We performed a comparison between Cisco Secure Firewall and SonicWall NSa 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."This solution has solid UTM features combined with a nice GUI."
"The most valuable feature is the SSL VPN, as it allows us to connect and it separates this product from other firewalls."
"We use a southern institution that's audited for IT security and the reporting that automatically comes off the unit makes it much easier to meet compliance standards and makes it easier as far as the amount of time that has to be spent to compile that information. If you get your reporting set up correctly when you initially set it up, you just select the one you want and hit print. The auditing trail on it is the best feature."
"The features that I have found most valuable are that it is good to use, and most importantly, the pricing. The customer especially likes the discount when they trade up or something like that."
"The threat prevention is the solution's most valuable aspect."
"It is easy to use. We chose this product for the possibility to have virtual domains (VDOMs). We are building another company in the group, and we would like to split the firewalling rules and policies between these two companies. Each company would be able to manage its own policies and security rules, which is an advantage of Fortinet FortiGate. We can define VDOMs, and every company can manage its own VDOM as if it has its own physical firewall, but in fact, we would be using the same physical appliance because we are also using the same internet lines. So, it allows us to reuse the existing resources without the disadvantage of having to compromise on policies and security. Each company can choose its own way of working."
"The product offers very good security."
"I like how we can achieve total integration."
"An eight because it's a good security solution. It's more mature than its competitors."
"The Adversity Malware Protection (AMP) feature is the most valuable. It is also very easy to use. Every technical user can operate this solution without any difficulty. The dashboard of Cisco Firepower has every tool that a security operator needs. You can find every resource that you need to operate through this dashboard."
"The solution is used for the protection of the mobile data network. It is protecting 3G/4G Internet customers and the Private APN."
"The stability of the product is good."
"On the network side, where you create your rules for allowing traffic — what can come inside and what can go out — that works perfectly, if you know what you want to achieve. It protects you."
"We chose Cisco because it had the full package that we were looking for."
"ASA 5505 and ASA 5506 are very powerful tools to use in a business environment, and provide a lot of security."
"There are no issues that we are aware of. It does its job silently in the background."
"The solution has many useful features, such as content management, user management, user filtering, and domain controller connectivity mapping."
"We can do the hosting and security all under one box. The UTM is a good feature."
"It has good reporting, the reporting is marvelous."
"This product is user-friendly and easy to configure."
"It's very flexible and meets our customer's needs."
"I like that SonicWall NSa is a stable product. It's also a scalable product."
"I like the solution's configuration, interfaces, and user guides."
"SonicWall's sales support is much better than other vendors'."
"I think that the infrastructure for the VPN could be improved. The way that it is bundled also made it difficult to use and sell as it is too expensive."
"The main aspect of FortiGate that could be improved is load balancing. Our management team does not want to buy another appliance for only load balancing."
"The license renewal process, annual renewal price, and the web application firewall features should be improved."
"The room for improvement is about the global delivery time period. Usually I need to wait for almost one month to deliver it overseas. So if you can shorten the deliver time it'd be great."
"Technical support needs to be improved."
"As far as wanting more scalability or things in the network diagram, it's going to cost you."
"Pricing for it is a bit high. It could be cheaper."
"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."
"I'm not a big fan of the FDM (Firepower Device Manager) that comes with Firepower. I found out that you need to use the Firepower Management Center, the FMC, to manage the firewalls a lot better. You can get a lot more granular with the configuration in the FMC, versus the FDM that comes out-of-the-box with it. FDM is like Firepower for dummies."
"The stability is not the best."
"Cisco ASA is starting to get old and Firepower is taking over. All the good things happening are with Firepower."
"It is surprising that you need to have a virtual appliance for the Firepower Management Center. It is not good if you have to setup a VMware server just for it."
"Make the IPS baked-in."
"I would like to see the inclusion of a protocol that can be used to protect databases."
"One area that could be improved is its logging functionality. Your logs are usually displayed on the screen, but if you want to go back one or two days, then you need another solution in place because those logs are overwritten within minutes."
"The central management tool is not comfortable to use. You need to have a specific skill set. This is an important improvement for management because I would like to log into Firepower, see the dashboard, and generate a real-time report, then I question my team."
"The dynamics needs to be improved. The solution is not very compatible compared to the market products."
"One issue with the solution is that no authorization or authentication features exist."
"Customer support is severely lacking with very slow response times."
"Overall, Im satisfied with SonicWall NSa, but it would be better if they could add a small terminal to each device. This would help me deal with certain issues by running a small bot onto any PC."
"It is not scalable. If your enterprise is growing hard then you have to buy another, bigger product. Maybe if you use it virtually it is more scalable."
"The reporting feature could be better because most of the companies want to have the analytics included, which is something that you have to buy separately."
"The logging, reporting, and storage capacity size could improve in a future release."
"You can do zero-trust networking with them, but it's not easy."
Cisco Secure Firewall is ranked 4th in Firewalls with 404 reviews while SonicWall NSa is ranked 20th in Firewalls with 77 reviews. Cisco Secure Firewall is rated 8.2, while SonicWall NSa is rated 7.8. The top reviewer of Cisco Secure Firewall writes "Highlights and helps us catch Zero-day vulnerabilities traveling across our network". On the other hand, the top reviewer of SonicWall NSa writes "Great performance and security with reasonable pricing". Cisco Secure Firewall is most compared with Palo Alto Networks WildFire, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX, Sophos XG and Huawei NGFW, whereas SonicWall NSa is most compared with SonicWall TZ, Meraki MX, Sophos XG, Netgate pfSense and WatchGuard Firebox. See our Cisco Secure Firewall vs. SonicWall NSa report.
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