Fortinet FortiOS Reviews

This is a user friendly solution and offers comprehensive integrations. 

The reporting for this solution could be improved. It could also be more stable and offer better pricing. 

I have been using this solution for five years. 

The customer support for this solution is good and user-friendly.

Positive

Installation takes two minutes.

If you are able to afford it, I would recommend Fortinet. 

We use the on-prem deployment model of this solution. We use the standard model for our clients. 

In terms of what needs improvements, the troubleshooting could use improvement. When we work with other products like Cisco ASA, Palo Alto, and Check Point, we see a big difference in the troubleshooting. It's not easy to find a report. In order to overcome the problem, you have to install FortiAnalyzer to help you find the troubleshooting problem. FortiOS has its limitations.

I work with many products but this is the most stable OS I have seen. With Cisco, for example, if you do an upgrade, it's not guaranteed that the production will be stable. The upgraded release will release many bugs. FortiOS isn't like this. 

There is something called Fortinet Fabric that helps you to enforce your security by connecting all of your products with FortiGate. For example, if you install FortiClient on your PC it will help you use the VPN and the antivirus. When there is an issue, if you have 1,000 users with FortiClient will send a message to FortiGate. I have many projects and I use FortiManager to manage them. It helps my team minimize implementation time.

We have thousands of user using this solution. Only one person is required for the deployment. 

Their technical support has its positives and negatives. If you contact them, they are responsive and interactive and they have good solutions to the problem. The issue is with the support documents. When you need to do something advanced, there isn't good documentation for it. For basic tasks, there are plenty of videos and information but for advanced tasks or solutions, there is not.  

The initial setup is easy. It's the easiest firewall installation process on the market. I work with three or four other products and this one is the easiest. 

The time it takes to deploy will depend on the needs of the company and how complex they are. A basic installation will take one hour. 

It's important to have 24/7 support because the documentation is poor and you will need the support. It's important to have a support team and a support contract. 

I would rate it a nine out of ten. Not a ten because of the troubleshooting. Other solutions have a mechanism to find your IP network. Cisco has something called Packet Tracer which is very advanced that helps you test your configuration. It really helps the engineers to test without affecting the product environment.   

FortiOS's most valuable feature is a next-generation firewall that can be used as the APT solution in advanced threat protection. The IPS feature is also very good and can sometimes detect threats that are not detectable by the Palo Alto firewall.

The threat time interval lags a little, especially if there's a heavy load on the firewall.

I've been working with FortiOS for over four years.

FortiOS is one of the most stable solutions.

FortiOS is very easy to scale.

Fortinet's technical support is good.

The initial setup was easy and could be done without an integrator or other external assistance.

Compared to other firewalls like Palo Alto, FortiOS is easy to deploy and upgrade - for example, an upgrade of Palo Alto takes at least thirty minutes, but Fortigate can be done in around ten. I would rate FortiOS eight out of ten. 

We use Fortinet FortiOS to control all the security and networking capabilities in all our FortiGates devices across our entire network.

Firewall and overall management are valuable features. They are a leader in the market.

The reporting and monitoring could improve, they have a lot of limitations. The monitoring is not easy compared to the other firewall.

I have been using this solution within the past 12 months.

The solution is stable.

I have used Palo Alto solutions.

I rate Fortinet FortiOS a nine out of ten.

The solution's most valuable feature is its ability to work efficiently with large-scale firewall deployments. Also, it provides custom segmentation for the firewall without adding any additional devices. It helps in reducing the cost of testing purposes.

The solution's firmware updates have significant bugs and issues. They affect the network and firewall. This particular area needs improvement. Also, they should include an advanced firewall feature.

I have been using the solution for two years.

I rate the solution's stability as seven.

I rate the solution's scalability a seven. The major bugs in the firmware update affect the scaling capabilities as well.

The solution's initial setup process is easy.

I rate the solution as a seven out of ten.

We use the solution as a firewall, and in conjunction with Fortinet FortiMail.

The solution is very easy to configure and has a good interface, plus it offers more configuration options than other vendors.

I would like to see fewer bugs. If you use the box with its basic features, the solution is straightforward and stable, but you can run into bugs when using newer features or in more complex use cases. They included a DNS filter as a new feature, and I had issues that required raising a ticket with customer support.

I've been using the solution for between 10 and 12 years.

The solution is very stable. There are occasional bugs, but support is very quick and helpful in resolving these issues.

The initial setup was easy.

A medium 100 or 200 Series box costs around $3000, and the software cost is around 55% of the hardware cost.

Depending on the situation, performance issues may require changing out the box. 

I was working at a bank where internal information security was strict, so I needed to block a lot of websites in Fortinet. For example, we needed to block Gmail, WhatsApp Web, porn, and violent content. 

FortiOS allows us to set up alarms for blocked websites and SSL verifications. When someone tries to access a blocked site, the solution sends a notification to the IT manager's mailbox.

The user interface is easy to use. Fortinet has high availability features, so you can have an active and hot standby box. We can have two boxes in Rio and two in São Paulo. When a box crashes, we can transfer all the operations to the second box. 

FortiOS tells you exactly what is happening in the first box, so you can quickly understand what went wrong and troubleshoot. Users rarely notice an impact on the daily operations. 

FortiOS could provide a more detailed analysis of the network and connected devices.

I used Fortinet for about nine months.

We have a support contract with a third-party company, but Fortinet provides the licenses, so we update the solution ourselves using the license code. 

I rate Fortinet FortiOS nine out of 10.

We are consultant architects so our role is to set up firewalls for our customers, who are usually small and medium-sized companies. 

I like that the firewall gives me a lot of control in terms of outgoing and inbound traffic, and it scores better in deep packet inspections when compared with the Azure Firewall.

The support could be improved, Fortinet's response time is very slow. 

Setting up the VPN could be made much easier, especially when deployed with Azure.

I have been using the solution for a year now.

The product is pretty stable.

The solution is scalable.

The initial setup of this solution is relatively easy.

The pricing could always be lower.

If I'm going with Azure data center, my first recommendation would always be Azure Firewall with the newly launched premium services. Otherwise, Fortinet is pretty good.

I rate this solution an eight out of ten. I advise users to go through the documentation very thoroughly as it's not the same as your on-premises Fortinet Power. It's slightly different. Setting up the VPN is a bit tricky in Azure, deploying the Fortinet firewall and Azure is somewhat tricky.