We performed a comparison between Cisco Secure Firewall and KerioControl 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."The main reason why I purchased the particular unit was that it had good reviews and what other people were saying as far as its completeness and its leading capabilities in terms of endpoint security was very good."
"I'm pretty happy with its reliability. It is also very scalable."
"All of the features of Fortinet FortiGate are useful and the security protection is good."
"The most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiGate is load balancing. It can provide central management and VPNA. Additionally, it has enhanced our security environment."
"The FortiGate controls the user's activities and maximizes my bandwidth use overall."
"The next-gen features, the unified threat management capabilities are something that just about everybody is interested in at this point."
"Fortigate's most valuable feature is that it doesn't need a push policy when writing rules."
"The pricing is great and very reasonable."
"The return on investment is not going to be restricted to just the box... Now, these genres have been expanded to cyber, to third-party integrations, having integrated logging, having integrated micro and macro segmentations. The scope has been widened, so the ROI, eventually, has multiplied."
"The GUI is among the most valuable features,"
"Stability is perfect. I haven't had any problems."
"The product is quite robust and durable."
"Integration with all the other Cisco tools is valuable."
"It is a very user-friendly product."
"ASA integrates with FirePOWER, IPS functionality, malware filtering, etc. This functionality wasn't there in the past. With its cloud architecture, Cisco can filter traffic at the engine layer. Evasive encryptions can be entered into the application, like BitTorrent or Skype. This wasn't possible to control through a traditional firewall."
"REST API offering with rich capabilities which makes the product very robust."
"Compared to other solutions, accounting and live monitoring of firewall status are very good features in KerioControl."
"The most valuable feature is to provide users with the ability to log in to the portal page, keep track of their data usage and perform bandwidth management."
"The product is affordable."
"One thing we use quite a lot, as well, is the DHCP Server, because we do a lot of work where all our devices need to have static IP addresses. Rather than going around and configuring every box, we do it all through DHCP reservations. It's easier. We've got a record of it. We can manipulate it if we need to change something or change some hardware. It's all easy. Even guys who are not used to using it can pick it up quite quickly."
"The firewall appliance itself is the most valuable feature."
"The traffic insight page or the administrative portal is really helpful because you can see all the internet usage down to the point where you can see if it's big files or streams. It gives us a good view of what the internet usage is of users who are coupled to an IP address. That way, if there are problems with, for example, a lot of data usage or problems with the connection, we can narrow it down to a single user or server and address the problem. It's really helpful for diagnostic data."
"Kerio Control can be scaled easily."
"It has helped our organization with testing."
"Vulnerability scanning could be improved."
"Sometimes you do need to know some CLI commands, so it's a bit harder for technicians or new people that don't know it."
"I have to say that the initial setup was complex. The deployment took a few days to get set up. Initially, we were using an IPVanish. We switched to this tool since we thought it would be easier. But it turns out it wasn't easier to set up and run."
"Cisco Meraki products are rising very quickly in the cloud and the connected era. Meraki products offer much better ROI, upgradability, and manageability."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve by adding enhancements to FortiMail, FortiSOAR, and FortiDeceptor."
"Maybe they could make some features more accessible, such as a way to translate directions between two networks that share the same subnets."
"If I had any criticism that I would give FortiGate, it would be that they need to stop changing their logging format. Every time we do a firmware upgrade, it is a massive issue on the SIM. Parsers have to be rebuilt. Even the FortiGate guys came in and said that they don't play well in the sandbox."
"We were not able to build a full-mesh VPN; however, I am not sure if this was the fault of Fortinet FortiGate."
"One of my main concerns, an area that could use improvement is in adjusting the need to buy a license to enable features."
"Cisco should improve its user interface design. There is a deep learning curve to the product if you are a newcomer."
"The reporting and other features are nice, but there is an issue with applying the configuration. That part needs some improvement."
"Cisco is still catching up with its Firepower Next-Generation firewalls."
"Cisco should redo their website so it's actually usable in a faster way."
"Nowadays, nobody is in the office, so I need to figure out how to put the firewall outside. If I could have a centralized firewall that also receives information from external locations, like peoples' home offices, that would help us consolidate everything into one appliance."
"I would like it if there was a centralized way to manage policies, then sticking with the network functions on the actual devices. That is probably the thing that frustrates me the most. I want a way that you can manage multiple policies at several different locations, all at one site. You then don't have to worry about the connectivity piece, in case you are troubleshooting because connectivity is down."
"Managing various product integrations, such as Umbrella, is challenging."
"They don't provide content filtering when it comes to search engine results. We had an incident on the network where a blocked site was showing up in search results. We are in a school environment, so we have blocked a site with some of the explicit content so that kids wouldn't see it. When one of them did a search, the results came on the search engine part. When you try to drill down to the website, it blocks, but when you search by image, it brings up all the images. That's one of the reasons why we are looking at Juniper."
"My experience with the solutions technical support is fine but they could be faster in responding."
"The overall speed needs improvement. Internet connectivity speed needs to be improved somehow."
"The GUI should be changed because it remains the same consistency across versions. However, those who have been using KerioControl for a long time may be accustomed to the current interface. Installing a new version in the same location makes it easy to find, but overall, there are no notable changes between versions."
"The Kerio hardware devices look cheap and could be improved. Some of our clients are switching to Sophos because their hardware has a more sleek design."
"I would like for them to add more security features."
"I would like to see a little improvement in their technical support when you have a problem. I may be a little jaded because I came from Kerio when we could call and get a person on the phone who worked on the product. Every tech had their own demo setup. They had instant messaging capability with the developers. If we found a problem, then we could get a result for it quickly. Now, the product seems to be 24 hours. They have also gone to the model that if you need quicker support, then they now charge you additional for the exact same level of support that they used to give. I am assuming it's the exact same level of support that they say it is. I'm not paying extra for it. That's the biggest flaw with the product."
"The solution can be improved to create the capability for larger bandwidths that support our business needs."
Cisco Secure Firewall is ranked 4th in Firewalls with 112 reviews while KerioControl is ranked 28th in Firewalls with 9 reviews. Cisco Secure Firewall is rated 8.2, while KerioControl is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of Cisco Secure Firewall writes "Includes multiple tools that help manage and troubleshoot, but needs SD-WAN for load balancing". On the other hand, the top reviewer of KerioControl writes "Has good accounting and live monitoring features". Cisco Secure Firewall is most compared with Palo Alto Networks WildFire, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX, Sophos XG and Juniper SRX Series Firewall, whereas KerioControl is most compared with Netgate pfSense, OPNsense, Sophos XG, Sophos UTM and WatchGuard Firebox. See our Cisco Secure Firewall vs. KerioControl report.
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