Fortinet FortiGate Reviews

It does a lot for you for intrusion protection and as an antivirus. The threat management bundle is worth the money. You don't need another company to monitor your web traffic for you. You can do everything yourself on the firewall. You restrict your own black list for people on the firewall. You don't need to pay some other company for another product to do that for you. The firewall can do that for you. So, it's an easy-to-use product for people to be independent. They don't need to rely on other vendors to do what the firewall can do. They can do everything.

The GUI is good. I'm really happy with the ease of use of the firewall. Fortinet's support is also great.  

I don't really have anything negative to say as far as Fortinet firewalls are concerned. If anything, they can support a user a little bit better. They can stop being so time-sensitive about how much time the support call has taken, and they can help you do it yourself.

I've had different models of Fortinet since 2009. They all are physical appliances. I had 300As, and now I'm on 300Ds. I've got a remote site with a different model, which probably is 60F. They are great little firewalls, and for bigger size places, they have 300 models.

I don't have virtual appliances. I don't have a virtual infrastructure. I have an older virtual environment with Hyper-V, and the servers are not up-to-date. It was a money thing. So, it was better to go with the appliance itself.

I'm happy with what they got. It is a great product. Sometimes, you're going to get a lemon—the way it initially happened with FortiAuthenticator 300F—but that doesn't happen very often.

If there is a problem, the next business day, they send it and get the replacement, and they help me configure it.

In terms of its users, everybody uses the firewall because they're going out. That's our egress point. So, there are about 20 users for that. We have a dozen IPsec tunnels with which we connect to different companies. So, security is a big part of it. I also have a remote location with about 10 users who use a different firewall.

We probably won't be increasing its usage. Now that I got Authenticator, it nicely compliments the Fortinet firewall. The size of the company isn't going to grow any more than what it is. So, we're good.

Their support is great, but it also depends on who you get for support. From the support perspective, they can help you do it yourself, which is always more beneficial to both parties. They can stop being so time-sensitive about the call duration and let a user help himself a little bit more.

It takes time to study this stuff, and I don't always have time to do it. So, I'm looking for a quick answer because I get interrupted all the time during work. I don't always have the time to study something and figure it out. So, I have to call them, but I don't always get somebody who really knows what they are doing. They don't know deep enough to help you. They're troubleshooting with you, and that's the difference between Level 1 and Level 2 support.

When I first got here in this job in 2007, they had Cisco ASA Firewall, but it was too cryptic. You had to enter all these CLI commands for a configuration. It also didn't do everything that Fortinet could do. It was very limited, and it wasn't easy to use. I know what I want to do, and I don't have to learn a special language in order to do it. I just want to be able to use some basic programming code that they have put into the firewall and use the GUI interface with it to actually visualize what I am looking at. Some of the Cisco products are not visual enough. That was one of the reasons I stayed away from it. Cisco is also very high-priced. They price themselves out of business a lot of times for equipment, but Fortinet is just great.

I've also used SonicWall before. It was okay, but it is better for bigger places. I was looking for a midrange-size firewall for a couple of hundred users, and I felt Fortinet was the right fit.

Its deployment and maintenance are easy. 

I pretty much used the support from Fortinet to do it. They're good about their support. I did it myself by being a nuisance to Fortinet. I kept calling them to ask questions. They had to remote on to it and see you do something you don't know how to do.

It was probably about $2,500 per firewall. It was all included. It included support, services, threat management software, and 24/7 FortiCare on it. Cisco products are more expensive.

Fortinet has got great firewalls. They do everything. They do FortiTokens for two-factor. They do the IPsec VPNs, SSL VPNs. They have a great GUI for you to know, but you still got to know the CLI commands. 

I would rate it a 10 out of 10. It does its job, and it is easy to use. The support is great.

We use the solution on the perimeter. We are a government entity. We have other organizations monitoring our network. We also have our own firewall to separate the DMZ and different things on our external servers.

The solution provides good threat intelligence feeds.

The advanced models are expensive.

I have been using the solution for five to six years.

The tool’s stability is good. I rate the stability a seven or eight out of ten. The stability could be improved.

The tool is very scalable. It connects to its own wireless access points. The firewall is supported by other technologies. We can add more products and extend the features and the network.

Fortinet has a tool that migrates all the policies from the previous firewall to the new one.

The vendor helped us with the setup. It was quick. We connected the new firewall first. Then, we exported the policies from the live firewall to the new one. On a weekend, we deployed the new firewall.

If we buy licenses for a longer duration, we get discounts.

Fortinet has better models, but we are using the one within our budget. It's a good product. Besides Fortinet, we're using Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Defender, as well as the safety features that come with these products. There are many products in the market. The monitoring team is using Palo Alto. Palo Alto is better than Fortinet, but it's more expensive.

We use Fortinet for VPN, too. We have not faced any major issues with the tool. It has a lot of capabilities that enable us to customize tunnels and allow traffic from certain countries or regions. The vendor provides cloud-based models, but we do not use them because they are subscription-based models that are not within our budget.

The vendor has a lot of free and paid training courses. It is the best way to learn about the product. It is similar to Palo Alto. All the good companies have a lot of training materials and training courses to understand the product. The initial versions are free of cost. The certifications will help people understand the process and make administration easier. The cloud version has AI features.

Overall, I rate the product a seven or eight out of ten.

We use the solution for desk security.

The integration primarily occurs within the ONDAP server. We focus on integration with the log server, mainly the logs. There's integration with third-party software for log collection. Integration with FortiManager and FortiAnalyzer within the FortiGate family shouldn't pose any issues.

Many protocols are not proprietary, except for H.A. It's easy to integrate.

Fortinet also supports different types of VPNs, with SSL VPN being one of the most commonly utilized options.

The solution's pricing could be improved.

I have been using Fortinet FortiGate SWG for 5 years.

You'll likely get the correct answer if you reach out to the right person or ask the right question. Sometimes, the engineer doesn't articulate their question correctly, and the answer received may not be relevant.

Positive

The initial setup is easy. It depends on the project. Complex projects are typically based on the implementation, which takes less than a week. The high-level and the low-level are correctly designed, and the stakeholders agree upon the features. FortiGate is a security and VPN device, so the implementation is pretty straightforward. The SD-WAN is pretty easy, and the routing features are solid because the firewall that we are using also acts as a router facing the Internet. You also use an IP site for that. If it's appropriately configured, the customer is pretty happy there.

The renewable is lower because the market doesn’t accept it publicly.

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.

We utilize the Fortinet FortiGate firewall to safeguard our network and provide secure VPN access from external locations.

We implemented FortiGate because we needed a firewall to protect our data.

FortiGate helped us meet our ISO requirements.

In the time we have been using FortiGate, we have not had any security breaches. 

FortiGate has reduced the risk of cyberattacks that can disrupt our production. Since implementing FortiGate we have not dealt with any such attacks.

I'm unsure whether centralized FortiGate management enhances efficiency, but our experience with it has been exceptional. We haven't encountered any issues, and the operational aspects have been seamless. Additionally, there was no downtime, which is crucial for our operations.

Our Fortinet security fabric has enhanced security across our industrial control system. By safeguarding our production environment and ensuring the security of VPN access granted to individuals, we have achieved comprehensive data protection. We have not experienced any incidents that would have occurred if our firewall was inadequate.

FortiGate does a lot of research, and the product is regularly updated, especially in the ransomware area. I know of a couple of other companies around us that had some ransomware incidents, but we never have. From that perspective, FortiGate has helped mature our approach to cybersecurity a lot.

The email protection and VPN features are the most valuable.

The process of configuring firewall rules appears excessively complex. While FortiGate offers greater functionality than other firewall solutions, its user interface could benefit from simplification.

I would like the log viewing process to be improved to provide a clearer understanding of the logs.

I have been using Fortinet FortiGate for five years.

I would rate the stability of FortiGate ten out of ten. We have never had any issues.

We used the limit of our FotiGate firewall which was around 150 users and we never noticed any performance issues. 

I would rate the scalability of FortiGate eight out of ten.

The technical support is good.

Positive

Our decision to switch from FortiGate to Sophos was solely driven by the seamless integration with our existing Sophos antivirus system. Had this integration not been an advantage, we would have maintained our FortiGate system.

The initial deployment was straightforward due to our understanding of the product and its operation. It was completed in one day by a team of two.

The price of FortiGate is comparable to that of most other firewall solutions and is more affordable than Cisco.

I would rate Fortinet FortiGate eight out of ten.

Except for the firmware updates we have to do now and then, there is no other maintenance required for FortiGate.

We had FortiGate deployed in one location in a big server room. We have 150 users.

I would recommend FortiGate to anyone. FortiGate is an out-of-the-box firewall with good pricing and excellent features.      

It's mainly used to secure our clients' network access because they do not have any servers. The only things we have connected to the FortiGate firewall are access points, CCTVs, and a printer. It's just used for web browsing and internet access.

It definitely helps with intrusion prevention. When managing a firewall, you need to create policies to dictate the traffic flow within your environment. And once you enforce a policy, it has an intrusion prevention assistant that you can activate, so it's not just acting as a firewall.

Like most next-generation firewalls today, it helps control network traffic. I don't have any problem managing the network traffic within our network. It's very easy to access and manage.

FortiGate has also helped reduce the risk of cyberattacks. If such an attack happened, the main consequences for us would be data breaches, where some of our company's most important information might be leaked and used by other people. That would endanger our production and security.

And with the System Events page, I can easily access and see the events that are happening within the device and the network. It's easy to track if something has happened and, based on that, make a decision about the next step that I should take. I can see if it is severe or if it is just something that is not critical but more than a nuisance. Even in that case, I have to think about the steps that I will take to prevent it from happening again.

Mostly, it's about protecting the internet access of our end users in the production area of our company. It protects us during our web browsing and from internet-related activities.

The feature I like most is the SD-WAN. It allows you to manage more than one ISP at the same time. And there is a high-availability mode, so if one of your ISPs is down, you still have a backup.

It also provides us with visibility because we are able to track the IP addresses, as well as the type of device, OS, vendor name, and the name of the devices.

In addition, Fortinet Security Fabric helps us meet regulations and compliance requirements.

The built-in APIs enable us to integrate with different vendors, such as TP-Link and Luigi. We did not have any problems with the integration. It's very easy to configure and connect. This helps reduce deployment time, but that has more to do with network knowledge than with the product. If you're familiar with basic networking, it would be easy for you to understand the application of a certain device and integrate it with the API of your choice.

I've been working with Fortinet FortiGate for about 10 months.

I would like to see improvements in the support from Fortinet. Here in the Philippines, whenever we have problems with a Fortinet product, we mostly ask for support from distributors and resellers and not directly from Fortinet.

Neutral

I don't know why our company acquired FortiGate because I'm not the account manager. I'm just the technical person who installed the product. But I can assume they just looked at other companies that are securing their networks and decided to secure their internet access like those companies do.

Including the reconfiguration of the network setup, the deployment took at least five days. But the actual deployment of the device only took one day. There were four people involved.

I have no idea what the difference in pricing is if you buy it from a reseller or distributor compared to Fortinet, or even if Fortinet gives that option. The pricing is justified. It's a little pricey, but what you pay for is what you get.

I can't say how much it has reduced MTTR because I have not experienced any issues with FortiGate.

When I first built the FortiGate firewall, it enabled me to learn more about the network security field.

I use Fortinet FortiGate SWG in my company for security purposes and the SD-WAN in our networks.

The network load balancing is one of the best features of Fortinet FortiGate SWG. Fortinet FortiGate SWG's SD-WAN compatibility with any of the providers is also one of its good features. The security devices work well with the solution, and it works well for anything pertaining to security, including the HTML files and VPN, which is beneficial for our company.

The graphical user interface of Fortinet FortiGate SWG is an area of concern where improvements are required.

I have been using Fortinet FortiGate SWG for three years. I use the solution's latest version, which is Fortinet FortiGate 100F Series. I am an end user of the solution.

Stability-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

Scalability-wise, I rate the solution an eight and a half out of ten.

My company uses Fortinet FortiGate SWG in around 350 locations spread across India, and we have a user base of over 5,000 users.

The response from the technical support team has always been excellent. I rate the technical support a nine out of ten.

Positive

There were no issues with the product's installation phase. In our company, there were some initial things like checking the networks and managing the area of whitelisting in the firewall.

The solution's installation process doesn't take longer than an hour.

The solution is deployed on an on-premises model since my company has security gateway appliances across the company for 350 locations.

There was a team of six engineers in my company to take care of the implementation part of the product.

I was a part of the design and implementation team of the solution in my company.

Earlier, in my company, we had constraints in regard to the link load balancer and the site getting isolated because of the internet. Now, the good part is that the failovers and integration have become entirely seamless, and the site remains connected, meaning, in our company, we don't see the site getting isolated.

I rate the price of Fortinet FortiGate SWG a seven and a half out of ten since it is not a cheap solution, though I feel it is a good product for the money one pays.

There were no additional costs apart from the licensing charges of the product, and the extra payments were related to the shipping charges so that it could be shipped to multiple cities.

My company plans to use FortiAnalyzer and FortiManager.

I rate the overall tool an eight out of ten.

We have deployed this firewall for many companies. Our clients are financial and medical companies.

It enabled our clients to reach locations and access their applications easily with no latency. It provided ease of access.

Its threat prevention capabilities are most valuable. 

It's a user-friendly firewall. Most of the tasks are very simple. It's simple to configure and troubleshoot this firewall. 

The improvement is related to logs. Instead of the CLI, we should be able to have more insights into the logs of the firewall in the GUI.

I faced a lot of issues when I was trying to deploy the firewall through FortiManager. The firewall is stable, but FortiManager is too buggy, and it doesn't work properly. It gives too many errors.

There are some issues with Fortinet SD-WAN. It's quite complex.

I've been using this solution for more than four years.

It's a very stable product.

It's scalable. We have plans to increase its usage.

Most of the time, they are helpful, but there are times when they don't resolve an issue right away. They take the log, and then they take their time to give input on the issue. Most of the time, they take one or two days to get back after analyzing the logs. Instead of that, they can just schedule a session to resolve the issue right away because sometimes the issue impacts the production environment, so we need to resolve that issue as soon as possible. Overall, I'd rate them a six out of ten.

Neutral

I have worked with other firewalls. Fortinet FortiGate is better than Palo Alto and Check Point firewalls. It's more user-friendly.

I have deployed it for a bank at a core level. On the perimeter, there was a Palo Alto firewall, and at the core level, we deployed the FortiGate firewall at DC and DR locations. After that, we deployed SD-WAN. We replaced the MPLS switch with the Fortinet SD-WAN device, so the whole branch traffic comes to the SD-WAN box, and from there, it comes to the FortiGate firewall, and then it goes to the Palo Alto firewall for the internet access and resource access. While migrating branches from MPLS to SD-WAN, we did require a maintenance window.

There was no difficulty. It was very user-friendly. I have had many difficulties with the Check Point firewall. I have deployed major projects on the FortiGate firewall. I migrated more than a thousand branches on Fortinet SD-WAN and implemented FortiGate super massive firewalls at DC and DR locations. There were no complexities. Only at one location, I had an issue related to SD-WAN, but my query was resolved by Fortinet's local team.

It's an on-premises firewall for the DC and DR locations. I have never worked on cloud projects, but if there is any opportunity to deploy it on the cloud, I will do it. I have only done on-premises deployment.

I am an implementation engineer. I deployed and configured the whole firewall. I also troubleshot any issues. When I had any queries, they were clarified by Fortinet's engineers.

Its pricing is good. It's average or normal as compared to Palo Alto and Check Point firewalls. 

I didn't evaluate other options.

I'd recommend this firewall to others. Most of the time, when I do PoCs, I recommend Fortinet FortiGate. It's quite easy to manage and deploy.

I'd rate Fortinet FortiGate an eight out of ten.

Our primary use case is for social network blocking and for unusual applications in our network as well as for intrusion prevention. We are a department store. 

This product has made it easier to secure our network. 

The pipe filter application is an outstanding feature. The hardware processors are also very impressive. In general, this is an easy-to-use application, with a user-friendly interface. If you have any issues, Fortinet has a support library where you can search for videos and documentation. If you want to configure anything and you're unsure about it, the solution is in the videos. If a single link fails, it automatically connects to a secondary one and that's saved me a lot of time as I would have previously had to deal with it manually. Fortigate blocks unusual traffic and therefore secures our network. Third-party integrations are good.

The updates Fortinet provides are sometimes unstable. We have to check everything thoroughly before any upgrade.

We've been using this solution for seven years. 

The solution is very scalable. The processor, the microprocessor and the security processors are very intelligent so they can scale significantly and manage that well. 

The initial setup is straightforward and easy to manage. There is no maintenance required. 

We've seen a return on our investment. 

This is a very comprehensive solution but the cost is quite high. 

We evaluated several options before going with Fortinet. 

I think this is the best solution of its kind on the market and I rate it nine out of 10.