We performed a comparison between Cisco IOS Security and Meraki MX 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 version is stable. I don't have any issues with this solution, in our environment, it works well."
"UTM/NGFW features and FortiCloud for logs and backups are awesome."
"The license management is very valuable. You can get a new license each year, or you can enroll every two to four years. You can get the logs, and you will get the information on the risk in your network and the entire organization. With this information, you can take action on your actives, computers, or devices. You can bring your own device as an SSE."
"The secure web gateway module and the application control module are valuable. HA operations are very easy."
"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."
"Security, SD-WAN, and Streetscape are valuable features."
"It is a safe product."
"I really like the captive portal feature for our guest network. It has nice VLAN features in terms of separating our network. The anti-virus is also good."
"You can scale it when you need to."
"The technical support is good."
"We use the product for firewalls."
"We are able to filter a lot of traffic especially when a lot of the traffic is in layer 7."
"I've found their network routing to be very good."
"Technical support for this solution is very good."
"I'm able to transfer data over internet network security. With the GRE I'm able to transfer data within one bunch to another bunch in a public way, like the internet. The communication is encrypted and is private. It gives me added privacy."
"The solution is very user-friendly and easy to deal with."
"It is a robust SD-WAN solution."
"Real Auto VPN with load balancer without needing a public IP. It is simple and functional."
"We've had no issues with the scalability or the stability of this solution"
"Deployment takes no more than one working day."
"I like the automatic firmware updates. We use the Active Directory to authenticate VPN users."
"It has very good features; it's easy to use, configure, set up, and deploy."
"What I like best about Meraki MX is that it's easy to deploy remotely. The product works. It has automatic updates. I also like that Meraki MX is a brilliant device. You turn it on, stick the key in there, activate it, and then you're done. Meraki MX does what my customers need at the end of the day, so I also like that."
"The technical support people from Meraki are brilliant."
"I would like to see improvements made to the dashboard and UI, as well as to the reporting."
"Fortinet should focus on enhancing the capabilities of FortiGate by consolidating its various products, such as FortiGate Cloud, FortiManager, and FortiAnalyzer."
"It could use better throughput on some of the smaller boxes for the branch offices."
"Some of the filtering is not robust, you can escape it with a VPN. Some of the users bypass some of the filters. It catches some but it also misses some, that area could be improved. It's functioning reasonably but there's room for improvement in that area."
"The biggest "gotcha" is that if the client purchases what they call the UTM shared bundle, which has unified threat management on both, it's not as easy to manage if you have more than one firewall."
"We would like to have the ability to disable some of the security functionalities."
"Reporting is limited to providing an external appliance for improving the reporting capabilities of the FortiAnalyzer. It does not offer a central management and is also sold separably as an appliance."
"Fortinet FortiGate needs to improve the logging and reporting. Additionally, the next-generation application's policies should be improved. When they were released they had bugs."
"Cisco is an expensive firewall, so the pricing can be improved."
"There's a technology called SD-WAN that we would like to see. We are unable to handle multiple connections or to automatically load balance. I would like to have a feature that enables us to automatically prepare for load balancing."
"We cannot directly upgrade the system. The tool's deployment is also very difficult in legacy environments. The tool needs to have bigger ports as well."
"Signatures and other critical definitions need to be updated more frequently."
"The solution is not user friendly and it is hard to manage the GUI interface."
"Cisco is a scalable product, but it is expensive compared to other vendors."
"We have a very bad experience on the support. They take too much time requesting logs, and they are not coming directly online to resolve the issues."
"The configuration and reporting interfaces need a lot of improvement. It needs to be more accessible forsolide without a strong technical background. If you had a simplified dashboard, the lower-level techs could manage the solution and provide services. Cisco IOS Security requires someone who is highly trained to operate it."
"MX can only be managed via a web interface, but I'm accustomed to using a CLI or a graphical interface. I would also like to see more reporting features. It doesn't provide enough information for me to know precisely about some clients."
"Meraki tech support staff have a lot more visibility into your network than you do, which is frustrating at times. I understand the approach is to keep the dashboard easier to understand. This will frustrate more advanced users at times."
"You can only have one tunnel in the whole infrastructure — one tunnel with one device."
"More detail needed for configuration of the VPN."
"Load balancing options and ability to manage a couple of Internet connections."
"We do not have account managers in our region for the solution. Some governments don't use the product since it is attached to the internet."
"Expensive licensing and firewall stops immediately working if the license is not renewed at expiration date."
"Right now, you can postpone the update but eventually, if you don't do the update, it will install the updates automatically for you and that's something that is not working for me."
Cisco IOS Security is ranked 22nd in Firewalls with 47 reviews while Meraki MX is ranked 2nd in Unified Threat Management (UTM) with 57 reviews. Cisco IOS Security is rated 8.0, while Meraki MX is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Cisco IOS Security writes "User-friendly and excels in documentation, making it easier to resolve issues". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Meraki MX writes "Cost-effective, simplified, easy to manage, and reliable with advanced security features and granular visibility". Cisco IOS Security is most compared with Cisco Secure Firewall, Fortinet FortiOS, Netgate pfSense, OPNsense and Palo Alto Networks URL Filtering with PAN-DB, whereas Meraki MX is most compared with Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Cisco Secure Firewall, Sophos XG, SonicWall TZ and Netgate pfSense. See our Cisco IOS Security vs. Meraki MX report.
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