We performed a comparison between Cisco Secure Firewall and Fortinet Fortigate based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Based on the parameters we compared, Fortinet Fortigate comes out on top. Its ease of deployment combined with its solid set of features and excellent service and support ratings make it a more desirable solution than Cisco Secure Firewall.
"The stability of the product is good."
"The stability is good. Very simple. Upgrades are great."
"The protection and security features, like URL filtering, the inspection, and the IPS feature, are also very valuable for us. We don't have IT staff at most of the sites so for us it's important to have a robust firewall at those sites"
"We have been using a 5520 for seven years in our datacenter and we are satisfied by this version."
"The most valuable feature that Cisco Firepower NGFW provides for us is the Intrusion policy."
"Cisco Firepower NGFW is really easy to use right now to determine when my file requires a shift from primary to secondary status, and it can be done with automation. Earlier we used to do this with patching."
"The deep packet inspection is useful, but the most useful feature is application awareness. You can filter on the app rather than on a static TCP port."
"At this point, we find that this product has high productivity and high availability and there is no need for improvement."
"The SD-WAN function is very developed. It has SD-WAN functionality with security features in one device. We can manage from one single console SD-WAN and the security policy."
"I'm pretty happy with its reliability. It is also very scalable."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is Quota."
"The inspection and web security features are most valuable."
"The pipe filter application is an outstanding feature."
"It is useful for protecting and segregating the internal networks from the internet. Most of our customers also use the FortiGate client to connect to their offices by using the VPN client, and of course, they usually activate the antivirus, deep inspection, and intrusion prevention services. They are also using it for web filtering and implementing various policies dealing with forwardings, NAT, etc."
"We are very happy with the general bandwidth agility we have seen from one website to another website."
"Fortinet FortiGate appears to be scalable."
"The relatively new Firepower Threat Defense image (mix of ASA and Sourcefire network security) fills a lot of gaps and features that were missing on ASA."
"They should allow customers to talk to them directly instead of having to go through the reseller."
"The ASA needs to incorporate the different modules you have to integrate to achieve UTM functions, especially for small businesses."
"It can probably provide a holistic view of different appliances because many customers do not have only one brand, besides the traditional SNMP protocols, to cover all their devices. There are some specific requirements in terms of configurations or actions that sometimes have to be done in a very manual way because of the different versions or brands in a customer's infrastructure. It could also have some additional analytics capabilities. It has some very interesting ways to monitor the traffic and identify false positives from the architecture and the environment. It would be good if there is a way to patch with some other industry-specific solutions and synchronize some of the information, such as what other customers experience in their operations and probably share some additional information that could be leveraged or shared among the industry. Such information would be something interesting to see. It could have AI capabilities related to how the appliances could benefit from learning the current environment and different exposures."
"Comparing Cisco solution to others, it is expensive, it would be better for it to be cheaper."
"The product line does not address the SMB market as it is supposed to do. Cisco already has an on-premises sandbox solution."
"The initial setup can be a bit complex for those unfamiliar with the solution."
"I see room for improvement when it comes to integrating all the devices into a central management system. Cisco doesn't provide this, but there are some good products in the market that can provide it."
"The routing capability on the FortiGate devices has room for improvement."
"I would like to see improvements in the product's application rules."
"In terms of what could be improved, the SD-WAN is quite difficult, because if you install the new box, 15 is okay, but if you change from an old configuration, if there is already configuration and a policy when you change to SD-WAN, you must change the whole policy that you see in the interface."
"A lack of integration between our data centers."
"The solution is very expensive."
"I would like to see better pricing in the next release, as well as a simplification of the installation."
"The way everything is set up could be easier. Currently, people need a lot of experience and knowledge to administer it and to link it to devices."
"The command line is complicated, and the interface could be better."
Cisco Secure Firewall is ranked 4th in Firewalls with 404 reviews while Fortinet FortiGate is ranked 2nd in Firewalls with 306 reviews. Cisco Secure Firewall is rated 8.2, while Fortinet FortiGate is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Cisco Secure Firewall writes "Highlights and helps us catch Zero-day vulnerabilities traveling across our network". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Fortinet FortiGate writes "It's a reliable solution that's easy to install and cheaper than competitors ". Cisco Secure Firewall is most compared with Palo Alto Networks WildFire, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX, Sophos XG and Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, whereas Fortinet FortiGate is most compared with Sophos XG, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX, WatchGuard Firebox and Check Point NGFW. See our Cisco Secure Firewall vs. Fortinet FortiGate report.
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