Fortinet FortiGate vs Hillstone T-Series vs Meraki MX comparison

Fortinet FortiGate enhances network security, prevents unauthorized access, and offers robust firewall protection. Valued features include advanced threat protection, reliable performance, and a user-friendly interface. It improves efficiency, streamlines processes, and boosts collaboration, providing valuable insights for informed decision-making and growth.

Hillstone’s T-Series intelligent Next-Generation Firewall (iNGFW) uses three key technologies to detect advanced attacks and provide continuous threat defense for today’s networks. First, it uses statistical clustering to detect unknown malware, leveraging the patented Hillstone Advanced Threat Detection engine (ATD). Second, it uses behavioral analytics to detect anomalous network behavior, which is based on the Hillstone Abnormal Behavior Detection engine (ABD). Finally, it leverages the Hillstone threat correlation analysis engine to correlate threat events detected by disparate engines – including ATD, ABD, Sandbox and other traditional signature-based threat detection technologies – along with context information to identify advanced threats.

Cisco Meraki MX appliances are next-generation firewalls with all the advanced security services needed for today’s IT security. The appliances are ideal for organizations considering a unified threat management (UTM) solution for branch offices, data centers, distributed sites, or campuses. Since Meraki MX is 100% cloud-managed, installation and remote management are simple and zero-touch.

Meraki MX’s hardware and virtual appliances are configurable in Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Google Cloud Platform, and private cloud support is offered through Cisco NFVIS and Alibaba Cloud.

Organizations of all sizes and across all industries rely on Meraki MX to deliver secure connectivity to hub locations or multi-cloud environments, as well as application quality of experience (QoE) through advanced analytics with machine learning.

Cisco Meraki’s advanced QoE analytics offers:

• End-to-end health of web applications at a glance across the LAN, WAN, and application server.

• Autonomous machine-learned smart application thresholds applied to identify true anomalies that are based on past behavioral patterns.

• Ability to monitor the health of all MX WAN links across an entire organization.

• Ability to detail hop-by-hop VoIP performance analysis across all uplinks.

Cisco Meraki’s SD-WAN offers:

The Meraki MX’s SD-WAN is unique in that it can be easily extended to deliver optimized access to resources in public and private cloud environments with virtual MX appliances. Its SD-WAN lowers operational costs and improves the performance of remotely-accessed resources. Users can ensure the availability of the apps and services their employees use most through dynamic path selection, policy-based routing, support for application-layer profiles, and VPN.

Meraki MX offers industry-leading cloud management that has template-based settings which can scale easily from small deployments to tens of thousands of devices. It features an intuitive web-based dashboard for managing mobile devices, united firewalls, switching, and wireless LAN. Users can also benefit from role-based administration, configurable email alerts for a variety of important events, and easily auditable change logs. Meraki MX is capable of producing summary reports with device, user, and application details archived in the cloud.

Meraki MX Key Features

MX has a robust suite of network services in an all-in-one device, which saves you money by eliminating the need for multiple appliances. These services include:

• SD-WAN capabilities
• SNORT®-based intrusion detection and prevention
• Layer 7 fingerprinting
• Web caching
• Application-based firewalling
• Anti-malware
• Geo-based firewalling
• Content filtering
• Site-to-site auto VPN and client VPN
• Web search filtering
• Cisco Advanced Malware Protection (AMP)
• 4G cellular failover
• Dynamic path selection
• Web application health and VoIP health

Reviews from Real Users

Meraki MX stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its easy management and its ability to be accessed remotely. Below is some feedback from PeerSpot users who are currently using Meraki MX as their firewall security solution.

Craig B., a central services engineer at Liberty Technology, writes, “The web console for managing everything keeps everything on Meraki and keeps us from going somewhere else. It is why I think a lot of people like Meraki. Comparing it to SonicWall or even a different Cisco firewall, like traditional ASAs, managing Meraki is a thousand times easier because of fluidity. You don't have to rebuild a table just to change one rule. It's much more readable for a human.”

Edgardo C., an IT director, notes,”By using the VPN, we can connect remotely. We have two offices, and we could connect them through the VPN. We could establish a network between two sites, and that has improved and increased communication and productivity. Our remote site is able to access the server remotely.”