We performed a comparison between Cisco Secure Firewall and Fortinet Fortigate based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Based on the parameters we compared, Fortinet Fortigate comes out on top. Its ease of deployment combined with its solid set of features and excellent service and support ratings make it a more desirable solution than Cisco Secure Firewall.
"The stability is very good; there's no vagueness. Either it works or it doesn't, and it's also very easy to find out why."
"The dashboard is the most important thing. It provides good visibility and makes management easy. Firepower also provides us with good application visibility and control."
"The high-availability and remote VPN features are most valuable."
"Cisco Secure Firewall improved our organization. We have it in every one of our French offices."
"Their performance is most valuable."
"I work with Cisco and other partners, but the Cisco team is the best team in our country. When I call them, they always help us."
"Its efficiency and security are the most important. We are more efficient and more secure."
"Cisco Secure Firewall has improved our customers' security posture because it offers Next-Gen features, granularity, and reporting on the back of it. You can see the amount of users accessing Office 365, for example, and whether they're having a good or bad experience. You can see the threats that are coming into your network. You can see anyone who is compromised from within your network."
"Fortinet FortiGate's most valuable features are ease of use, flexibility, and most of the configuration we can be done using the GUI. When we compare Fortinet FortiGate with other solutions the firewall policy are very easy to understand."
"Fortigate's most valuable feature is that it doesn't need a push policy when writing rules."
"The interface is very good."
"The Fortinet FortiGate local partners were good. I did not have direct contact with Fortinet support."
"The signature database and zero-day detection are Fortinet FortiGate's most valuable features."
"The tool is a nice product and easy to handle. The software's user interface is also good. You can easily implement remote access in the solution."
"I'm pretty happy with its reliability. It is also very scalable."
"The initial setup of Fortinet FortiGate was straightforward."
"Other products are becoming easier to access and configure. They are providing UI interfaces to configure, take backup, synchronize redundant machines, and so on. It is very easy to take backup and upgrade the images in those products. Cisco ASA should have such features. If one redundant machine is getting upgraded, the technology and support should be there to upgrade other redundant machines. In a single window, we should be able to do more in terms of backups, restores, and upgrades."
"I would like it if they made the newer generation a bit simpler. You can do ASA code and FXOS. It is just a bit confusing with the newer generational equipment on what it can do."
"I would like to see more configurable feature parity with Cisco ASA, which is the legacy product that Cisco is moving away from. When configuring remote access VPN, not all of the options are there. You have to download another tool, which means that the configuration takes a little bit longer with Cisco Secure Firewall. Though it's getting there, there are still some features lagging behind."
"The only improvement that we could make is maybe [regarding] the roadmap, to have better visibility as to what we are targeting ahead in the next few quarters."
"Licensing is complex, and I'd like it to be simplified. This is an area for improvement."
"The reporting and other features are nice, but there is an issue with applying the configuration. That part needs some improvement."
"It should be easier for the IT management or the admin to configure products. For example, the firewall products are not very straightforward for many users. They should be easier to configure and should be more straightforward."
"Recently, we have been having an issue with the ASA firewall. We haven't found the root cause yet and are still working on it. We failed over the firewall from active to passive and suddenly that resolved the issue. We are now working to find the root cause."
"Scalability for Fortinet FortiGate needs to be improved. SD-WAN security for this solution also needs some improvement."
"Usually, we sell the bundle with the UTM or threat management piece with IPS, IDS. Other providers, such as Palo Alto, are ahead in terms of safe functionality. So, for me, delivering truly safe service is probably something that still needs to be improved."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve by having more capabilities for troubleshooting VPN connections. For example, I do get some feedback about the current status, but I could use some history and logging of important events. The information is logged in our Syslog server, but I could use that information from the device. If they could provide a GUI to have some more insight on what's going with my VPN would be useful."
"The support team for Fortinet FortiGate needs to be more customer friendly."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve by having better visibility. Palo Alto has better visibility."
"Bandwidth usage in reporting could be improved for Fortinet FortiGate."
"Fortinet FortiGate is a stable solution. However, my issue is the performance only. When I use all the profiles, this affects the performance. From the beginning, I should have had a better sizing of the box."
"The scalability could be better."
Cisco Secure Firewall is ranked 2nd in Firewalls with 115 reviews while Fortinet FortiGate is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 99 reviews. Cisco Secure Firewall is rated 8.2, while Fortinet FortiGate is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Cisco Secure Firewall writes "The ability to implement dynamic policies for dynamic environments is important, given the fluidity in the world of security". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Fortinet FortiGate writes "Efficient, user-friendly, and affordable". Cisco Secure Firewall is most compared with Meraki MX, Palo Alto Networks WildFire, pfSense, Juniper SRX Series Firewall and Sophos XG, whereas Fortinet FortiGate is most compared with pfSense, Sophos XG, Meraki MX, WatchGuard Firebox and Check Point NGFW. See our Cisco Secure Firewall vs. Fortinet FortiGate report.
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