not give a lot of information, so it is better to make calls and have meetings with the support team."
"Additionally, the firewall management requires significant improvement, as the current behavior resembles firewalls from 25 years ago; it lacks central management policies and objects that modern firewalls possess."
"The only improvement I can suggest for Catalyst 8000 Edge Platforms is that in the AI era, it will be important to embed machine learning capabilities."
"I would probably not recommend the product to customers because it is not top of the line."
"When it comes to a complex deployment, the rules, firewall features, SD-WAN core features, and auto-scaling can cause the device to be not quite stable."
"Management could be better. They can improve the management."
"I found one problem with Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall. They still do not have any VPN clients for Windows computers with ARM processors."
"Forcepoint would be improved if there were more training available."
"They should provide more details on potential cyber threats."
"The security features need to be improved."
"While the policies are easy to read, the UI feels a bit dated and sometimes clunky on certain pages."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The cost is fair, but it could be improved."
"It could be cheaper like Fortinet."
"We would love to take other solution from Forcepoint, but unfortunately the price is too high. That's why we are not considering using Forcepoing for our proxy and DLB. They have a very good DLB, but the matter in the end is the cost."
"Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall is reasonable, it is priced the same as other firewalls."
"The pricing of the solution is normally competitive with other products."
"There is a need to make payments towards the licensing charges attached to the product. The product is not expensive."
"There is a license required to use this solution and we can purchase it for one, two, three, or five years."
"It is an affordable product. We purchase its yearly license."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Construction Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Large Enterprise5
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business29
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise14
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Catalyst 8000 Edge Platforms?
The only improvement I can suggest for Catalyst 8000 Edge Platforms is that in the AI era, it will be important to embed machine learning capabilities. It will be important to embed some agencies w...
What is your primary use case for Catalyst 8000 Edge Platforms?
Currently, we are using the Cisco 5585 and the Firepowers, and the Firepower IPS, which comes as part of the firewall module, and the switching and the routing. For switching, we have the Catalyst ...
What advice do you have for others considering Catalyst 8000 Edge Platforms?
I still work with the product, specifically with this solution, but I have low hands-on experience myself. However, I am managing the team which is hands-on. 90% of the time, even now, if you call ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall?
In terms of price, I would say Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall is not expensive. It is very much comparable to other vendors, and pricing is not a problem, especially for the Asian market, with...
What needs improvement with Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall?
The negative side of Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall is that the ZTNA part is missing. For that, we have to integrate a third-party component with Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall to complet...
What is your primary use case for Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall?
The major use cases for Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall are in government turnkey projects where we require a lot of traffic coming from the public domain. That is why we are putting these fire...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Forcepoint NGFW, Stonesoft Next Generation Firewall, McAfee Network Security Platform, Intel Security Network Security Platform
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR)
Find out what your peers are saying about Catalyst 8000 Edge Platforms vs. Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
915,341 professionals have used our research since 2012.