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Cisco Secure Firewall vs Cloudanix comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 30, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

Fortinet FortiGate
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
588
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (2nd), Firewalls (1st), Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) (1st), Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (1st), WAN Edge (1st), ZTNA (1st), Unified Threat Management (UTM) (1st)
Cisco Secure Firewall
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
456
Ranking in other categories
Firewalls (5th), Cisco Security Portfolio (3rd)
Cloudanix
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
GRC (27th), Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS) (24th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (31st), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (21st), AI Legal & Compliance (10th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Firewalls Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco Secure Firewall7.5%
Fortinet FortiGate18.3%
OPNsense10.3%
Other63.9%
Firewalls
Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cloudanix0.2%
Wiz17.4%
Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks12.4%
Other70.0%
Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP)
 

Featured Reviews

Vasu Gala - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager, Information Technology Operation/Presales at TechMonarch
A stable solution with an intuitive interface and quick customer service
I have been working with Fortinet FortiGate, WatchGuard, Sophos, and SonicWall. I'm not as comfortable with SonicWall because of their UI and limitations. I prefer Fortinet above all other options. When it comes to configuration, I am confident in my ability to handle various tasks, including creating policies such as firewall rules, web policies, and application policies. Additionally, I can configure VPNs and implement load balancing, among other tasks. Overall, I feel much more comfortable working with Fortinet. Fortinet has made significant improvements by integrating AI with firewalls for threat analysis and prevention. In the past 2-3 years, they have launched FortiSASE and SIEM, and they also provide SOC services. Both Palo Alto and Fortinet FortiGate are excellent. While Fortinet FortiGate comes at higher prices, the functionality and support justify the cost. They promptly resolve firmware issues and inform all support providers about configuration changes.
Phil Shiflett - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager, Network Engineering at TTi Power Equipment
Unified policies streamline network management but complex licensing requires attention
Cisco Secure Firewall has some growth opportunities in terms of visibility and control capabilities regarding managing encrypted traffic. It has the ability to analyze encrypted traffic, and there is potential for more integration with APIs and AI to enhance these capabilities. Cisco Secure Firewall needs improvement in deployment time and the capability to access the CLI during support calls. I often encounter issues when technical support uses a CLI that is not familiar to me while troubleshooting through the GUI. My ongoing complaint for the last six years has been the lack of CLI functionality, which hinders my ability to work on the firewall, alongside concerns regarding deployment time. For the next release, they should look at the features offered by competitors such as Fortinet, including the ability to perform packet capture directly from the interface. If they enhanced their troubleshooting efficiency related to packet capture for each specific rule, it would simplify the process significantly.
Naveenkumar Lakshman - PeerSpot reviewer
Presales Engineer at Crayon AS
Unified cloud security has simplified multi-cloud visibility and streamlined developer workflows
Cloudanix could improve by addressing the limitations in terms of customization. The feature expectations suggest that integrating products such as Slack for IAM workflows or enhancing asset management visibility would give it overall weightage. Enhancing customization is necessary because the current limitations cause some drawbacks in its performance that should be improvised. Regarding needed improvements, I feel that the primary strength of Cloudanix lies in unified security governance and IAM. It needs further improvement in risk correlation and attack path analysis; additionally, it requires richer dashboards to enhance the UI and usability as well. The attack path analysis is a key area that needs further industry-level enhancement, while the integration aspect is a growing ecosystem that requires improvements over time. Additional improvements Cloudanix needs include enhancing the enterprise-grade support experience.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"What I appreciate about Fortinet FortiGate is that the UI is easier than what I've previously known from Sophos."
"The network security and cloud security are most valuable."
"Provides good firewall security and has great VPN features."
"This product is scalable and as a service provider, we extend our usage to external customers."
"You have access to CLI in case you have no web access."
"The solution has helped our organization secure our network and connect remote sites."
"Before using this solution, we had so many problems accessing our resources because we don't have a lot of internet bandwidth. And by using application control and traffic shaping, we were able to manage user to quickly access services that are important. This tool has aided to the simplicity of our day-to-day management."
"FortiGate Next Generation Firewall is a good solution because it has a range of options and a clear ecosystem."
"Simple to deploy, stable."
"The greatest benefit for the organization is the confidence that we are secured."
"The VPN feature is the most valuable to us because it accomplishes the task well, and we're able to do everything we need to do."
"The remote access, VPN, and ACL features are valuable. We are using role-based access for individuals."
"The ASAs are solid; they have been in the environment for 10 years, are easy to manage and make it easy to look at logs, and they are still running and doing their job."
"We have not, as of now (touch wood) faced any issues; it's stable, and we don't face any performance issues as well, it's reliable, there are no bugs or glitches, and it doesn't crash or freeze."
"I like them mostly because they don't break and they have great diagnostics."
"The integration of network and workload micro-segmentation helps a lot to provide unified segmentation policies across east-west and north-south traffic. One concrete example is with Cisco ACI for the data center. Not only are we doing what is called a service graph on the ACI to make sure that we can filter traffic east-west between two endpoints in the same network, but when we go north-south or east-west, we can then leverage what we have on the network with SGTs on Cisco ISE. Once you build your matrix, it is very easy to filter in and out on east-west or north-south traffic."
"Choosing Cloudanix has proven very efficient and intuitive, and it remains easy to handle compared to other products available in the market."
 

Cons

"If anything, they can support a user a little bit better."
"We faced some technical issues on the Fortinet side."
"FortiGate needs to be elastic to the market's trends. It should be easy for SMBs to get the solution."
"Need to Improvement in Reporting"
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve by having better visibility. Palo Alto has better visibility."
"Performance and technical support are the main issues with this solution."
"Whitelisting could be better."
"At the moment, the main concern is the pricing and the type of licensing. Fortinet offers different types of licensing, and my idea is that the best approach is to have only one, two, or a maximum of three types of licensing."
"Its implementation was not straightforward. It was mainly because we were running two projects together."
"There is limited data storage on the appliance itself. So, you need to ship it out elsewhere in order for you to store it. The only point of consideration is around that area, basically limited storage on the machine and appliance. Consider logging it elsewhere or pushing it out to a SIEM to get better controls and manipulation over the data to generate additional metrics and visibility."
"There are many areas for improvement despite the fact that we love the product, but because it is a newer version we’ve been working out lots of issues."
"There used to be information displayed about the packets in a module called Packet Flow, but it is no longer there."
"On firewall features, Fortinet is better. Cisco needs to become more competitive and add more features or meet Fortinet's offering."
"The operation of the ASA is good but the problem is that whenever you require an upgrade, there are multiple pieces of software that you have to upgrade. Extensive planning is required, because if you upgrade one piece of the software it has to be compatible with the others as well. You always need to check the compatibility metrics."
"Multiple WAN connections: Even though you can implement more than one interface to outside connections, it is lacking on load balances, etc."
"I don't see a return on investment with Cisco Secure Firewall; it's more of a needed tool, just something we need to do to get business done, so I'm not really looking at it as a tool that would give us an ROI."
"Cloudanix could improve by addressing the limitations in terms of customization."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"If the customer is looking for SD-WAN, it comes free with FortiGate."
"We are currently evaluating a Palo Alto solution, and the pricing could be a reason for going for Palo Alto."
"Pricing for Fortinet FortiGate SWG is more suitable for enterprise or large-sized organizations because they are the ones who can afford it versus small and medium-sized organizations."
"The product is a little bit expensive."
"Setup cost may be not so low, as you expect, because it depends on different factors, but TCO for 5 years may pleasantly surprise you."
"The product pricing is reasonable."
"Fortinet FortiGate is expensive."
"Before choosing a piece of equipment you have to take into account the cost-benefit offered by each one. Sometimes it is not worth paying a very cheap price to have a minimum level of security."
"I like the Smart Licensing, because it is more dynamic and easier to keep track of where you are at. If we have a high availability firewall pair and they are deployed in active/standby rather than active/active, I would expect that we would only pay for one set of licenses because you are using only one firewall at any one time. The other is there just for resiliency. The licensing, from a Firepower perspective, still requires you to have two licenses, even if the firewalls are in active/standby, which means that you pay for the two licenses, even though you might only be using one firewall any one time. This is probably not the best way to do it and doesn't represent the best value for money. This could be looked at to see if it could be done in a fairer way."
"The price of Firepower is not bad compared to other products."
"With AnyConnect, it depends on your license. It depends on the number of concurrent users you want to connect."
"Cisco's pricing is high, at times, for what they provide."
"Cisco pricing is premium. However, they gave us a 50 to 60 percent discount."
"The pricing for Cisco products is higher than others, but Cisco is a very good, strong, and stable technology."
"I rate the product's price a seven on a scale of one to ten, where one is expensive, and ten is cheap."
"If we compare it with FortiGate and the co-existing ASA, FortiGate is better in price."
Information not available
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Comparison Review

it_user206346 - PeerSpot reviewer
Security Consultant at Webernetz.net - Network Security Consulting
Mar 11, 2015
Cisco ASA vs. Palo Alto Networks
Cisco ASA vs. Palo Alto: Management Goodies You often have comparisons of both firewalls concerning security components. Of course, a firewall must block attacks, scan for viruses, build VPNs, etc. However, in this post I am discussing the advantages and disadvantages from both vendors concerning…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Construction Company
6%
Construction Company
67%
Healthcare Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
5%
Financial Services Firm
4%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business364
Midsize Enterprise135
Large Enterprise190
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business186
Midsize Enterprise129
Large Enterprise231
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

Which is the better NGFW: Fortinet Fortigate or Cisco Firepower?
When you compare these firewalls you can identify them with different features, advantages, practices and usage a...
What is the biggest difference between Sophos XG and FortiGate?
From my experience regarding both the Sophos and FortiGate firewalls, I personally would rather use FortiGate. I know...
What are the biggest technical differences between Sophos UTM and Fortinet FortiGate?
As a solution, Sophos UTM offers a lot of functionality, it scales well, and the stability and performance are quite ...
Which is better - Fortinet FortiGate or Cisco ASA Firewall?
One of our favorite things about Fortinet Fortigate is that you can deploy on the cloud or on premises. Fortinet Fort...
How does Cisco's ASA firewall compare with the Firepower NGFW?
It is easy to integrate Cisco ASA with other Cisco products and also other NAC solutions. When you understand the Cis...
Which is better - Meraki MX or Cisco ASA Firewall?
Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) software is the operating software for the Cisco ASA suite. It supports netw...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cloudanix?
My experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing shows that pricing is more affordable compared to other vendor...
What needs improvement with Cloudanix?
Cloudanix could improve by addressing the limitations in terms of customization. The feature expectations suggest tha...
What is your primary use case for Cloudanix?
My main use case for Cloudanix is to get controls to model the cloud environment.
 

Also Known As

Fortinet FortiGate Next-Generation Firewall
Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Firewall, Cisco ASA NGFW, Adaptive Security Appliance, Cisco Sourcefire Firewalls, Cisco ASAv, Cisco Firepower NGFW Firewall, Cisco Secure Firewall ASA Virtual - BYOL
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, IBM, Cisco, Dell, HP, Oracle, Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, Vodafone, Orange, BT Group, Telstra, Deutsche Telekom, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, CenturyLink, NTT Communications, Tata Communications, SoftBank, China Mobile, Singtel, Telus, Rogers Communications, Bell Canada, Telkom Indonesia, Telkom South Africa, Telmex, Telia Company, Telkom Kenya
There are more than one million Adaptive Security Appliances deployed globally. Top customers include First American Financial Corp., Genzyme, Frankfurt Airport, Hansgrohe SE, Rio Olympics, The French Laundry, Rackspace, and City of Tomorrow.
Information Not Available
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