"The Firepower+ISE+AMP for endpoint integration is something that really stands it out with other vendor solutions. They have something called pxGrid and i think it is already endorsed by IETF. This allows all devices on the network to communicate."
"The most valuable feature is stability."
"We have not had to deal with stability issues."
"It's got the capabilities of amassing a lot of throughput with remote access and VPNs."
"I have access to the web version of Cisco Talos to see the reputation of IP addresses. I find this very helpful. It provides important information for my company to obtain the reputation of IP addresses. The information in Talos is quite complete."
"It has a good security level. It is a next-generation firewall. It can protect from different types of attacks. We have enabled IPS and IDS."
"The customer service/technical support is very good with this solution."
"Firepower NGFW has improved my organization in several ways. Before, we were trying to stamp out security threats and issues, it was a one-off type of way to attack it. I spent a lot of manpower trying to track down the individual issues or flare-ups that we would see. With Cisco's Firepower Management, we're able to have that push up to basically one monitor and one UI and be able to track that and stop threats immediately. It also gives us a little more granularity on what those threats might be."
"Cisco ASA provides us with very good application visibility and control."
"Even in very big environments, Cisco comes in handy with configuration and offers reliability when it comes to managing multiple items on one platform."
"The solution is excellent for enterprise-level networks."
"The Inline Mode configuration works really well, and ASA works very impressively."
"We are mostly using it for remote access, so the remote access feature is the most valuable, but all other features are also needed and required. It is also a very straightforward and reliable solution."
"Netting is one of the best features. We can modify it in different ways. Site-to-site VPN is also an awesome feature of Cisco ASA. The biggest advantage of Cisco products is technical support. They provide the best technical support."
"The most valuable feature we have found to be the VPN because we use it often."
"The benefits we see from the ASA are connected to teleworking as well as, of course, having the basic functionality of a firewall in place and the prevention of attacks."
"It's user-friendly and easy to operate."
"I like Fortinet FortiGate's antispam filter, SPN, and clustering features."
"I like that they have given me a solution at a fair price."
"The user interface (UI) is very, very good."
"The SD-WAN feature is the most valuable. This feature evolved from link load balancing. It has helped us in terms of our uptime and privatizing applications whenever we experience an outage. The SD-WAN feature has been a plus for us. Two-factor authentication has allowed us to add more users in terms of remote working. We have two-factor authentication for remote workers to authenticate them before they get on the network."
"This product is definitely scalable."
"The simplicity of the product is great. It's very easy to use, which is a compliment we get all the time in terms of feedback."
"The most valuable features are that it is very simple to configure and to manage."
"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."
"Deploying configurations takes longer than it should."
"We cannot have virtual domains, which we can create with FortiGate. This is something they should add in the future. Additionally, there is a connection limit and the FMC could improve."
"Report generation is an area that should be improved."
"My team tells me that other solutions such as Fortinet and Palo Alto are easier to implement."
"FlexConfig is there as a bridge for features that are not yet natively integrated into Firepower. It is a way of allowing you to be able to configure things that wouldn't otherwise be possible until the development team can add them into Firepower's native capability. There is still some work that needs to be done around FlexConfig. There are still quite a few complex things, like policy-based routing, that have to be done in FlexConfig, and it doesn't always work perfectly. Sometimes, there are some glitches. It is recommended that you configure FlexConfig policies with Cisco TAC. It would be good to see Cisco accelerate some of those configurations that you can only do in FlexConfig into the platform, so that they are there natively."
"The initial setup was a bit complex. It wasn't a major challenge, but due to our requirements and network, it was not very straightforward but still easy enough."
"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."
"They should improve their interface."
"We don't have any serious problems. The firewall models that we have are quite legacy, and they have slower performance. We are currently investigating the possibility of migrating to next-generation firewalls."
"Cisco provides us with application visibility and control, although it's not a complete solution compared to other vendors. Cisco needs to work on the application behavior side of things, in particular when it comes to the behavior of SSL traffic."
"I have worked with the new FTD models and they have more features than the ASA line."
"The configuration is an area that needs improvement."
"The virtual firewalls don't work very well with Cisco AnyConnect."
"If I want to activate IPS features on it, I have to buy another license. If I want Cisco AnyConnect, I have to buy another license. That's where we have challenges."
"In the next release, I would like to see the VPN and UTM features included."
"The visibility of the network can be better. The GUI can be improved for better visibility of the network flow. Other solutions have better GUI in terms of network visibility."
"We would like to see an upgrade to the VPN feature, we are using the VPN from outside of our office and there is a limitation to 10 connections, more connections would be suitable."
"We were not able to build a full-mesh VPN; however, I am not sure if this was the fault of Fortinet FortiGate."
"The logs need to be better. They need to be more visible and easier to access."
"There are SD-WAN network monitoring, SD-WAN features, Industrial Databases, Internet of Things, Detection, etc., however, we do have not licenses for those features. We thought that if you bought a product, you should have all of the features it offers. Why should you need to make so many extra purchases to enable features? They should have one price for the entire offering."
"Currently, FortiGate is providing SSL VPN. But they're missing some features that are available in Palo Alto's SSL VPN."
"The central management for the FortiGate Fortinet Firewall needs improvement. They have the manager to do the essential management for both SD-WAN and for the security policy. They should also improve the SD-WAN function."
"If I had any criticism that I would give FortiGate, it would be that they need to stop changing their logging format. Every time we do a firmware upgrade, it is a massive issue on the SIM. Parsers have to be rebuilt. Even the FortiGate guys came in and said that they don't play well in the sandbox."
More Cisco Firepower NGFW Firewall Pricing and Cost Advice →
Cisco ASA Firewall is ranked 6th in Firewalls with 62 reviews while Fortinet FortiGate is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 98 reviews. Cisco ASA Firewall is rated 8.0, while Fortinet FortiGate is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Cisco ASA Firewall writes "Robust solution that integrates well with both Cisco products and products from other vendors". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Fortinet FortiGate writes "Stable, easy to set up, and offers good ROI". Cisco ASA Firewall is most compared with Palo Alto Networks WildFire, Meraki MX, Juniper SRX, pfSense and SonicWall TZ, whereas Fortinet FortiGate is most compared with pfSense, Check Point NGFW, Meraki MX, Sophos XG and SonicWall TZ. See our Cisco ASA Firewall vs. Fortinet FortiGate report.
See our list of best Firewalls vendors.
We monitor all Firewalls reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
Better is very subjective. If you want a firewall that your Cisco-trained engineers can integrate with your Cisco routers and Cisco switches and that supports Cisco proprietary protocols, or you need a firewall that runs at terabit speeds and integrates with FortiSwitch, I bet you know the answer.
Headline, Fortigates are fixed-port appliances, with really good hardware acceleration and a big security integration fabric.
Cisco ASA (and now Firepower) can be modular, where you choose the ports you need, but tend to cost more for the same amount of throughput and tend not to have as much integration with other parts of the security world.
There is a lot more to say but pick the things that are important to you.
I think they are for two different businesses with different digital strategies as well.
On the one hand, we have the option of consolidating everything in a single box and on the other, putting together a solution with parts and pieces that are more robust but also more complex.
And don't forget the look of the technology departments where an option clearly requires less expert level to exploit the acquired infrastructure. This is where the concept of Service appears, which in my understanding has already had to evolve from the traditional times of responses and product catalogs.
CISCO ASA is a great product, easy trouble shooting on Cmd line and GUI interface,best Cisco Support