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Cisco Secure Endpoint vs Fortinet FortiClient vs VMware Carbon Black Endpoint comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
7.4
Cisco Secure Endpoint enhances productivity and reduces costs by streamlining threat detection, integrating tools, and minimizing manual intervention.
Sentiment score
6.9
Fortinet FortiClient boosted productivity and security, reduced VPN costs by 8%, but faced challenges in functionality activation.
Sentiment score
6.5
Users reported significant ROI with VMware Carbon Black Endpoint, citing reduced malware and ransomware incidents, and 10% cost savings.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.1
Cisco Secure Endpoint support is praised for responsiveness and expertise, providing quick issue resolution and valuable user guidance.
Sentiment score
6.5
Fortinet FortiClient's customer service varies, with response times and resolution quality improving notably for higher-tier service subscribers.
Sentiment score
6.3
VMware Carbon Black Endpoint support is generally praised as effective and knowledgeable, but some report delays and issues with tiered support.
Cisco has good technical support, especially considering these are newer solutions compared to traditional routing and switching products.
They initiate the troubleshooting process quickly and resolve issues in a timely manner.
They provide very good support, and an issue I had was resolved quickly over the phone.
The technical support for FortiClient is excellent.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.4
Cisco Secure Endpoint is scalable, integrates with SecureX for efficient management, and supports diverse industries without extra resources.
Sentiment score
7.3
Fortinet FortiClient is praised for scalability, easily accommodating user expansion and seamless integration, despite some suggested improvements.
Sentiment score
7.4
VMware Carbon Black Endpoint is highly scalable and adaptable for various enterprises, praised for ease of adding tenants and managing environments.
Cisco Secure Endpoint is definitely scalable.
The scalability could use improvement as you need to ensure that routes and policies are aligned, which can be complex.
We can recommend FortiClient for small organizations with 50 to 60 users as well as for larger enterprises due to its extensive features.
The scalability rates at nine out of ten because the features can be easily extended.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
6.5
Cisco Secure Endpoint is highly stable, reliable, and trusted for performance, earning high ratings from users in various enterprises.
Sentiment score
7.8
Fortinet FortiClient is praised for its stability, reliability, and performance, with minor issues quickly resolved through updates.
Sentiment score
7.4
VMware Carbon Black Endpoint is stable, lightweight, reliable, and highly rated, though minor issues with sensors and updates occasionally occur.
We have not encountered any problems.
Its stability level is excellent.
The overall stability of Fortinet FortiClient rates at nine out of ten.
 

Room For Improvement

Cisco Secure Endpoint requires better integration, reporting, and UI enhancements, alongside improved pricing, AI capabilities, and IoT support.
Fortinet FortiClient requires improvements in management, configuration, compatibility, user interface, and integration with additional security features and platforms.
VMware Carbon Black Endpoint struggles with mobile support, complex UI, performance issues, inadequate reporting, and insufficient third-party integration.
The forensic capabilities need enhancement, especially for deep forensic data collection.
Fortinet frequently releases updates without thorough testing.
There are complexities with the scalability part, particularly with routing and policy alignment.
There are advanced features like Zero Trust that I currently do not use but could be beneficial for security.
 

Setup Cost

Cisco Secure Endpoint offers competitive and flexible pricing with value-rich features, despite some complexity in licensing.
Fortinet FortiClient offers cost-effective VPN solutions with variable pricing, requiring licenses for advanced features, often rated reasonably by users.
VMware Carbon Black Endpoint licensing is seen as expensive and inflexible, with prices ranging from $15 to $7,000 per node.
Cisco is aggressive in pricing, making it competitive and sometimes even cheaper than other good products like CrowdStrike, Microsoft Defender, or SentinelOne.
FortiClient is a value-for-money product and is not considered expensive compared to similar products on the market.
FortiClient is cost-effective since the client itself is free with the purchase of Fortinet.
FortiClient is included in a package with the UTM features, so there is no separate cost for it.
 

Valuable Features

Cisco Secure Endpoint provides advanced security features, cross-platform support, and ease of use with strong threat intelligence and support.
Fortinet FortiClient provides strong security features, easy management, and integration, enhancing VPN services and endpoint protection.
VMware Carbon Black Endpoint offers robust remote security with intuitive real-time detection, AI-driven threat response, and centralized cloud control.
Cisco Secure Endpoint is very good in machine learning, which allows it to secure offline contents even if not connected to the internet.
I strongly recommend this solution, especially for Fortinet customers who use FortiGate or other Fortinet products, as they can easily integrate these features and exchange information seamlessly.
We appreciate its VPN capabilities and the features that offer extra security functionalities like antivirus and malware scanning.
The most valuable feature of FortiClient is its high security level.
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) category, the mindshare of Cisco Secure Endpoint is 1.5%, down from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Fortinet FortiClient is 1.8%, down from 2.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Carbon Black Endpoint is 1.6%, down from 2.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
 

Featured Reviews

Brad Wright - PeerSpot reviewer
Does a great job of allowing us to take the individual endpoint assets, do an inventory, and know what the normal state is
I think a large benefit of using Secure Endpoint is the ability to offload the personnel. We have a crisis in the country where we have too many jobs and there are not enough people, and using something like Secure Endpoint and integrating the Cisco ecosystem allows us to pull in all of this data into a single place and offset those people that we have to have to do the job. It allows us to do some threat hunting and make good decisions with good tools, and it's affordable. Secure Endpoint has decreased our time to remediate by providing the tools and the integrations we need so we can quickly look across our entire network, look for those threats, and actually make good decisions. Cisco Secure Endpoint provides us the scale to quickly reduce the time to find out about an event by integrating into different platforms and providing threat intelligence specifically from Talos so we could quickly find these things. Where things used to take days, we can now do things in hours. Cisco Secure Endpoint does a great job of allowing us to take the individual endpoint assets, do an inventory, and know what the normal state is, so we can have a delta when things change, and we can look for consistencies. And when those things change, we get alerts. We can know what's happening with those boxes. The great part about it is I was able to eliminate lots of other features of doing inventory management and spreadsheets and see what's going on. It's also allowing us to integrate all of the other secure malware antivirus-type platforms that do a single platform. And do threat hunting with that. Five out of five times, Secure Endpoint helps every customer I talk to improve their cybersecurity resilience. It provides integrations, it provides an affordable and easy-to-implement package where we can quickly talk to customers and work with them to get a solution in place. Logicalis does a great job of taking the package and not just installing it, but doing it in a way that a customer can understand how to use that platform afterward.
MuhammadJahangir - PeerSpot reviewer
Users only need to install the VPN and authenticate with their email address
I primarily use remote VPN solutions to connect securely. We have configured both site-to-site VPN and remote VPN, and it is connected to FortiClient Implementing this solution has streamlined time management in our organization. Without SSO, we would need manual configuration for each PC, but…
Nikunj Kamboj - PeerSpot reviewer
Integrates well with our existing SIEM tool and helps in identifying suspicious activities
The solution's integration with our existing security infrastructure is good. Whenever we have any alert in VMware Carbon Black Endpoint, we can easily that alert in our SIEM tool and check logs from the SIEM tool itself. VMware Carbon Black Endpoint is just a secondary security tool for us, and we are just monitoring the alerts from it. The solution's behavioral analytics feature helps in identifying suspicious activities pretty well. Whenever we have even a small thing, we get an alert. The solution is deployed on the cloud in our organization. Performance-wise, the solution is doing great in terms of connecting to the host directly. Performing a malware scan usually takes a lot of time, more than 24 hours. A malware scan is something that we do only on Carbon Black for the old endpoint devices and servers. It used to take sometimes three days to perform. I would recommend the solution to other users. Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
21%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
Healthcare Company
6%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Cisco Secure Endpoint?
The product's initial setup phase was very simple.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco Secure Endpoint?
Cisco is aggressive in pricing, making it competitive and sometimes even cheaper than other good products like CrowdS...
What needs improvement with Cisco Secure Endpoint?
Cisco Secure Endpoint lacks features like DLP which other vendors offer. XDR is new, so integration capabilities with...
How does Fortinet FortiClient compare with Open VPN Access Server?
Fortinet FortiClient is a feature-rich solution that is easy to use and deploy without sacrificing safety and securit...
What's the difference between Fortinet's FortiEDR and FortiClient?
I suggest Fortinet’s FortiEDR over FortiClient for several reasons. For starters, FortiEDR guarantees solid protectio...
What to choose: an endpoint antivirus, an EDR solution or both?
I can recommend Carbon Black, an award-winning next-gen anti-virus (NGAV) and endpoint detection and response (EDR) s...
What's the difference between Carbon Black CB Response and Carbon Black CB Defense?
Carbon Black offers two different levels of Endpoint Detection and Response. One is the VM Carbon Black Cloud Endpoin...
What do you like most about Carbon Black CB Defense?
VMware Carbon Black Endpoint is a highly stable solution.
 

Also Known As

Cisco AMP for Endpoints
FortiClient
Carbon Black CB Defense, Bit9, Confer
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Heritage Bank, Mobile County Schools, NHL University, Thunder Bay Regional, Yokogawa Electric, Sam Houston State University, First Financial Bank
Black Gold Regional Schools, Amadeus Hospitality, Jefferson County, Chunghwa Telecom, City of Boroondara, Dimension Data
Netflix, Progress Residential, Indeed, Hologic, Gentle Giant, Samsung Research America
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, CrowdStrike, SentinelOne and others in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP). Updated: July 2025.
864,574 professionals have used our research since 2012.