We performed a comparison between Cisco Umbrella and Fortinet FortiGate SWG based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Cisco Umbrella is the winner in this comparison. It is a powerful and reliable tool with a proven ROI. It also received higher marks in the Support category.
"The protection offered by the product is the most valuable feature. It detects vulnerabilities or traps on our users' phones and then prompts them to clean up their devices. Tools we used previously would only discover, which required us to gather information on the backend, so Lookout is a welcome upgrade."
"The most valuable features are the antivirus as a whole, the anti-malware, and all of the protection features that scan our enterprise devices."
"I haven't needed to reboot the servers for years due to their excellent stability."
"The most valuable feature is its ability to detect if a URL has malware or is vulnerable."
"The insight into what our users are doing via Cisco Umbrella is valuable. Knowing that we're protecting our users as they leave our network is also valuable now because we've got more hybrid working."
"One of the most important features is the security posture check which Umbrella offers when a user accesses any website. That is one of the most unique features that it offers."
"By using Cisco Umbrella, you are sure of inspecting all the traffic. Whenever the user machine is connected to your network, it is inspected. That's the best thing. It means you are sure that nothing is being exported or imported without your choice. That is the best feature."
"When we have laptops that leave the building, they could connect to public WiFi before they establish a VPN connection back into the company. For that duration or that period of time when they're not docked in the network or on a VPN, they effectively don't have that full layer of security that I provide inside the building. This tool stands in during that period of time, and we extend the security settings through their basic firewall or their cloud-based firewall at that time. So, we do content filtering and control access, but they also are looking at new domains, IP addresses, and bad requests. They're blocking them on my behalf when a laptop is not sitting behind our security appliances."
"It is user-friendly. It is easy to manage the solution."
"The most valuable features are the dashboard, visibility, and reporting capabilities. Our customers can see how much Umbrella is protecting their organization. If you don't know what you've got, you can't protect it. With Umbrella, you get the visibility and see the protection that it's providing. We can get PDF reports on a weekly basis of any malware activities and any denial of service or command-and-control-type activities."
"FortiGate is a great solution, although initially, it faced challenges in the Brazilian market due to lower brand recognition than Cisco. However, explaining and demonstrating its product format and offerings has proven easy. The cost-effectiveness and better features of FortiGate have made some clients skeptical. We set up a trial period, and they eventually opted for it. Many clients were convinced it was great after experiencing the solution's capabilities firsthand."
"The most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiGate SWG is inspection."
"Web filtering is the most useful feature."
"The user interface is intuitive. Anyone can configure the firewall with little knowledge of the product. The back-end is robust with good security."
"We have found the product to be scalable."
"The solution is superior to Cisco in terms of security."
"FortiGate SWG's most valuable feature is integration with vulnerability management."
"It offers web filtering capabilities at a more affordable price compared to other solutions like PSMs or NETGEAR."
"We just submitted an enhancement request reflecting the main area we want to see improvement in; the APIs. Currently, we're able to build dashboards, but it's somewhat backward because we use our MDM API to create them. Lookout should provide API to customers so we can query our data and use it in our cloud, and this is the only outstanding area for improvement with the product right now."
"From the analysis that we've done, they do seem to be maybe a step behind in trying to enter the market with a new solution. But when they do pick up, they do come out with some good products."
"Although Cisco Umbrella has an excellent global network footprint, there is still room for improvement and growth in this area. Additionally, there are bandwidth limitations associated with the connectors that need to be addressed. To be a viable solution for larger offices, Cisco Umbrella must continue to expand and improve its capabilities in these areas."
"The design of the screens could be improved. Sometimes you're trying to look for information, for what you think is critical that should be on that first screen of the dashboard so that you can quickly take screenshots to have people help out, but you have to hop between screens to find little pieces of evidence."
"It would be good to have more extensions to third-party products and a client for other device types."
"I am unsure if Cisco Umbrella offers a Windows option for running the server."
"The rule-making process for blocking sites or for blocking characteristics can use some simplification."
"Having ready-to-go templates with best practices is definitely something that would be an improvement. Deployment, from day one, is something that definitely needs to be improved for Cisco customers."
"Its reliability and the response time of the support team can be better."
"Its price could be better."
"What could be improved in Fortinet FortiGate SWG is its pricing because it's a bit higher. If it's cheaper, my company could pitch it to customers and engage with customers better about it. What I'd like to see in the next release of Fortinet FortiGate SWG is an improvement in its dashboard or GUI. I'd like it to be more user-friendly."
"The product needs to drastically improve its reporting capability."
"Integrating OpenVPN with FortiGate would provide a powerful combination of secure remote access and comprehensive network security."
"The initial setup is medium complex and takes between five days and a week."
"We can't identify which users are causing challenges when we have issues."
"We also have FortiAnalyzer deployed here, so we want to enable the soft functionality of FortiGate and built-in compression for a firewall VPN use case. We want the ability to deploy a gateway for HTTPS enabled on this firewall. It is currently only for use in our headquarters."
"Fortinet needs to continue to improve network traceability. Other than that, we haven't run into anything that would give me any concern."
"The price could be improved."
Cisco Umbrella is ranked 1st in Secure Web Gateways (SWG) with 49 reviews while Fortinet FortiGate SWG is ranked 5th in Secure Web Gateways (SWG) with 17 reviews. Cisco Umbrella is rated 8.8, while Fortinet FortiGate SWG is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Cisco Umbrella writes "We can see all of our locations in one place and only have to make changes once for all our locations". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Fortinet FortiGate SWG writes "Non-IT people could plug it in, connect it to the fiber, and get it running without IT help. ". Cisco Umbrella is most compared with Zscaler Internet Access, Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps, Palo Alto Networks DNS Security, Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks and Infoblox Advanced DNS Protection, whereas Fortinet FortiGate SWG is most compared with Fortinet FortiProxy, Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway, Netskope Next Gen Secure Web Gateway, Zscaler Internet Access and Skyhigh Security. See our Cisco Umbrella vs. Fortinet FortiGate SWG report.
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