Trellix Intrusion Prevention System vs WatchGuard Firebox comparison

Trellix Intrusion Prevention System vs. WatchGuard Firebox

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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

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2025, in the Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) category, the mindshare of Fortinet FortiGate is 14.8%, down from 19.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Trellix Intrusion Prevention System is 2.7%, up from 2.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of WatchGuard Firebox is 7.3%, down from 12.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Fortinet FortiGate	14.8%
WatchGuard Firebox	7.3%
Trellix Intrusion Prevention System	2.7%
Other	75.2%

Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)

Featured Reviews

Vasu Gala

Manager, Information Technology Operation/Presales at TechMonarch

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.

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Bhupesh-Sharma

Large account Manager at Softcell Technologies Limited

Has offered reliable threat protection and detailed network insights but could expand features beyond existing capabilities

The best features of Trellix Intrusion Prevention System include advanced ATP (Advanced Threat Protection), which uses signatures, behavior analysis, and machine learning to stop zero-day exploits and malware advanced persistent threats (APTs). They track and collect data from APTs, which allows them to track malicious files entering the environment. The system offers inline prevention and real-time automatic blocking of malicious packets before they reach the network. It integrates with the Trellix ecosystem and provides application visibility and control. The solution provides deep insight into network traffic, applications, and protocols for better information. All packets coming through the application are analyzed and reported. They share intelligence updates regularly to protect from different malicious files and sector-specific threats. It supports both on-premise and cloud environments.

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Syed Pasha

Senior Network Consultant at NETOPS

Makes defining policies simpler but lacks performance and modern features

WatchGuard Firebox is only deployed in one location within my customer's organization, and at the other locations, we are using Meraki and FortiGate. We plan to replace WatchGuard Firebox soon. My impression of the spam blocking capabilities of WatchGuard is not very favorable, as I don't think it is very capable. I haven't noticed effective web ratings or IPS signatures, which may be due to managing an older OS; I'm not certain about the performance of the newer versions. I am not aware of whether the transition to faster ports on WatchGuard Firebox supports maintaining productivity levels during peak usage times. Based on my experience, I would rate WatchGuard Firebox as five out of ten overall.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I prefer FortiGate because it has a lot of other solutions embedded within it and is the easiest for our technicians to operate."

"FortiGate has led to a reduction in our security budget."

"The most valuable feature is the VDOM, which allows the customer to have multiple firewalls in a single campus."

"It offers web filtering capabilities at a more affordable price compared to other solutions like PSMs or NETGEAR."

"The most valuable features are the enterprise modeling and the simple interface."

"FortiGate firewalls are easy to manage through a user-friendly web interface. They also have advanced features like DDoS and DLP. However, I wouldn't recommend enabling all of these features on one device because it can cause performance issues."

"The security fabric is excellent."

"The best features of Fortinet FortiGate are UTM, web filtering, and IPS."

More Fortinet FortiGate pros

"The best features of Trellix Intrusion Prevention System include advanced ATP (Advanced Threat Protection), which uses signatures, behavior analysis, and machine learning to stop zero-day exploits and malware advanced persistent threats (APTs)."

"The best feature of the Trellix Intrusion Prevention System is the rules that Trellix provides, I think that's the best value from IPS."

"The most valuable features in Trellix for me are the automated signature updates. It is a great and convenient feature."

"Overall the solution is very good. It offers great protection and gives us a good overview of what is on the network."

"There's a good dashboard you can drill down into. It helps you easily locate intrusions and the source of attacks."

"McAfee NSP is much more stable than Cisco."

"Great monitoring feature."

"The most valuable features are the customization of the signature and the unlimited amount of signatures in IPS."

More Trellix Intrusion Prevention System pros

"One of my favorite features is the Geolocation service, where you can actually block specific activity or IP addresses registered to certain countries. For example, I don't want any web traffic from Russia or North Korea. I may even lock down certain policies down to 'I only want U.S. IP addresses.' I find that very useful."

"If we don't want specific data sent out, the tool will stop that data based on the policy we have allocated to it. It has reduced the risks of sending data where it shouldn't be. I haven't faced any issues with the tool's integration capabilities."

"WebBlocker has the best URL category database ever."

"The security that is used for defending from the attacks is very good."

"The set up of the VPN is pretty straightforward. Being able to build VPNs on the fly for certain users, if need be, is also valuable."

"Intrusion Prevention is my primary focus so that's what I find most useful. The why is straightforward: It's to prevent intrusion."

"We have received a good return on investment."

"If you just plan to use WatchGuard Firebox in your office and not publicly, then it is okay to purchase it. With WatchGuard Firebox, you can manage your users and permissions while also taking care of the basic setup phase in your office."

More WatchGuard Firebox pros

Cons

"It needs to improve its ISP load balancing."

"In terms of pricing, Fortinet needs to do more to compete effectively."

"The integration with third-party tools may be something that they should work on."

"The room for improvement is about the global delivery time period. Usually I need to wait for almost one month to deliver it overseas. So if you can shorten the deliver time it'd be great."

"The support we receive when we need to upgrade is not satisfactory and has room for improvement."

"The SD-WAN functionality is a bit overly complicated and not fully documented."

"One of the most important areas for improvement for Fortinet FortiGate is the limited resources for tests."

"I would suggest that Fortinet add sandboxing to their solution."

More Fortinet FortiGate cons

"The solution could improve some aspects of detection."

"The area of concern where the tool needs improvement is how the product prompts users at a network level that helps prevent any wireless network attacks through alerts and notifications."

"The technical support has room for improvement."

"The technical support must be improved."

"Integration with Global Thereat Intelligence could be better. Also, I think management solutions are end of life now at McAfee. Network threat analyzer may be used for endpoint quarantines. Integration between these sides, as well as endpoint APO, will help you quarantine the risky endpoints."

"The management component could be simplified."

"The solution needs to improve the graphical interface. And they had a limitation in some of the sensor modems as well."

"Some of the documentation is not as straightforward as it could be."

More Trellix Intrusion Prevention System cons

"Due to their lack of investment in marketing, channel development, and certifications, WatchGuard faces challenges in gaining visibility and market share, especially in regions like Pakistan."

"The performance of the solution's processor needs to be faster."

"The ease of detecting where an issue is should be improved."

"There is no message displayed for the user on the desktop informing them that access to a web page has been blocked by Application Control."

"It's very hard to get information from their website, for exactly what I need to do. Sometimes I end up having to open a lot of support tickets... It's a navigational issue which makes it hard to find what I'm looking for and it's just so broad."

"I would like to have a little more control over access points and the ability to see the bandwidth that is passing through a specific access point. We are not able to see that. We can see what traffic is passing through the Firebox itself, but we can't identify if it is coming from a particular access point or not."

"The data loss protection works well, but it could be easier to configure. The complexity of data loss protection makes it a more difficult feature to fully leverage. Better integration with third-party, two-factor authentication would be advantageous."

"The documentation for the System Manager/Dimension configuration, could be a little bit clearer... The use case where you have multiple sites with multiple firewalls, and one site that has the System Manager server and the Dimension server, wasn't really well defined. It took me a little bit of digging to get that to actually work."

More WatchGuard Firebox cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This is not a cheap solution but it isn't expensive, either. It's a good solution for the right price."

"The product pricing is reasonable."

"Some of our customers are using Sophos and SonicWall due to price concerns, as they can't manage the pricing of Fortinet FortiGate."

"Its price could be better."

"Fortinet FortiGate SWG is an affordable solution."

"Before choosing a piece of equipment you have to take into account the cost-benefit offered by each one. Sometimes it is not worth paying a very cheap price to have a minimum level of security."

"Fortinet is competitive price-wise."

"It is around $50,000 per month."

More Fortinet FortiGate pricing and cost advice

"I rate the product’s pricing an eight out of ten."

"The tool is competitively priced."

"WatchGuard Data Loss Prevention's pricing is expensive. I rate it a seven out of ten."

"WatchGuard Firebox is a cheap solution."

"I haven't seen the pricing since 2017, but it was competitive. SonicWall, Barracuda, and WatchGuard were all about the same price when we did our last pricing."

"The pricing is competitive."

"The solution is not expensive and customers pay for a yearly license."

"The licensing model for WatchGuard Application Control is based on the number of users. WatchGuard Application Control also has licensing models with several features."

"I think the tool is quite competitive compared to the other brands."

"The licensing contract we have is on a three-year basis. There aren't any costs in addition to the standard licensing fees—usually, every three years, we just purchase or renew the same license and we are okay. Every six years, we completely change the firewall, but that's the usual schema. So after three years, we just renew the licenses for another three years, and then after that particular period of time, we just purchase another firewall equivalent to the ones that we currently use."

More WatchGuard Firebox pricing and cost advice

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879,371 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

14%

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

Comms Service Provider

Computer Software Company

13%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Manufacturing Company

Retailer

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	357
Midsize Enterprise	132
Large Enterprise	188

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	6
Midsize Enterprise	7
Large Enterprise	5

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	92
Midsize Enterprise	25
Large Enterprise	15

Questions from the Community

Which is the better NGFW: Fortinet Fortigate or Cisco Firepower?

When you compare these firewalls you can identify them with different features, advantages, practices and usage a...

What is the biggest difference between Sophos XG and FortiGate?

From my experience regarding both the Sophos and FortiGate firewalls, I personally would rather use FortiGate. I know...

What are the biggest technical differences between Sophos UTM and Fortinet FortiGate?

As a solution, Sophos UTM offers a lot of functionality, it scales well, and the stability and performance are quite ...

What do you like most about McAfee Network Security Platform?

The threat intelligence updates are very accurate.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for McAfee Network Security Platform?

The tool is competitively priced. I rate the pricing a six out of ten.

What needs improvement with McAfee Network Security Platform?

Trellix Intrusion Prevention System does not provide virtual patching. Patching involves updates on the OS side to ad...

What is your primary use case for WatchGuard Firebox?

We are providing our services to all WatchGuard customers in the region.

What is your primary use case for WatchGuard Firebox?

We just use it as a secondary WiFi device. We're a small office and we needed to set up a WiFi device for a few of ou...

What is your primary use case for WatchGuard Firebox?

We're a hospital and we use it for developing our incoming and outgoing policies, and we also use it for VPN.

Sophos XG vs Fortinet FortiGate

Comparisons

Compared 19% of the time

Cisco Secure Firewall vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 12% of the time

Netgate pfSense vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 7% of the time

OPNsense vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 4% of the time

Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 3% of the time

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Trend Micro TippingPoint Threat Protection System vs Trellix Intrusion Prevention System

Compared 21% of the time

Palo Alto Networks Advanced Threat Prevention vs Trellix Intrusion Prevention System

Compared 16% of the time

Cisco Secure IPS (NGIPS) vs Trellix Intrusion Prevention System

Compared 15% of the time

Vectra AI vs Trellix Intrusion Prevention System

Compared 8% of the time

Darktrace vs Trellix Intrusion Prevention System

Compared 5% of the time

More Trellix Intrusion Prevention System Competitors

OPNsense vs WatchGuard Firebox

Compared 7% of the time

SonicWall TZ vs WatchGuard Firebox

Compared 5% of the time

Sophos UTM vs WatchGuard Firebox

Compared 4% of the time

Netgate pfSense vs WatchGuard Firebox

Compared 4% of the time

SonicWall NSa vs WatchGuard Firebox

Compared 4% of the time

More WatchGuard Firebox Competitors

Product Reports

Fortinet FortiGate

Download Fortinet FortiGate product report

Trellix Intrusion Prevention System

Download Trellix Intrusion Prevention System product report

Trellix Intrusion Prevention System report

WatchGuard Firebox

Download WatchGuard Firebox product report

Also Known As

Fortinet FortiGate Next-Generation Firewall

McAfee Network Security Platform, McAfee NSP, IntruShield Network Intrusion Prevention System, IntruShield Network IPS

WatchGuard Threat Detection and Response, WatchGuard Application Control, WatchGuard Data Loss Prevention, WatchGuard Gateway AntiVirus, WatchGuard Intrusion Prevention Service

Overview

Fortinet FortiGate is a versatile network security tool offering features like VPN, firewall, web filtering, intrusion prevention, and scalability. It is known for its performance and integration with other Fortinet products, making it a preferred choice for robust cybersecurity.

Fortinet FortiGate stands out as a comprehensive cybersecurity solution with strong performance and ease of configuration. It delivers unified threat management, integrating features such as dynamic routing, SD-WAN support, and centralized management. Despite its strengths, improvements in the web interface's stability, pricing structures, and reporting capabilities are needed. Users seek better integration with third-party tools and automation advancements to enhance the experience further. These enhancements, alongside improvements in bandwidth management and the reduction of licensing costs, are points of interest for users looking to capitalize on FortiGate's extensive capabilities.

What are Fortinet FortiGate's key features?

VPN: Ensures secure remote connections.
Firewall: Protects against unauthorized access.
Web Filtering: Blocks malicious sites and content.
Application Control: Manages and controls applications.
Intrusion Prevention: Detects and prevents vulnerabilities.
SSL Inspection: Enhances security by inspecting encrypted traffic.

What benefits should be considered when evaluating Fortinet FortiGate?

Affordability: Offers cost-effective security solutions.
Reliability: Known for consistent and stable performance.
Integration: Seamlessly integrates with other Fortinet products.
Comprehensive Protection: Provides broad threat protection capabilities.

Fortinet FortiGate is widely implemented across industries as a primary firewall system for securing internet gateways and safeguarding data centers. It supports businesses in achieving SD-WAN integration and enhances cybersecurity by providing essential features like antivirus, web filtering, and application control. Enterprises utilize FortiGate for securing remote connections and ensuring compliance with security standards, making it adaptable for different network sizes and industries.

Fortinet

Block More Intrusions
Stop new and unknown attacks with signature-based and signature-less intrusion prevention systems. Signature-less intrusion detection finds malicious network traffic and stops attacks where no signatures exist.

Unify Virtual and Physical Security
Support network virtualization across private and public cloud platforms to scale security and evolve with changing IT dynamics.

Maximize Security and Performance
Scale hardware performance to speeds up to 100 Gbps and leverage data from multiple products.

Trellix

WatchGuard Firebox is a high-performance firewall known for its ease of setup, offering robust security with layered protection and centralized management capabilities.

WatchGuard Firebox stands out for its intuitive management and high throughput, addressing security needs with features like VPN, web filtering, and threat detection. Its centralized control and reporting abilities, along with Active Directory integration, make it popular among varied organizations. Its user-friendly interface and ongoing updates enhance usability and reliability. However, there's a call for better cloud-based administration, scalability, and improved integration with third-party vendors.

What are the key features of WatchGuard Firebox?

Ease of Setup: Quick and straightforward installation process.
GUI: User-friendly graphical interface for simplified navigation.
VPN Features: Secure and efficient virtual private network management.
Web Filtering: Advanced filtering for safer browsing experiences.
Threat Detection: Proactive monitoring and detection of cyber threats.

What benefits or ROI should be evaluated?

Centralized Control: Streamlined management from a single point.
High Throughput: Efficient data handling and processing capacity.
Stable Performance: Consistent and reliable operational functionality.
Active Directory Integration: Seamless connection with user directories.
Customer Service: Strong support service for customer inquiries.

WatchGuard Firebox is implemented across industries to secure internet gateways and protect data in multi-site businesses. Its applications span from Unified Threat Management (UTM) and intrusion prevention to compliance support in business environments requiring secure connectivity through VPNs.

WatchGuard

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

Desjardins Group, HollyFrontier, Nubia, Agbar, WNS Global Services, INAIL, Universidad de Las Américas Puebla (UDLAP), Cook County, China Pacific Insurance, Bank Central Asia, California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, City of Chicago, Macquarie Telecom, Sutherland Global Services, Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, United Automotive Electronic Systems

Ellips, Diecutstickers.com, Clarke Energy, NCR, Wrest Park, Homeslice Pizza, Fortessa Tableware Solutions, The Phoenix Residence

Trellix Intrusion Prevention System vs. WatchGuard Firebox