Cisco Hybrid Mesh Firewall vs Fortinet FortiGate-VM comparison

Cisco Hybrid Mesh Firewall vs. Fortinet FortiGate-VM

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Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score

7.8

Organizations reported rapid returns with Cisco Hybrid Mesh Firewall, noting cost savings, improved metrics, and enhanced security controls.

Sentiment score

4.5

Fortinet FortiGate-VM offers cost-effective security, efficient threat handling, and seamless Microsoft AD integration, enhancing network reliability in Brazil.

With Cisco Hybrid Mesh Firewall, that need is completely eradicated.

Sales And Brand Strategist at CrossConnect

I believe there is a return on investment with Cisco Hybrid Mesh Firewall for every company that deploys it, as they typically see returns quickly, often within a few months, and the value measured is reasonable and comes back quickly.

Solution Principal Senior . at Insight

Because of the integrated ecosystem, we are able to gain better insight and develop better controls around securing our system.

For more quotes and insights, download the Cisco Hybrid Mesh Firewall report

Manager, Network at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees

I observed a fifty to sixty percent reduction in operational costs after migrating to FortiGate VM.

Rahool Sharma

Senior Network Consultant at Visionet Systems Inc.

They have a platform that organizes their networks and access effectively.

Pietro Di Blasi

Pre-Sales Analyst at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees

We haven't used MPLS for over five years now, and it was extremely beneficial to see the changes from MPLS to SD-WAN using Fortinet FortiGate.

reviewer2706363

Chief Technology Officer at a consultancy with 11-50 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Fortinet FortiGate-VM report

Customer Service

Sentiment score

7.7

Cisco Hybrid Mesh Firewall support is praised for responsiveness and expertise, despite licensing concerns and shift change issues.

Sentiment score

6.4

Fortinet FortiGate-VM's support is praised for responsiveness and expertise, though some note variability and inefficiency in complex cases.

I would evaluate my customer service and technical support experience as fantastic.

Manager, Network at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees

I would evaluate the customer service and technical support as a white-glove experience for sure.

Sales And Brand Strategist at CrossConnect

I evaluate the customer service and technical support as excellent, as the support provided by Cisco is superior to other companies I have dealt with across various products.

For more quotes and insights, download the Cisco Hybrid Mesh Firewall report

Solution Principal Senior . at Insight

Their support is helpful and effective.

Rahool Sharma

Senior Network Consultant at Visionet Systems Inc.

The end-user support is delayed at levels L2 and L3.

reviewer1866795

Chief Executive Officer at a tech services company with 1-10 employees

They support us almost instantly.

Khushru_Mistry

Chief Technology Officer at GM Modular

For more quotes and insights, download the Fortinet FortiGate-VM report

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score

7.7

Cisco Hybrid Mesh Firewall scales effectively, supports East-West traffic, and is praised despite some deployment challenges.

Sentiment score

6.6

Fortinet FortiGate-VM is scalable and cost-effective, though some users encounter challenges with scalability and specific modules.

I find that Cisco Hybrid Mesh Firewall is well-prepared to scale with the growing needs of my organization, as it is designed with scalability in mind.

For more quotes and insights, download the Cisco Hybrid Mesh Firewall report

Solution Principal Senior . at Insight

It scales well with the growing needs of my organization.

reviewer1532805

IT Director at a retailer with 10,001+ employees

Cisco Hybrid Mesh Firewall scales well with the growing needs of our organization.

reviewer2848713

Senior Domain Architect II at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

Fortinet FortiGate-VM adapts effectively; for example, you have a limited number of VPN connections on VM01, accommodating around 1,000 remote users, and if the customer needs another endpoint, we can deploy VM02 and manage that transition effectively.

Samuel-Mottet

EMEA Enterprise Solutions Architect at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees

Scalability is well-supported, with the notable ability to implement features easily.

Ino Vitra

Assistant Operation Manger at IIJ Singapore

It can start with a single core and scale up to a 32-core license for a robust deployment.

reviewer1866795

Chief Executive Officer at a tech services company with 1-10 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Fortinet FortiGate-VM report

Stability Issues

Sentiment score

8.1

Cisco Hybrid Mesh Firewall's stability has improved, resolving initial issues and ensuring a smooth transition without disruptions.

Sentiment score

6.6

Fortinet FortiGate-VM is highly stable with minimal bugs, consistently reliable performance, and improved high availability for network security.

I have not experienced any downtime, crashes, or performance issues.

Manager, Network at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees

No downtime or crashes experienced once it has been onboarded.

Solution Principal Senior . at Insight

I have not experienced any downtime or crashes with Cisco Hybrid Mesh Firewall.

For more quotes and insights, download the Cisco Hybrid Mesh Firewall report

Sales And Brand Strategist at CrossConnect

The stability of Fortinet FortiGate is excellent.

Subhadip Pakrashi

CEO at Kapstone Technological Services LLP

The product has been very stable, based on my ten to eleven years of experience.

Ino Vitra

Assistant Operation Manger at IIJ Singapore

In the past couple of years, they started releasing numerous new features, and things have become somewhat unstable.

reviewer2706363

Chief Technology Officer at a consultancy with 11-50 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Fortinet FortiGate-VM report

Room For Improvement

Cisco Hybrid Mesh Firewall needs improved licensing, networking features, integration, documentation, pricing, and enhanced security product support.

Fortinet FortiGate-VM needs simplification in activation, integration, interface, and support, with calls for enhancements in features and pricing.

Licensing is always a pain point and represents the worst aspect of the solution.

reviewer2848713

Senior Domain Architect II at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

Whenever we ask for a feature while working with Cisco, within a day, we get the feature added.

For more quotes and insights, download the Cisco Hybrid Mesh Firewall report

Sales And Brand Strategist at CrossConnect

Cisco Hybrid Mesh Firewall could be improved by refining the documentation around the migration path from Cisco Defense Orchestrator or Farsight Manager because when we were early adopters, the migration path was quite unset and very vague and ambiguous.

BradDavenport

Director of Security Solutions North America at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

You should not look just at a data sheet, but also look at real tests in the field and load tests from companies who are making them.

reviewer2283873

Founder at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

The API needs better integration to match accounts and objects more effectively.

Rahool Sharma

Senior Network Consultant at Visionet Systems Inc.

Now, these features require separate products like FortiManager, FortiAnalyzer, and a FortiCloud subscription for reporting.

reviewer1866795

Chief Executive Officer at a tech services company with 1-10 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Fortinet FortiGate-VM report

Setup Cost

Enterprise buyers find Cisco Hybrid Mesh Firewall affordable and valuable, with special pricing, reinvestment potential, and justified investment benefits.

Fortinet FortiGate-VM offers competitive pricing with flexible licensing, appealing to medium-large enterprises but challenging for smaller firms.

While some vendors offer cheaper options, the real value lies in the technology and the support provided by Talos and TAC, justifying its price in comparison to other vendors.

Solution Principal Senior . at Insight

Pricing has been competitive, and any savings we make on infrastructure can be reinvested in patient experience, care, and safety.

For more quotes and insights, download the Cisco Hybrid Mesh Firewall report

Manager, Network at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees

My experience with the pricing, setup costs, and licensing has been satisfactory.

reviewer1532805

IT Director at a retailer with 10,001+ employees

The license for Fortinet FortiGate-VM costs 100K to 150K Philippine pesos per year for VM1 or VM2.

Sitti Ridzma Salahuddin

System Engineer at Trends and Technologies, Inc

I don't have this experience with Fortinet FortiGate-VM because my colleagues in Germany are reaching better prices than me.

Karel Ondracek

Network Administrator at THK Co Ltd

As long as there is competition, they go with 50% + discounts.

Ehab Ali

Senior Presales Consultant at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Fortinet FortiGate-VM report

Valuable Features

Cisco Hybrid Mesh Firewall offers centralized management, integration, monitoring, segmentation, and machine learning for streamlined security operations and cost savings.

Fortinet FortiGate-VM combines strong security, ease of use, scalability, and affordability with advanced threat detection and centralized management.

The centralized management console has helped my organization streamline security policies because we have a single place to view logs, ingestion, and to correlate all logs and events from one dashboard.

Solution Principal Senior . at Insight

We also have the ability to document changes and indeed have the ability to roll back failed changes in a much more expeditious manner with an audit trail, which ensures that both our network team and our security and compliance organizations are confident that we can not only effectively implement change, but we can also manage the risk that comes along with change.

BradDavenport

Director of Security Solutions North America at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

The most valuable feature is the integration with all of the other Cisco tools that we have, and its platform-first approach.

For more quotes and insights, download the Cisco Hybrid Mesh Firewall report

Manager, Network at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees

The more integrated we become, the less we spend on solving bugs and issues, allowing us to reduce time focusing on understanding and improving our network.

Pietro Di Blasi

Pre-Sales Analyst at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees

Fortinet is the only provider to have successfully set up a unified operating system on all its products in the network security ecosystem.

reviewer2742447

System Administrator, Security Engineer, Security Result at a tech vendor with 201-500 employees

For what we need to do, which is setting up a VPN connection between both sides and using it for SSL VPN connections for remote users, it works effectively and we haven't encountered vulnerabilities.

Samuel-Mottet

EMEA Enterprise Solutions Architect at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Fortinet FortiGate-VM report

Categories and Ranking

Cisco Hybrid Mesh Firewall

Ranking in Firewalls

21st

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Firewall Security Management (9th)

Fortinet FortiGate-VM

Ranking in Firewalls

11th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

151

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Featured Reviews

Smart switching has transformed data center security and now simplifies stateful segmentation

Sales And Brand Strategist at CrossConnect

To improve Cisco Hybrid Mesh Firewall, I think right now awareness is the biggest area for improvement. Cisco should focus on raising awareness about what the firewall on the switch actually is and how policy has changed. That is a massive story that has not been emphasized enough regarding saving time and effort due to the combination of all these tools. From a feature perspective, I am discovering new features as we deploy, so I do not know if there is a good answer yet because we are at the forefront of this technology. I can tell you that whenever we ask for a feature while working with Cisco, within a day, we get the feature added. For instance, understanding flow data is crucial. Within the N9300, to be able to apply the policy as we are discussing, you need to understand your network flow and what communicates with what. We were able to collaborate with the Cisco BU to refine how we consume that data and migrate old policies to the new structure necessary with Cisco Hybrid Mesh Firewall and HyperShield.

Read full review

Ehab Ali

Senior Presales Consultant at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Unified security fabric has simplified multi-country deployments and strengthened threat response

FortiGate VM delivers exceptional performance and security with no degradation of service or protection (same features as the HW option). As part of the Fortinet Security Fabric, it extends across clouds and distributed locations, mitigating blind spots in virtual infrastructures. FortiGate VM can be rapidly deployed, managed through a centralized platform, and offers a range of purchasing options to suit every need. Also, FortiGate VM offers versatile deployment options across both public and private clouds, supporting all major public clouds including AWS, Azure, and Google as well as most hypervisors such as VMware, Hyper-V, and KVM. These deployments enable organizations to create scalable, high-performance firewalls that can be tailored to different virtualized environments and hyper-scale public cloud infrastructures. FortiGate VM integrates seamlessly with various infrastructure as code (IaC) tools such as Jenkins and GitLab, supporting security as code practices.

Read full review

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

No data available

Financial Services Firm

Construction Company

Computer Software Company

Outsourcing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	74
Midsize Enterprise	35
Large Enterprise	43

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco Hybrid Mesh Firewall?

My experience with the pricing, setup cost, and licensing of Cisco Hybrid Mesh Firewall is that it was minimal compared to the cost difference between what traditional N9300 would have cost to empo...

What needs improvement with Cisco Hybrid Mesh Firewall?

What is your primary use case for Cisco Hybrid Mesh Firewall?

My main use case for Cisco Hybrid Mesh Firewall is the consolidation of multiple tools into one management platform.A specific example of how I use Cisco Hybrid Mesh Firewall for consolidation is t...

Features comparison between Palo Alto and Fortinet firewalls

In the best tradition of these questions, Feature-wise both are quite similar, but each has things it's better at, it kind of depends what you value most. PA is good at app control, web filtering a...

Which would you recommend - FortiGate VM or Azure Firewall?

Both of these solutions are excellent options that provide flexible scalability and solid security. Fortinet Fortigate VM integrates well and has excellent centralized reporting. It is very easy to...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortinet FortiGate-VM?

I am not involved in the pricing and costs associated with Fortinet FortiGate-VM, as those are handled by the CFO. We are in operations, and we just access the product as it is and take care of the...

Palo Alto Networks VM-Series vs Cisco Hybrid Mesh Firewall

Comparisons

Compared 100% of the time

More Cisco Hybrid Mesh Firewall Competitors

Azure Firewall vs Fortinet FortiGate-VM

Compared 12% of the time

Fortinet FortiGate vs Fortinet FortiGate-VM

Compared 9% of the time

Palo Alto Networks VM-Series vs Fortinet FortiGate-VM

Compared 9% of the time

Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) vs Fortinet FortiGate-VM

Compared 6% of the time

Cisco Secure Firewall vs Fortinet FortiGate-VM

Compared 6% of the time

More Fortinet FortiGate-VM Competitors

Product Reports

Cisco Hybrid Mesh Firewall

Download Cisco Hybrid Mesh Firewall product report

Fortinet FortiGate-VM

Download Fortinet FortiGate-VM product report

Also Known As

No data available

FortiGate Virtual Appliance, FortiGate-VM

Overview

Cisco Hybrid Mesh Firewall offers comprehensive protection and advanced security features tailored for modern network infrastructures. It efficiently addresses complex security challenges by integrating multiple functionalities into a cohesive framework.

This firewall architecture effectively secures hybrid environments, blending cloud and on-premise resources seamlessly. With its flexible deployment options, Cisco Hybrid Mesh Firewall allows businesses to adapt to evolving threats while maintaining high performance. Its scalable and robust nature ensures balanced load distribution and advanced threat detection, optimizing both resource utilization and security management.

What are the most important features of Cisco Hybrid Mesh Firewall?

Real-Time Threat Intelligence: Provides immediate responses to emerging threats with precise intelligence.
Advanced Traffic Control: Manages and filters network traffic to maintain optimal performance and security.
Scalable Architecture: Adjusts easily to network growth and complex security demands.
Integrated Security Policies: Unifies firewall rules and policies for consistent enforcement across environments.

What benefits and ROI should users look for in reviews?

Cost Efficiency: Reduces the need for separate security solutions, lowering total investment.
Improved Security Posture: Enhances overall security through comprehensive threat management.
Operational Simplification: Minimizes complexity by integrating multiple security functions.
Adaptability: Offers the flexibility to adjust to new security challenges as they arise.

Cisco Hybrid Mesh Firewall is extensively implemented in industries like finance, healthcare, and retail, where secure handling of sensitive data is critical. It supports businesses by offering tailored security configurations, ensuring compliance with industry standards, and facilitating smooth integration with existing infrastructures.

Cisco

Fortinet FortiGate-VM delivers robust security services and advanced network management suitable for cloud environments, providing solutions like firewall and SD-WAN, with seamless integration across Fortinet devices.

FortiGate-VM is designed for enterprise security, offering comprehensive features like intrusion prevention and application filtering. It's known for its scalability and flexibility, supporting cloud platforms such as Azure and AWS. It enhances threat response and network management efficiency, thanks to real-time threat response, intuitive integration with existing systems, and cost-effectiveness.

What are the key features of Fortinet FortiGate-VM?

Strong Security: Offers firewall, intrusion prevention, and application filtering.
SD-WAN Capability: Improves network connectivity and performance.
Scalability: Efficient scaling in cloud environments.
Integration: Seamlessly connects with other Fortinet devices.

What benefits can users expect from Fortinet FortiGate-VM?

Enhanced Network Management: Simplifies deployment with real-time threat response.
Cost-Effectiveness: Optimal for managing network protocols at reasonable costs.
Flexibility in Deployment: Suitable for secure virtual machine operations on platforms like Azure or AWS.

Fortinet FortiGate-VM is predominantly employed in industries requiring stringent data center security, enabling network segmentation and VPN services. It's particularly favored by organizations using virtual and cloud networks due to its Unified Threat Management capabilities, making it an efficient solution for protecting virtual environments from threats.

Fortinet

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

Security7 Networks, COOPENAE

Cisco Hybrid Mesh Firewall vs. Fortinet FortiGate-VM