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Cisco Secure Firewall vs Zyxel Unified Security Gateway comparison

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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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Fortinet FortiGate
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
379
Ranking in other categories
Firewalls (2nd), Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (1st), WAN Edge (1st)
Cisco Secure Firewall
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
428
Ranking in other categories
Firewalls (6th), Cisco Security Portfolio (3rd)
Zyxel Unified Security Gateway
Average Rating
6.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
Unified Threat Management (UTM) (14th)
 

Featured Reviews

Vasu Gala - PeerSpot reviewer
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
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.
Alexander Azikov - PeerSpot reviewer
A robust appliance that is reasonably priced and straightforward to set up
Although manageable, the user interface is a little bit slow and could be improved. There are two user interface options available, namely the basic and the advanced. The basic UI is not very good and doesn't have a lot of features, although it is fast. The advanced UI allows me to do whatever I want, but this is where the issue of speed exists. At one of our sites, the CPU utilization was very high, and for no reason. Technical support needs to be more responsive to requests.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is quite easy to handle."
"Some of the key features of the solution is that it has good reporting, you can receive many details from the connection, for example, clients and website information."
"I find Fortinet FortiGate to be quite stable, as I have never heard of any issues where they broke or malfunctioned; they are always working."
"Secure, user-friendly, stable, and scalable network security solution. Installation is straightforward."
"It has improved our security capabilities."
"The best features of Fortinet FortiGate include the simple user interface."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are the ease of use and there are several operating systems that can include the hardware capacities. In the newer releases, the resources were more useful because they were included in the operating system."
"Fortinet FortiGate's ease of management is the most valuable feature."
"ASA is stable and with a low level of work required on the maintenance side."
"The most valuable features of Cisco Secure Firewall include the next-generation firewall and its strong anti-malware capabilities."
"Its ability to work with the traffic.​"
"Cisco Secure Firewall is reliable, which is why we opted for it during the pandemic for our remote users."
"The customer service/technical support is very good with this solution."
"One of the nice things about Firepower is that you can set it to discover the environment. If that is happening, then Firepower is learning about every device, software operating system, and application running inside or across your environment. Then, you can leverage the discovery intelligence to get Firepower to select the most appropriate intrusion prevention rules to use for your environment rather than picking one of the base policies that might have 50,000 IPS rules in it, which can put a lot of overhead on your firewall. If you choose the recommendations, as long as you update them regularly, you might be able to get your rule set down to only 1,000 or 1,500, which is a significant reduction in a base rule set. This means that the firewall will give you better performance because there are less rules being checked unnecessarily. That is really useful."
"Another benefit has been user integration. We try to integrate our policies so that we can create policies based on active users. We can create policies based on who is accessing a resource instead of just IP addresses and ports."
"What I appreciate the most about Cisco Secure Firewall is that it can be very elastic, as it can be configured with all the flexibility of my network needs and complexity."
"The solution can scale well."
"This is a capable appliance and the standard features work well for us."
"The most valuable features of the solution stem from web filtering, malware protection, and antivirus."
 

Cons

"The price and deployment part of Fortinet FortiGate is good, but it can always be better."
"Fortinet needs to overhaul its documentation."
"In the next release, maybe the documentation on how to use this solution could be improved."
"It would be a benefit if Fortinet would release a one-stop solution that is better integrated with other products and an automated emergency response system."
"The performance and speed are aspects of the solution that could always be improved upon."
"If they had better integration with security products, such as Cisco ISE or Rapid Threat Containment, then it would be an improvement."
"The firewall engine is not so strong as of now, in my opinion... My second concern is that, while they have Zero-day vulnerability and anti-malware features, the threat engine needs to be strengthened, its efficiency can be increased."
"Performance on the box and technical support are areas where Fortinet FortiGate can be improved."
"I think that the solution can be improved with the integration of application-centric infrastructure. It could be used to have better solutions in one box."
"Security must be increased when a new user connects over the LAN and an alarm must be generated."
"It needs to provide the next-generation firewall features that other vendors provide, like data analytics, telemetry, and deep packet inspection."
"We don't have any serious problems. The firewall models that we have are quite legacy, and they have slower performance. We are currently investigating the possibility of migrating to next-generation firewalls."
"Firewalls, in general, were not really designed for normal IT personnel, but for firewall and network experts. Therefore, they missed a lot of options and did not provide any good reporting or improvement options."
"I would like to see improvement when you create policies on Snort 3 IPS on Cisco Firepower. On Snort 2, it was more like a UI page where you had some multiple choices where you could tweak your config. On Snort 3, the idea is more to build some rules on the text file or JSON file, then push it. So, I would like to see a lot of improvements here."
"The Firepower FTD code is missing some old ASA firewalls codes. It's a small thing. But Firepower software isn't missing things that are essential, anymore."
"One feature I would like to see, that Firepower doesn't have, is email security. Perhaps in the future, Cisco will integrate Cisco Umbrella with Firepower. I don't see why we should have to pay for two separate products when both could be integrated in one box."
"The product has some scalability and data management issues where improvements are required."
"Sometimes it reboots when you least expect it, and that's the main issue."
"Although manageable, the user interface is a little bit slow and could be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing cost is at the intermediate level."
"It's very competitive."
"Work through partners for the best pricing."
"The main reason we chose Fortinet FortiGate was that the price was better than the competition."
"The price range is quite acceptable and normal."
"When you look at these end security systems and firewalls, these firewalls even five years ago were $50,000 or perhaps $25,000 to implement in some types of customer sites. Now we're talking about tools that are $1,000. In this case, it might have been $500 or something like that."
"Fortinet prices are around $600 for the small 40F model, and for licenses, the simplest option is about $300 for a year. They sell licenses that can last for 1, 2, 3, or 5 years."
"It is more affordable than Check Point and Palo Alto. Another thing is that all the features and the OS remain the same irrespective of the size of the device. Pricing-wise, Fortinet typically provides one-year support with the firewall appliance. There is also an option for three years which is how their licensing works."
"It has a great performance-to-price value, compared to competitive solutions."
"The pricing is fair."
"It is pay-as-you-go, so it much cheaper than buying in the plants."
"Cisco ASA Firewall should be cheaper."
"The licensing scheme is completely confusing, and they need to streamline it. They have classic licensing and a new type of licensing now. Also, the licensing for the actual firewall is separate from the one for TAC support."
"The cost of keeping the licensing up on the ASA is very expensive. It has a lot of positives, but the cost of going with it is really starting to be a major negative right now."
"Cisco pricing is premium. However, they gave us a 50 to 60 percent discount."
"The pricing of Cisco firewalls, in the security market, is fair."
"The price of Zyxel Unified Security Gateway is good compared to other similar products in the market."
"This gateway is pretty cheap."
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Comparison Review

it_user206346 - PeerSpot reviewer
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
15%
Educational Organization
10%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Educational Organization
26%
Computer Software Company
17%
University
6%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Comms Service Provider
18%
Computer Software Company
17%
Retailer
6%
Financial Services Firm
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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Which is better - Fortinet FortiGate or Cisco ASA Firewall?
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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 do you like most about Zyxel Unified Security Gateway?
The most valuable features of the solution stem from web filtering, malware protection, and antivirus.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zyxel Unified Security Gateway?
The price of Zyxel Unified Security Gateway is good compared to other similar products in the market.
What needs improvement with Zyxel Unified Security Gateway?
If you have very secure data, Zyxel Unified Security Gateway will not be very useful. My company doesn't have to deal...
 

Also Known As

FortiGate 60b, FortiGate 60c, FortiGate 80c, FortiGate 50b, FortiGate 200b, FortiGate 110c, FortiGate, Fortinet Firewall
Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Firewall, Cisco ASA NGFW, Adaptive Security Appliance, Cisco Sourcefire Firewalls, Cisco ASAv, Cisco Firepower NGFW Firewall
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.
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Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Secure Firewall vs. Zyxel Unified Security Gateway and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
861,481 professionals have used our research since 2012.