Fortinet FortiGate Reviews

We are using this solution to filter communication to and from the website or our site. 

We also use it to create a VPN connection for all of our sites in the world.

I like that they have given me a solution at a fair price.

The user interface could be improved.

I have been working with FortiGate for more than ten years.

It's a stable solution, we have not had any issues. It works.

It's a scalable product. We have 600 users in our organization.

We have not contacted technical support. We have been fortunate in that we did not have any issues that needed it.

I am working as a manager, and I am not doing any of the configurations.

We only require one person for the maintenance of this solution.

The pricing is fair.

I would recommend this solution to others who are interested in using it. That said, nothing is perfect and there is always room for improvement.

I would rate Fortinet FortiGate an eight out of ten.

We use it for our paralegal security, our internet operations, and network zone segmentation.

It could be more stable and secure. They can improve the ability to make changes, change requests, and provide more rounded monitoring in terms of security and potential threats.

My team has been using Fortinet FortiGate for a few years.

Fortinet FortiGate appears to be stable. 

Fortinet FortiGate appears to be scalable. 

We previously used Palo Alto.

The setup is pretty complex and not easy to implement. 

Implemented by our in-house team. 

I would give Fortinet FortiGate a seven out of ten.

The primary use case of this solution is for the integral firewall, monitoring, and all types of security.

The most valuable features are security and vision, and all of the UTM functionality.

The user interface needs a bit of upgrading.

Pricing could be better. 

Customers are looking for 24/7 protection, but it's not as critical in the end. The pricing is preventing them for adopting it so they should be competitive.

I have been using this solution for approximately six years

I am working on the most up-to-date version.

It's very stable, it can take a lot.

It's scalable and we have not had any problems at all.

Technical support is very good. I have no issues with them.

Previously, we were using another solution. Fortinet FortiGate IPS, was recommended to us, and once we tried it we liked it and we stuck with it.

I am not happy with WatchGuard.

For me, after using it for six years, the initial setup is easy.

They are more expensive than others.

If you are looking for a lifestyle solution, then FortiGate is my choice.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

We use it to protect our or our customers' full environment by using features such as IPS signatures, VPN, endpoint protection, and antivirus.

The application control features, such as Facebook blocking and Spotify blocking, are the most valuable.

The license renewal process, annual renewal price, and the web application firewall features should be improved.

I have been using this solution for two years.

It has been very stable and reliable. We are comfortable with its stability.

It is good enough for us. We have about 15 employees who use this solution.

I would rate them a nine out of ten.

The set up was a little complex, but the interface and the process are user friendly.

The license is too expensive to renew. The license renewal process is also complex. 

I would advise others to use the documentation. The official documentation is very comprehensive and complete. I use the Cookbook Reference Guide.

I would rate Fortinet FortiGate an eight out of ten. 

This firewall is an antivirus, protects against spam, and is an IPS.

The most valuable feature is the web filter.

The performance is fine.

Some of the features in the graphical user interface do not work, which requires that we used the command-line-interface. We have problems with that.

Log retention should be greater than 24 hours.

I have been using FortiGate for about eight years.

The complexity of the initial setup depends on the implementation. There are some that are very simple, whereas others are complex.

I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.

We used FG-90D as UTM device to protect some users and servers, and also to enable inter-vlan routing with advanced security policies inside our lab zone. Also used FG-500D in transparent mode in front of Cisco ASA for advanced and high performance protection by applying IPS, AV, AntiSpam, App.Control and DoS-protection profiles.

We have better manageability: opening and closing ports/services, adding addresses is done very quickly (can be done in single page of the web GUI).

It offers outstanding reporting tools when coupled with FortiAnalyzer (Fortinet's log collector and reporting tool) help meet compliance (there are PCIDSS, HIPAA and many more report types).

Better security posture: safe web surfing, less spam and viruses in incoming email messages, very granular AppControl, blocking vulnerability exploitation attempts and traffic anomalies by IPS, preventing DoS attacks by DoS policies.

Good VPN, both IPSEC and SSL (web-mode, tunnel-mode). An engineer/network administrator has tools to debug VPN issues that can occur during tunnel setup with other vendors' equipment.

SD-WAN feature at no cost. This is really great feature for remote locations (branch offices) and HQ, application steering between many ISP links becomes a simple task. Steering can be done dynamically by measuring link quality (latency, jitter, packet loss, available bandwidth).

Wi-Fi and Switch controller at no cost. FortiSwitch and FortiAP can become a kind of port extender of the firewall, all its ports can be referenced in firewall policies. When you have such management plane consolidation it gives you a simpler way to operate.

Security Fabric Framework is helping in analyzing sudden and rapid changes in whole infrastructure, and gives the ability to simplify daily operations (e.g. address objects synchronization between all firewalls in Fabric, estimating overall security rating, single-sign-on for admin access and many more)

Single Sign On support with deep LDAP integration (several variants for environments with different scales), RADIUS authentication.

Can work as transparent and explicit web-proxy, the last option supports Kerberos authentication which requires no agents installed on any windows server.

Human readable firewall policies with editable security policies and
addresses in single page. This is very useful and time saving feature.

Firmware upgrade process is very simple, even for cluster configurations it is fully automated by default.

Straightforward SNAT and DNAT; you may work in two ways: with Central NAT rules configuration and by applying translation directly inside firewall policies.

Bulk CLI commands are uploaded via gui in script file (portions of config file).

VDOMs are very useful when you need to grant admin role to clients separately. VDOMs in FortiGate can be represented in FortiAnalyzer's ADOMs (administrative domain), which can have different log storage policies, event handling and alerting configurations. You can create one VDOM working in NAT/Route mode, and another VDOM working in Transparent mode.

If you don't want to create and use second VDOM you can still transparently inspect traffic at layer 2 level while having only one VDOM in NAT/Route mode. This is achived by configuring Virtual Wire Pair ports that work like a separate bridge.

Ability to capture packets going through any interface of device (and VM too). You can set number of packets, filter out packets by IP and port number for particular troubleshooting purposes, then download a .pcap file from web gui and analyze it in your favorite programm.

Advanced routing (RIP, OSPF, BGP, PBR). It gives you a seamless and simple integration into a large network.

IPS, AV, Web Filter, AppControl profiles are working very well.

SSL Inspection and CASI (Cloud Access Security Inspection) profiles.

Rich logging options allow you troubleshoot most problems.

Straightforward HA with different redundancy schemas.

IPv6 support.

I think there could be more QoS features in GUI. FortiGate has Traffic Shaping feature that is enough in most cases when shaping egressing packets, but sometimes I just need 802.1p prioritizing (Class of Service) of incoming packets and manual ingress queue assignment. This is what would be nice to have, but I realize that such a job is more efficiently done by L4 switch standing before firewall. Fortinet has a FortiSwitch that can do it, and it also can be controlled by FortiGate via FortiLink protocol.

[Firmware version FortiOS 6.2 update]: There are a lot of improved and newly added things, so it is very hard to imagine any additional features.

Four years.

Small models (up to FG-90) are build on SoC (System on a Chip), so they need to be mounted in places with enough airflow and right temperature, otherwise they could hang, slow down traffic processing, but more often you just can't log in to the device's web-interface (reboot won't help you until it cools down). Actually, that's not an issue. It is a technical requirement for operating environment to be 5-40 degrees (but at 35 degrees with poor airflow there may be issues mentioned above).

For large scale deployment I would suggest to look at FortiManager, a central management point for large amount of FortiGates. I have tested the solution and found it quite useful. I could download configuration from any device and install edited list of policies to several devices simultaneously through a couple of clicks. Also I liked functionality of clearing out Address objects list from unused entries. It can be configured to be a central repository of firmware and updates, and a local rating server (url and antispam rating services) which can improve rating lookup latency value.

Technical support is good (in average).

We used an old IPS from Cisco. We switched because of End-of-Support on that device.

Initial setup in plain networks is very straightforward. For large environment you should prepare beforehand, because FortiGate is a highly-tunable and feature rich product, so you must have a plan with many considered details.

We did not engage a vendor team. Documentation is good enough to implement with an in-house team.

Setup cost may be not so low, as you expect, because it depends on different factors, but TCO for 5 years may pleasantly surprise you.

Palo Alto, Cisco ASA, CheckPoint

Many interesting things are hidden in CLI, they can help you in different situations. Web-interface (GUI) is primarily intended for day-to-day routine.

Don't underestimate FortiAnalyzer. It can give you a better understanding of what is going on in your network. When FortiGate sends logs to FortiAnalyzer, FortiAnalyzer inserts received log data into database. Predefined and customizable data queries, charts and reports can significantly help you by visualizing problem points, so you can thoroughly investigate security events and traffic behavior anomalies.

FortiGate is a constantly evolving product, so pay attention to FortiOS version it runs.

The primary use case of this solution is as a firewall.

The way the rules are created and set up on our firewall is very quick, very simple, and does not take a lot of time. It allows us to spend more time in other areas.

The most valuable features are that it is very simple to configure and to manage.

For me, this solution has nothing to improve and it meets the needs that I have. I don't see any way to improve, at least from my point of view on regular use.

In the next release, maybe the documentation on how to use this solution could be improved.

What I have noticed is that when we have done some configurations directly from the command line, there is not a lot of information regarding splitting.

I have been using this solution for six years.

We are using the latest version.

This is a stable product.

Fortinet FortiGate is very scalable.

We are satisfied with technical support. We have not had any issues.

The initial setup is very straightforward.

We used a reseller to help us with the implementation.

Pricing is very competitive. It's cheap for what it offers and for what it does.

It's very affordable.

I would recommend this solution to others who are interested in using it.

Fortinet FortiGate is simple and effective.

I would rate Fortinet Fortigate a nine out of ten.

We manage all the IT for airports and airlines. We have some data centers for providing different services, such as tickets, to customers. We use Fortinet FortiGate IPS to secure the environment.

It is a good product. It does what we want it to do so. I didn't find many false-positives or things like that. We mainly use the IPS and URL filtering features, and they are pretty good.

They can probably improve the reporting feature. Reporting and report alerting are the main key features of this solution. They can always find ways to improve these.

I have been using Fortinet FortiGate IPS for four years.

It is doing good in terms of stability. It is a good product and a good feature within the firewall. 

We haven't tried to scale it. 

I have contacted them. Their technical support is good. They are pretty responsive and knowledgeable.

The initial setup was straightforward. Basically, it is quite easy to set up. You just need to follow the guidelines because they are well-made for Fortinet FortiGate IPS. 

We are currently evaluating a Palo Alto solution, and the pricing could be a reason for going for Palo Alto. 

I'm a part of the team that is testing the Palo Alto solution. We are only responsible for testing to ensure that it matches what we want, but we are not responsible for making the actual decision. Another team will decide which solution to go for based on the contract in terms of money and other things. Technically, either FortiGate or Palo Alto will be able to provide what we want.

I would rate Fortinet FortiGate IPS an eight out of ten. It is a good product.