Fortinet FortiGate Reviews

My customers use Fortinet FortiGate for various purposes. The security services provided by Fortinet FortiGate are quite strong. 

I have had use cases where FortiGate helped to protect the mission-critical data for my customers. 

FortiGate is effective at protecting the data at the edge.

What I appreciate about Fortinet FortiGate is its effectiveness. The feature that I find the most effective is threat prevention. 

The mean time to respond and the remediation process is sped up. FortiGate has also helped to consolidate tools and applications for my customers.

The firewall has indeed helped customers to consolidate tools and applications. Once everything is set and done, maintaining FortiGate can have its challenges.

Fortinet FortiGate brings numerous benefits to my company.

The good things aside, there are improvements needed in the Fortinet FortiGate. My customers requested specific features to be included in the Fortinet FortiGate.

My experience with the Fortinet FortiGate is recent, as I worked with it less than a year ago.

My impression of the stability of FortiGate is that it is quite stable.

When it comes to scalability, I find it scalable.

I have escalated questions to Fortinet's tech support.

Positive

We need to compare different firewalls, including Fortinet FortiGate and Hillstone, and then suggest the better one to our clients.

The initial implementation part is straightforward, but it has some complexities. My implementation strategy involves several steps that I take when deploying it.

I do have hands-on experience working with the products, and I do the POCs and implementation part.

When it comes to the ROI, the return on investment of FortiGate can be a bit hard to estimate, but based on my experience, I find it to be quite favorable. Overall, Fortinet FortiGate has indeed helped to reduce the total cost of ownership for my customers.

My impression of the firewall's ability to provide network and security coverage is positive. 

When it comes to sustainability, my impressions of the firewall are favorable.

The size of the environment with Fortinet FortiGate was significant, including many endpoints and users, and it involved enterprise-level business.

Based on my experience, I would say to someone considering purchasing Fortinet FortiGate's data center firewall is that it's a good choice. I would give Fortinet a solid score.

Fortinet FortiGate is mainly used for next-generation firewall features.

Most of our customers primarily use FortiGate as a general-purpose firewall and for remote work. During COVID, they needed to enable the SSL VPN licenses, which was a straightforward process, and they benefited greatly from that. However, apart from this, I don’t see a significant differentiator between FortiGate and other firewalls.

Most of our implementations are standalone. We have a few integrations as well with Active Directory and other things. It is pretty straightforward, and we have not had any issues.

The main value comes from the simplicity of the product in terms of configuring and managing. 

Their user interface could be improved from a configuration perspective.

I have personally used it for about five years, but the organization has been using Fortinet FortiGate for the organization and customers for about 10 years.

Stability is excellent. We have not had issues from the product itself.

We have deployed Fortinet FortiGate from 50 user locations to 100-200 user locations. We have not had any issues with any of those models.

I would rate their support an eight out of ten. There's always room for improvement. 

Positive

We are a small system integrator and an authorized partner for Fortinet FortiGate, Cisco, Cisco Meraki, Palo Alto, Sophos, and Check Point. We cater to the SMB and upper SMB market and some enterprise customers. Most customers do not require fully fledged integrated solutions.

In Sri Lanka, there is about 40% market penetration for Fortinet. They have partnerships with two telcos, so most corporates with MPLS links who wanted to move out with the operator are offered managed SD-WAN solutions using Fortinet FortiGate.

We have Cisco customers as well, including local customers and global customers whom we support using Cisco firewalls. Comparing Cisco and Fortinet firewalls is challenging. You cannot compare a Ferrari with a normal Nissan sedan from a product and feature perspective. The SMB market segment and the upper SMB market segment are very price-conscious. Cisco does not offer firewalls that are competitively priced for this market segment, especially compared to Fortinet's offerings. They only recently released the 200 series, which can compete with the FortiGate 50 models that we sell.

Fortinet FortiGate is pretty straightforward compared to Cisco.

It is mostly on-prem. One or two clients are using it on the cloud.

Our customers get their ROIs on the price points that we sell in this market.

For the market and the segment that we cater to, the FortiGate pricing structure is sufficient.

I would rate Fortinet FortiGate a nine out of ten.

The solution is used for protecting offices for outbound traffic.

To be brutally honest, it wasn't my choice of vendor, but it seems to be able to do everything, though its configurations have to be quite specific. This is neither a positive nor a negative aspect, it is simply how the solution functions.

The operational logic is not as straightforward as a Sophos XGS device. When creating rules in the Sophos firewall, they are more intuitive than in the Fortinet FortiGate IPS device. The Fortinet FortiGate IPS device is more complicated.

The solution needs to be simplified.

I have been using Fortinet FortiGate IPS for six months.

The initial setups are acceptable, though I have not been the one implementing them.

The solution is stable.

It is crucial to size your hardware correctly to avoid problems.

The solution serves about five users.

The support package being an additional extra, even with an enterprise package purchase, is pathetic.

Though I haven't had direct experience with support, the fact that it doesn't come by default, which is very misleading compared to other brands, warrants a rating of two out of ten.

Negative

A basic setup can be accomplished in a few hours, but significant customization is required to achieve the desired configuration.

I view it from the perspective that making an investment in the product prevents potentially larger costs when something goes wrong.

The solution is more affordable compared to alternatives.

The solution is suitable for small-medium customers, provided they have the ability to set it up.

The implementation has been successful so far.

On a scale of 1-10, I rate Fortinet FortiGate IPS a seven.

We are using Fortinet FortiGate to block or deny malware and to administrate the network to control the traffic inside and outside.

It has significantly contributed to the effective control and monitoring of the network infrastructure. We could see its benefits immediately after the implementation.

It is complemented by other equipment, such as the Fortinet switch, and it is integrated with other tools that help to prevent cyberattacks, including a web filter, IPS, and application control. 

The user interface of the Fortinet FortiGate management console could be more intuitive and user-friendly, and the log analysis and reporting features could be enhanced to provide more flexibility and customizable insights.

I have had experience with Fortinet FortiGate for one year so far.

Fortinet FortiGate is very stable. I would rate its stability a ten out of ten.

It is scalable. I would rate the scalability of Fortinet FortiGate a ten out of ten.

We are a medium-sized organization.

I would rate Fortinet's customer service as very good. They are good because they provide solutions to problems that we encounter and help us make new changes or meet requirements, and they have the ability to work with us to make the changes that we want.

Positive

We previously used Sophos for web filtering. We now use Fortinet FortiGate for web filtering as well. We switched from Sophos to Fortinet FortiGate because we chose to adopt a Fortinet ecosystem to achieve better centralized control. We wanted to streamline security management while integrating firewalls, switches, endpoint protections, and wireless. 

We used Sophos only for web filtering control applications, but when we switched to Fortinet FortiGate, we achieved better integration with other devices in the security management.

I was involved with the initial setup and deployment of Fortinet FortiGate. It was of medium complexity. It was easy because the tools we were integrating were well-documented, but somewhat difficult due to the learning curve and the need to adapt our legacy system to the new environment.

It took four technical people to deploy Fortinet FortiGate. 

Only two people maintain it; for implementation, we used four people, but to maintain it, it is just two. 

It doesn't require a lot of maintenance. The job roles of those who maintain it include making changes, adjusting web filter configurations, and switching ports. The people who maintain it are network administrators.

I would advise people considering using Fortinet FortiGate to carefully plan the network structure and train the team; Fortinet is powerful, but its full potential comes with understanding the platform. I would recommend starting small, documenting everything, and using its centralized tools to stay secure and efficient.

Overall, I would rate Fortinet FortiGate a ten out of ten.

I see several benefits of using Fortinet FortiGate. When it comes to deploying the solution, it is easy. It allows customers to quickly get up to speed with their day-to-day tasks, minimizing mundane requests. Additionally, the support regarding upgrades and hardware failures has been above par.

Fortinet FortiGate helps to remediate threats more quickly. 

Fortinet FortiGate helps to reduce the mean time to respond when it is properly integrated with proper tools. For example, with email and other automation capabilities, it has reduced to under an hour for me. 

Fortinet FortiGate helps to consolidate tools and applications by offering web control, email protection, routing, firewalling, and extending to switching and wireless on the same management platform.

Fortinet FortiGate is good for helping you secure and protect mission-critical data. It is also good for protecting your edge.

When it comes to security, Fortinet is excellent in terms of how updates are done when there is an incident globally or there's a new variant of any IOCs. It is quite up-to-date.

I find application control, logging and reporting, and ease of use valuable. I find the ease of configuring specific policies to be the most valuable feature of the Fortinet FortiGate firewall.

The solution could be improved by addressing limited local reporting. It requires obtaining the FortiAnalyzer for proper visibility because you can't do much from a reporting perspective with just the firewall alone.

In terms of convergence, it is a good solution, but it can be better. FortiGate has the capability to support their switching and wireless platforms. They are quite excellent on their wireless side, but I found a couple of gaps in terms of how FortiGate integrates with their own switching platform. There are some gaps there.

My experience of working with Fortinet FortiGate is approximately 10 years.

It caters to all with different units, such as from five users to a model that supports telcos or huge enterprises. Depending on the size of your organization, you end up getting the correct fit of the model, and they have the same capabilities. The variation comes in terms of the interfaces and throughputs, but from a security perspective, you get the same benefit, irrespective of whether you have an entry-level unit or an enterprise.

Their support is quite effective. I would rate technical support from Fortinet a nine out of ten.

Positive

I've had a chance to do a couple of deployments on the cloud. I've done deployments on private and public clouds. I've deployed it on-prem as an edge firewall or as a data center firewall. 

In terms of maintenance, like all firewalls, there is an aspect of upgrading based on new features and getting the latest updates from the signatures and IPS uploads that come along with it. That happens effectively in an automated way. Software upgrades are catered to during the support window.

The FortiGate firewall has helped to reduce the total cost of ownership.

It provides value for money and is quite competitive compared to other vendors, allowing you to achieve the proper ROI from investments.

The pricing or licensing of Fortinet FortiGate is quite effective as it offers different bundles that aggregate most required features, while also allowing clients the option to select specific components alone.

The typical use case for Fortinet FortiGate as a firewall is because of the commercial aspects. It is competitive from a pricing perspective. There is ease of use compared to other vendors and effective vendor support for any issues.

Anyone considering purchasing FortiGate's data center firewall should go for it because data centers require stability and proper performance, which the platform provides. I would recommend getting the latest unit for a longer shelf life as clients often buy nearly end-of-sale products, limiting their usability.

Overall, I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

For IPS, IDS, traffic management, SDWAN, high availability, we leverage Fortinet FortiGate as a virtual appliance to secure our data center, internal office infrastructure, and site-to-site VPNS Site to client VPNS for our internal lab controls, rather than using physical Fortinet FortiGate hardware.

We implemented Fortinet FortiGate as part of our compliance requirements to address the high volume of intrusion attempts we were experiencing. This solution provides us with a insight on Intrusion to block these attacks and gain insights into who is trying to access our network. Essentially, we aim to understand the nature of incoming and outgoing network traffic.

FortiGate offers visibility into the types, brands, versions, and users of connected devices. This visibility is crucial for our industrial devices, as their reliable operation is essential to our business.

Fortinet Security Fabric empowers us to comply with regulations, governance, and compliance requirements across regions like the US and Europe, ensuring smooth operations for our global business.

FortiGate's built-in APIs enable us to integrate with the vendors of our choice.

Fortinet's FortiGate is easy to deploy in our environment thanks to its well-written and easy-to-follow documentation.

FortiGate is a highly benchmarked product that improves efficiency and adds value to our organization.

Although we don't see a benefit overnight, we gradually see the benefits of FortiGate over the years. It has provided a lot of insight into our organization's activities.

FortiGate significantly helped reduce the risk of cyberattacks that could disrupt our production. This has protected us against financial losses.

Fortinet has its management suite so it helps to centralize the management of network and security operations in our company. This helps us easily manage the issues and solutions that are required.

Fortinet FortiGate provides us with actionable data to inform our decisions about the most appropriate course of action. It delivers insights into resource consumption and compromised hosts, helping us identify the source of unauthorized login attempts. This comprehensive view allows us to understand what's entering our network.

Fortinet Security Fabric improved security across our industrial control systems.

Fortinet FortiGate helped reduce our mean time to remediate.

Fortinet FortiGate helped to mature our approach to cybersecurity for protecting our industrial equipment. The level of detail we can see regarding incoming traffic and ongoing activities is quite high. This detailed visibility extends to host configuration and other such aspects, providing us with valuable insights. As a result, Fortinet can provide a clear understanding of how to manage our network and quickly mitigate any issues that may arise.

The most valuable feature of FortiGate is FortiView which provides proactive monitoring. 

Ideally, I'd like to see most CLI configuration options exposed in the GUI to avoid manual command typing. However, there should be a more user-friendly approach than simply replicating everything in the GUI. Alternatively, some users might prefer scheduling tasks through commands for automation.

I have been using Fortinet FortiGate for over 12 years.

I would rate the stability of Fortinet FortiGate ten out of ten. As long as we configure FortiGate properly.

The technical support has improved over the years.

Positive

We previously used an open-source firewall, but we were looking for a solution that was more proactive, easier to manage, and continuously improved. FortiGate was a major competitor at the time and has since become one of the market leaders.

Initially, there was a learning curve during the deployment. We did have the help of local vendors.

If our policies are already in place, we can have the solution up and running in less than a day using a script. However, if we need to determine our policies while implementing the solution, it can take over a month to complete.

Fortinet FortiGate mitigates an excessive amount of manpower requirements because it is easy to manage and this helps contribute to a return on investment.

The price varies yearly and there could be additional costs to help manage the infrastructure. 

In certain markets, if an organization subscribes to their internet service they get a Fortinet firewall included in the cost.

We evaluated some of the leading brands. At the time we found FortiGate easier to administrate and handle. The interface was intuitive and the solution was affordable.

I would rate Fortinet FortiGate nine out of ten.

Fortinet FortiGate is one of the most user-friendly security appliances I've encountered. It has a gentle learning curve, and even beginners can configure it effectively. However, for a successful deployment, it's crucial to have a well-defined network layout, documented initial requirements, and a clear configuration strategy. While physical documentation isn't mandatory, a well-organized approach is essential. This includes using clear and consistent naming conventions for commands and rules, along with detailed descriptions within the configuration itself. This makes it easy for anyone to understand the overall logic and navigate the configuration from start to finish. It's important to note that my approach to policy management might involve unique syntax. This includes how I structure policy sets and identify which ones consume the most resources. Understanding how policies interact with other aspects, like implementation and rule execution, is also crucial. Ultimately, a well-defined naming standard is the foundation for a clear and maintainable configuration.

Mostly firewalls.

The best features of Fortinet FortiGate include everything about networking, such as routing and VPNs. Fortinet FortiGate is specifically user-friendly with an easy guide. It is easy to follow and learn about and work with. It has resources available all over the internet with an extensive database. It is very popular, so every community discusses Fortinet FortiGate. Every problem has been solved at some point.

Without a license, it becomes difficult to implement static DNS. The FortiDDNS.com functionality is particularly challenging to access without a license.

I have been working with Fortinet FortiGate for approximately a year and a half.

Fortinet FortiGate is quite stable. The main problem occurs when customers do not update their Fortinet FortiGate properly and regularly. Most issues stem from firewalls not being updated. I have not encountered any problems with Fortinet FortiGate devices.

I have not opened many cases due to lack of need. When we do open cases, we receive fast and friendly replies. The support has been good, though I have not experienced significant issues to fully evaluate this aspect.

I have worked with other firewalls including Palo Alto, specifically their Prisma Access SASE solution. I have also briefly worked with Cisco systems.

I am not in that field, but it is quite expensive, especially for personal or home use.

We recommend it primarily because we have more knowledge in the Fortinet FortiGate field. Customers ultimately choose what they prefer. We work better with Fortinet FortiGate due to our extensive experience with it.

I have not used FortiGuard extensively as it is not in my field. The only SASE solution I have used is Prisma Access from Palo Alto, not the Fortinet FortiGate SASE. The interface is very user-friendly and easy to use, though knowledge of networking aspects, VPNs, and protocols is necessary. Fortinet FortiGate offers great compatibility with other Fortinet FortiGate functions such as IDS, antivirus, and sandbox features.

All problems we have encountered have had straightforward solutions. Throughout my year and a half working with Fortinet FortiGate, I have not found myself needing additional features.

I rate this solution 8 out of 10.

The typical use cases for Fortinet FortiGate revolve around its security capabilities, as it has a number of features that clients see as necessary for a security solution. This helps them protect various platforms on their networks and infrastructures.

I am involved in implementation as a partner.

It's a good solution. I've not interacted much with it. I know a few features, and it's a nice one.

It's comprehensive and time-saving. It covers several areas regarding security.

Improvements for Fortinet FortiGate could be made by making it easier to implement on networks and simpler to add users and accounts that utilize this solution. That's basically the only challenge that I see.

I have one to two years of experience working with Fortinet FortiGate.

Fortinet FortiGate is a stable solution. While there are issues during implementation, once everything is properly configured, it remains stable. The implementation process can affect users, but those issues get sorted out. 

I find the scalability of this solution to be very good because it allows for easy expansion. You can add more users as needed, which makes it flexible.

I would rate the technical support from Fortinet FortiGate an eight out of ten.

Positive

I normally apply the licensing as a partner, but I am not involved in procurement. 

It's a good product that significantly enhances security and protects organizational data. Therefore, I would recommend considering using it.

I would rate Fortinet FortiGate an eight out of ten.