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Cisco Umbrella vs Fortinet FortiGate SWG comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 6, 2024
 

Categories and Ranking

iboss
Sponsored
Ranking in Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
23rd
Average Rating
8.4
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
Internet Security (8th), Web Content Filtering (5th), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (11th), ZTNA as a Service (15th), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (15th)
Cisco Umbrella
Ranking in Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
1st
Average Rating
8.8
Number of Reviews
109
Ranking in other categories
Internet Security (1st), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (1st), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (2nd), Domain Name System (DNS) Security (1st), Cisco Security Portfolio (2nd)
Fortinet FortiGate SWG
Ranking in Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
4th
Average Rating
8.6
Number of Reviews
41
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Featured Reviews

GZ
Sep 25, 2021
Stable and quick to set up but needs more clear status information for end users
The solution is a corporate proxy server, an intelligence proxy From a corporate perspective, I understand that it's important to keep the company data safe. From a corporate point of view, it's a good solution. The solution is stable. The solution can scale.  It was a very easy product to…
BL
Jun 15, 2023
Helps enable us to effectively detect and remediate threats, free up IT staff time, and improve cybersecurity resilience
Cisco Umbrella is transparent to my users; they are unaware of its presence. The documentation they use is solely for the IT staff. It is functioning exceptionally well, to the point where I no longer require extensive documentation for its operation. It has reduced malware and mitigated risks associated with email links and various other factors, resulting in cost savings. Cisco Umbrella helps secure our infrastructure, enabling us to effectively detect and remediate threats. Apart from host-based firewalls or malware attempting to bypass threat detection, we currently do not have any other alternatives. Although there may be competing solutions available, we have been using Umbrella, and it has served us well. Cisco Umbrella helps free up IT staff time indirectly by reducing the number of calls we receive regarding malware or bad calls. Our organization improved its cybersecurity resilience by effectively blocking threats with Cisco Umbrella.
Chee Yuen Yap - PeerSpot reviewer
Mar 12, 2024
A security solution with VPN and SSL supported
It's easy to use. The interface and other reports are all user-friendly. The software is a bit expensive to renew. The FortiGate product range is diverse and suitable for different types of enterprises. It is more geared towards meeting the needs of larger enterprises. In the financial services industry in Malaysia, it's often paired with Palo Alto. Most of the projects follow a similar pattern. It's all in one box. You can use it for switching, routing, firewall, VPN - everything you need can be integrated into the FortiGate. Essentially, it's only one device for smaller setups. FortiGate has a very good range, from small businesses to even larger ones. Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Content filtering is the most useful feature of iboss."
"Technical support is pretty sharp and very responsive."
"It was a very easy product to install. It can be deployed very fast."
"Valuable features: Within the filter: Controls (Web categories, applications, and Allow/Block list) and Network (local Subnets). Within the reporter: Logs (Event Log) and Reports."
"The security aspect of the solution, particularly the malware behind it, is excellent. That's something that really helped us out. It's not just a simple proxy that just blocks the insights of potential threats that come on behind it. They do malware detection and that helps us a lot."
"Our primary use case for this product is DLP,"
"Granular setup, which was able to set different levels of filters using the OUs in the AD."
"Because of iboss, I did not have to assign web filtering tasks to my techs on a daily basis."
"Cisco Umbrella's integration with other solutions has been a great feature in terms of ease of administration. Administration and troubleshooting are faster. The single pane of glass is great as well. Another great feature of Cisco Umbrella is remote browser isolation. With this feature, you open a virtual browser, and it's seamless to the user. If the user ends up going to a bad website that's passed a policy and something bad tries to download, it will not download into the machine because it is a virtual window somewhere in the cloud. You are protected by this feature."
"I have found the malware protection feature valuable. It is helpful and deliverable and is able to protect my entire organization from getting compromised. It also prevents us from visiting any malicious sites which are not visible to the users."
"Cisco's technical support is pretty good. When a solution is available, they will find it. On a scale from one to ten with ten being the best, I'd rate Cisco's technical support at nine."
"The Global Block List is one of the most valuable features because it's really easy to block domain names as well as URLs. Sometimes you don't want to block the whole site, you just want to block one URL. The Global Block and Allow Lists are the best features for us."
"A single pane of glass saves time... This does have a lot of options available for us to see who's doing what, what trends, what errors. We can set up our alerting through it as well. It is definitely a great dashboard."
"Umbrella, being one pane for managing, being all-encompassing, allows us to quickly go in, make a change, and it applies to either every location, if we want it to, or we can have policies in place that only apply to certain users or certain computers."
"Helps block personal email accounts."
"Provides dependable DNS monitoring of external devices."
"I am content with its user interface and functionalities."
"The product is easy to install since we only need to follow the user manual, documents, and articles provided by Fortinet to install the product."
"Web filters, particularly web application controls, grant us the ability to regulate user access effectively."
"The most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiGate SWG is inspection."
"It's a flexible solution."
"The product's most valuable features are SD-WAN and the integration of WiFi and switches."
"I would rate the scalability of this product a nine out of ten because it is highly scalable. We have not had problems with customers in terms of scalability."
"Fortinet FortiGate SWG's content is its most valuable feature."
 

Cons

"Iboss is growing so fast that it is often hard for them to keep up with the challenges."
"SSL decryption: We had issues with learners using apps instead of using web browsers. This type of encryption is tough for any appliance in a BYOD environment."
"The area I would like to see improvement in is the ability with in the reporter to navigate directly to the content the user is traversing. It is kind of there, but it's not perfect. Quite frequently, I receive links that lead me to pages with error messages."
"Sometimes, obviously, there are bugs."
"Sometimes the agent stops working in iboss, and we have to reinstall the agent."
"The dashboards for local use could be better."
"The solution could be stronger on the integration side and offer more cloud applications like G Suite or Oracle."
"File integrity monitoring would be very advantageous as an additional feature."
"Something on our end that might make it better is alerting going to our ticketing system. It's not something that we have discussed, but that would be a proactive option for us to provide a learning experience for the staff."
"We would like to see the enhancements made to the EDR, as we see features that are running endpoint management."
"It's easier for us to have support features with companies who are Cisco representatives, but sometimes, it's hard for us to get the help we need without having to use our contacts within Cisco."
"It would be good to have more extensions to third-party products and a client for other device types."
"It should have more integrations with multiple end user OEMs."
"The API is very Cisco orientated, which is absolutely fine if you're using Cisco Firepower and SecureX kind of products, but if you want to integrate with third parties, it is a bit tricky. There are some key API connectors for the more prevalent SIEM tools. I would really like to see in Cisco Umbrella the ability to create customized reports and then assign the rights to view these reports to people within a group. I should be able to create a customized report, which is viewable by anybody who has the rights. I should be able to create groups within Cisco Umbrella, and then assign reports to groups and have those reports split out automatically only to those groups. I can kind of do it by restricting my email list, but it is a half-complete way of doing it."
"Its reliability and the response time of the support team can be better."
"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."
"They have not yet extended to the cloud."
"The UI/UX experience can be a little better."
"We are providing VoIP and the IP licensing could improve in Fortinet FortiGate SWG."
"Support could be improved."
"The solution has many heightened points which we cannot get to without working on CLI."
"The solution is expensive."
"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."
"The software is a bit expensive to renew."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is expensive compared to one of its competitors."
"The pricing was marvelous."
"Its price for us is quite expensive because it's a subscription, and we just use it for the DNS log. So, for us, it's quite expensive."
"The licensing and pricing structure of Cisco Umbrella is in line with standard systems on the market, and we have no specific requirements in this area. Overall, we have found it to be an acceptable pricing model for our organization."
"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."
"The licensing fee is paid on a yearly basis."
"Cisco should make the solution cheaper."
"It needs a better price point."
"Cisco uses subscription models for the pricing and there are three subscription plans."
"It could be more competitive and cost-effective."
"It is around $50,000 per month."
"When comparing the price of Fortinet FortiGate SWG to other solutions it is expensive. The price could be better."
"There is a need to pay for a license for the product."
"We pay about $4,000 for a yearly license, and there aren't any additional fees."
"I rate FortiGate's pricing a five out of ten."
"I rate the product's pricing a seven out of ten. Its one-year license cost is competitive with three and five-year licenses offered by other products."
"While slightly more affordable than competitors, it remains relatively expensive due to its inclusive subscription."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Educational Organization
8%
Educational Organization
20%
Computer Software Company
20%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
16%
Government
9%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about iboss?
Content filtering is the most useful feature of iboss.
What needs improvement with iboss?
Sometimes the agent stops working in iboss, and we have to reinstall the agent. This is a hiccup that iboss should im...
What is your primary use case for iboss?
We use iboss for the proxy solution. I used iboss in my organization to block a few sites for a few of my employees.
Which is the better security solution - Cisco Umbrella or Zscaler?
Cisco Umbrella and Zscaler Internet Access are two broad-spectrum Internet security solutions that I have tried. Zs...
Which is the better security solution - Cisco Umbrella or Microsoft Cloud App Security?
Cisco Umbrella is an integral component of the Cisco SASE architecture. It integrates security in a single, cloud-nat...
What do you like most about Cisco Umbrella?
Cisco Umbrella is easy to monitor, manage, and deploy.
What do you like most about Fortinet FortiGate SWG?
The interface and other reports are all user-friendly.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortinet FortiGate SWG?
The product pricing is moderate and competitive to Palo Alto. I rate the product’s pricing a six out of ten, where on...
What needs improvement with Fortinet FortiGate SWG?
Zero trust could be added. Nowadays, solutions like Zscaler, Netskope, and even SecureWorks combine multiple features...
 

Also Known As

iBoss Cloud Platform
OpenDNS
FortiGate SWG, FortiGate Secure Web Gateway
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

More than 4,000 global enterprises trust the iboss Cloud Platform to support their modern workforces, including a large number of Fortune 50 companies.
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
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Umbrella vs. Fortinet FortiGate SWG and other solutions. Updated: September 2024.
800,905 professionals have used our research since 2012.