Cisco Umbrella vs Fortinet FortiGate SWG comparison

Cancel
You must select at least 2 products to compare!
Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary
Updated on Jul 12, 2022

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.

  • Ease of Deployment: Users of both solutions say that their initial setup is straightforward.
  • Features: Users of both products are happy with their stability and scalability.

    Cisco Umbrella users say it is flexible, fast, secure, and easy to manage. Several users mention that they would like better integration options.

    Fortinet Fortigate users like its security for endpoints feature and say that it performs well but that its reporting tools need to be improved.
  • Pricing: Most reviewers of both solutions feel that their prices are high.
  • ROI: Cisco Umbrella reviewers report seeing an ROI. Fortinet FortiGate SWG users do not mention ROI.
  • Service and Support: Users of both solutions report being satisfied with the level of support they receive. Fortinet FortiGate users note that sometimes the response time can be slow.

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.

To learn more, read our detailed Cisco Umbrella vs. Fortinet FortiGate SWG Report (Updated: March 2023).
688,618 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"Application performance has greatly improved and there are less operational issues. Productivity has been going up because we have less operational issues. Also, we have happy customers.""I like that it integrates with the infrastructure. I also like the kind of data and intelligence that's built-in. It helps create innovative reports for security.""If it didn't have a single pane of glass, we would not be using it. The single pane of glass gives you a one-stop shop. It's like going to Home Depot. You find all your stuff there. You can see all your threats and your endpoints. It's a very important feature and makes things very simple.""It offers good visibility for the Administrator. The administrator has full visibility of what is blocked or has the knowledge of where users go when they are surfing the internet.""It is user-friendly. It is easy to manage the solution.""The integration features within, for example, the Cisco VPN product and the Umbrella module are valuable.""I was able to implement it myself. It was really easy to install. You could install it on a server locally if you want to. If you have the biggest site, you would do that, but for my site, it was just directing all the traffic out through the Cisco Umbrella DNS. It was really handy. When the owners of the company went overseas, I knew that they would be secure because even if they were not on the company network, they would still go through the Cisco Umbrella servers. It was a complete solution for protecting the company with outgoing data.""I also think that the dashboard view is really helpful. Whenever sites get blocked, we get the details and the users who are connecting to them."

More Cisco Umbrella Pros →

"The most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiGate SWG is inspection.""FortiGate SWG's most valuable feature is integration with vulnerability management.""FortiGate is easy to use, and I also like its VPN.""The pricing on offer is excellent.""The user interface is intuitive. Anyone can configure the firewall with little knowledge of the product. The back-end is robust with good security.""FortiGate is easy to configure. We configured one of the units and sent it to Indiana to be installed. We asked them to give us a call when they got it, so we could help them through the process, but they called us back to tell us it works great.""The interface is user-friendly, so it's easy to add policies and block traffic.""Web filtering is the most useful feature."

More Fortinet FortiGate SWG Pros →

Cons
"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.""Its on-prem rollout is quite challenging. It needs better coordination with the Internet Service Provider. It is a cloud-based solution, and any endpoint that connects to it has to go through all the gateway ISPs, but some of the ISPs block HTTPS-based DNS. That's where the challenge occurs with Umbrella.""The main issue that we have is with the final steps or the full integration and getting rid of Zscaler. The company still has to fall back to Zscaler when something in Umbrella is not working as expected, such as when we enable SSL inspection. When something is not working 100%, the company is falling back to Zscaler.""It should have more integrations with multiple end user OEMs.""I think it's a very basic solution, and because of that, Cisco Umbrella would not be a suitable solution for large companies.""We would like them to add more features to Cisco Umbrella.""If a hardware platform were provided for Umbrella, that would definitely improve the market for it... Especially when we are addressing governmental customers, they hesitate to connect to the cloud. That is where we need a hardware platform so that the solution can be used on-premises as well.""Their support should be improved. It is necessary that the support is efficient. It is not really easy to get a resolution for an issue from Cisco support. They should be faster and more efficient."

More Cisco Umbrella Cons →

"It could always be more secure.""We can't identify which users are causing challenges when we have issues.""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 initial setup is medium complex and takes between five days and a week.""FortiGate's reporting features could provide a better picture of what is happening in the box.""Fortinet needs to continue to improve network traceability. Other than that, we haven't run into anything that would give me any concern.""We have experienced a number of failures when trying to upgrade firmware and the process takes a long time. We only experienced this when doing major upgrades between versions.""The solution could improve by having some additional features, such as IBS and better cloud administration."

More Fortinet FortiGate SWG Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "It has a reasonable price. It is certainly not as expensive as it used to be. It is in line with other offerings on the market. There are a number of different flavors of Umbrella. They could bring Umbrella SIG down a bit because its price is a little bit high for what it does, but I also understand why its price is high."
  • "Cisco Umbrella is expensive and could be cheaper."
  • "When talking about Cisco solutions in general there pricing model is horrible. For example, you can sell a Meraki-based solution, but if the customer starts shopping around, someone is going to have access to the pricing at a level that you cannot compete because they do not have uniform pricing. Not everybody gets fair pricing. Unless you are one of the real major corporations selling the solution your ability to compete is impossible. Cisco will acknowledge the situation and assure you next time it will be in your favor but it never becomes favorable for you. Cisco is not very good in this regard. However, Umbrella is good."
  • "The licensing fee is paid on a yearly basis."
  • "In the region I'm from, that of EMAR, Europe, the Middle East, Eastern Asia and Africa, our organizations do not have many liquid cash assets, so the price could be better."
  • "The price depends on the use case, and it's a bit linear. But it depends on the customer's strategy and how Cisco plans to optimize the costs."
  • "We were using the free version, and we implemented the paid version about two months ago. I'm paying a fair price, but everything is negotiable with Cisco. One of the benefits that I got by having Cisco Umbrella is the licensing of the Cisco AnyConnect VPN client."
  • "There are no hidden costs with Umbrella. Everything is included in the package."
  • More Cisco Umbrella Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "There is a need to pay for a license for the product."
  • "The price is relatively expensive compared to other solutions which are providing similar features."
  • "We pay about $4,000 for a yearly license, and there aren't any additional fees."
  • "The pricing for this solution is reasonable."
  • "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."
  • "FortiGate SWG is reasonably priced."
  • "When comparing the price of Fortinet FortiGate SWG to other solutions it is expensive. The price could be better."
  • More Fortinet FortiGate SWG Pricing and Cost Advice →

    report
    Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Secure Web Gateways (SWG) solutions are best for your needs.
    688,618 professionals have used our research since 2012.
    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer: Cisco Umbrella and Zscaler Internet Access are two broad-spectrum Internet security solutions that I have tried. Zscaler Internet Access is a good option for carrying out multiple security… more »
    Top Answer:Cisco Umbrella is an integral component of the Cisco SASE architecture. It integrates security in a single, cloud-native solution, unifying multiple features like DNS-layer security, threat… more »
    Top Answer:We are very new users of the solution and are still in the exploration stages, but we are happy with the product thus far.
    Top Answer:The interface is user-friendly, so it's easy to add policies and block traffic.
    Top Answer:Oh, yes. We pay we already we are already paying license. We have recently got a subscription and also description we are seeing.
    Top Answer: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… more »
    Ranking
    Views
    45,477
    Comparisons
    34,181
    Reviews
    35
    Average Words per Review
    862
    Rating
    8.8
    Views
    4,585
    Comparisons
    3,873
    Reviews
    10
    Average Words per Review
    387
    Rating
    8.4
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    OpenDNS
    FortiGate SWG, FortiGate Secure Web Gateway
    Learn More
    Overview

    Cisco Umbrella offers flexible, cloud-delivered security according to users’ requirements Cisco Umbrella includes secure web gateway, firewall, and cloud access security broker (CASB) functionality all delivered from a single cloud security service. Cisco Umbrella’s protection is extended to devices, remote users, and distributed locations anywhere. As company employees work from many locations and devices, Cisco Umbrella is the easiest way to effectively protect users everywhere in minutes.

    Cisco Umbrella uses machine learning to search for, identify, and even predict malicious domains. By learning from internet activity patterns, this DNS-layer security solution can automatically identify attacker infrastructure being staged for the next threat. These domains are then proactively blocked, protecting networks from potential compromise. Cisco Umbrella analyzes terabytes of data in real time across all markets, geographies, and protocols.

    Cisco Umbrella works with leading IT companies to integrate its security enforcement and intelligence. Built with a bidirectional API, Cisco Umbrella makes it easy to extend protection from on-premises security appliances to cloud controlled devices and sites.

    Cisco Umbrella is suitable for small businesses without dedicated security professionals, as well as for multinational enterprises with complex environments.

    Why use Cisco Umbrella?

    • Simplify security management: Cisco Umbrella is the fastest and easiest way to protect all users within minutes and reduces the number of infections and alerts sent from other security products by stopping threats at the earliest point. With no hardware to install and no software to manually update, ongoing management is simple

    • Reliable reporting: Cisco Umbrella reports show activity for each device or network in the system. Users gain a more complete picture of the security risks facing their organization and can take action to remedy them.

    • Manage and control cloud apps: Umbrella provides visibility into sanctioned and unsanctioned cloud services in use across the enterprise. Users can uncover new services being used, see who is using them, identify potential risk, and block specific applications easily.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Cisco Umbrella stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Some of the major ones are its DNS-based protection, ability to protect users no matter where they are located, stability, and high performance.

    Daniel B., a network specialist at Syswind Kft, writes, “We primarily use the solution as cloud security for our branches. It protects us from direct internet outbreaks. It makes for good flexibility. The solution is very easy to manage. We found the initial setup, for example, to be quite simple. Efficient protection on the DNS level and even higher. The sandboxing feature analyses and handles the complicated security risks.”

    Victor M., SOC & Security Services Director at BEST, notes, “It provides security for the remote workers and it helps to improve enterprise security in a very easy way. We mainly enjoy web software protection capabilities. It prevents the end-users from getting into bad sites or sites that potentially could have malware or could be phishing. It helps end-users avoid the wrong sites. The solution works very smoothly. The user interface is good.”

    As Enterprises continue to rearchitect their WAN Edge with rapid migration of applications to the cloud, the attack surface at the remote sites/branch locations continues to increase. This risk is especially high for web-based traffic, as web-based threat continue to be one of the primary attack vectors. As attack techniques become more advanced and versatile, organizations need an integrated approach to secure against external and internal risks. Fortinet's secure web gateway provides flexible deployment options to protect against internet-based threats without compromising on end-user experience.

    Offer
    Learn more about Cisco Umbrella
    Learn more about Fortinet FortiGate SWG
    Sample Customers
    Chart Industries, City of Aspen, Eastern Mountain Sports, FLEXcon, George Washington University, Jackson Municipal Airport Authority, Ohio Public Library Information Network, PTC, Richland Community College, Smart Motors, Tulane University, VeriClaim
    Salt Lake County, Catholic College Bendigo, Azienda Unita Sanitaria
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm14%
    Comms Service Provider10%
    Educational Organization8%
    Healthcare Company8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company21%
    Comms Service Provider9%
    Financial Services Firm9%
    Government6%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm22%
    Manufacturing Company22%
    Non Profit11%
    Marketing Services Firm11%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company20%
    Comms Service Provider14%
    Government7%
    Financial Services Firm6%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business37%
    Midsize Enterprise24%
    Large Enterprise38%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business21%
    Midsize Enterprise16%
    Large Enterprise63%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business57%
    Midsize Enterprise29%
    Large Enterprise14%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business27%
    Midsize Enterprise19%
    Large Enterprise55%
    Buyer's Guide
    Cisco Umbrella vs. Fortinet FortiGate SWG
    March 2023
    Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Umbrella vs. Fortinet FortiGate SWG and other solutions. Updated: March 2023.
    688,618 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Cisco Umbrella is ranked 1st in Secure Web Gateways (SWG) with 39 reviews while Fortinet FortiGate SWG is ranked 7th in Secure Web Gateways (SWG) with 12 reviews. Cisco Umbrella is rated 8.8, while Fortinet FortiGate SWG is rated 8.2. 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, Infoblox Advanced DNS Protection and Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks, whereas Fortinet FortiGate SWG is most compared with Fortinet FortiProxy, Netskope Next Gen Secure Web Gateway, Zscaler Internet Access, Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway and iboss. See our Cisco Umbrella vs. Fortinet FortiGate SWG report.

    See our list of best Secure Web Gateways (SWG) vendors.

    We monitor all Secure Web Gateways (SWG) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.