We performed a comparison between Cisco Umbrella and Fortinet FortiGate SWG based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Cisco Umbrella is the winner in this comparison. It is a powerful and reliable tool with a proven ROI. It also received higher marks in the Support category.
"The most valuable features are the antivirus as a whole, the anti-malware, and all of the protection features that scan our enterprise devices."
"The protection offered by the product is the most valuable feature. It detects vulnerabilities or traps on our users' phones and then prompts them to clean up their devices. Tools we used previously would only discover, which required us to gather information on the backend, so Lookout is a welcome upgrade."
"On the outside, the main differentiation is because Lookout ingest. They have ingested basically all of the apps for the last ten years and all the versions of all the apps, and we have that in a corporate database that allows us to do very large-scale machine learning and analysis on that data set. That's not something that any of the competitors really have the capability to do because they don't have access to the data set. A lot of the apps you can no longer get them because that version of the app is five or six years old, and it just doesn't exist anywhere anymore, except within our infrastructure. So, the ability to have that very rich dataset and learn from that dataset is a real differentiator."
"The solution is stable."
"Using this solution has meant that we've needed to make fewer firewall changes."
"Improves security through DNS visibility, which can block malware, phishing, C&C, etc."
"We like Cisco Umbrella because of DNS security. It's one step ahead of whatever we are using for regular web filtering. In that way, it's more secure than other web filtering products."
"Cisco's technical support is pretty good. When a solution is available, they will find it. On a scale from one to ten with ten being the best, I'd rate Cisco's technical support at nine."
"Web proxy adds an effective layer for security."
"Cisco Umbrella is a totally different solution. They are the first to come up with this idea of security. It's a totally new concept of security for everybody, for every time, real time, perfectionism."
"I think recently with many people working from home, Cisco Umbrella has been very useful. For example, we can manage the device and the network when the employee is not working on the local host. Cisco Umbrella is very valuable for this kind of infrastructure."
"The single-pane-of-glass management is very important. We have a very small team. We can't spend a lot of time going from product to product to product to either investigate or set up policy. We need to have one place that we can go to and set everything up."
"The overall features of Fortinet FortiGate SWG are good."
"The product is highly stable."
"The performance is very good and the solution is simple to manage."
"It offers web filtering capabilities at a more affordable price compared to other solutions like PSMs or NETGEAR."
"FortiGate is a great solution, although initially, it faced challenges in the Brazilian market due to lower brand recognition than Cisco. However, explaining and demonstrating its product format and offerings has proven easy. The cost-effectiveness and better features of FortiGate have made some clients skeptical. We set up a trial period, and they eventually opted for it. Many clients were convinced it was great after experiencing the solution's capabilities firsthand."
"The security for endpoints is the most valuable. It is very secure for our workers. It allows us to secure a transaction and enable security for a specific segment in the workflow."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate SWG are IPS and scanning."
"One of the features I appreciate the most is application control which offers great flexibility."
"The stability depends on the service from where you access it. Because sometimes, the place you are in, you have Gateway. You don't have Gateway. The gateway is overutilized. At the end, you need to go through their gateways. And this is the key point here. You have a tracking point. If it's not well orchestrated, and it scales up as you add more to the existing team, you will suffer"
"We just submitted an enhancement request reflecting the main area we want to see improvement in; the APIs. Currently, we're able to build dashboards, but it's somewhat backward because we use our MDM API to create them. Lookout should provide API to customers so we can query our data and use it in our cloud, and this is the only outstanding area for improvement with the product right now."
"Lookout was moving into the SSE space. And so their work on SecureWeb Gateway and SD-WAN is still sort of evolving."
"From the analysis that we've done, they do seem to be maybe a step behind in trying to enter the market with a new solution. But when they do pick up, they do come out with some good products."
"I would like to see more integration between Cisco Umbrella and Cisco DNA Center."
"I would like to see more integrations with more products. Some of the integrations need to be simpler as well. For example, the integration with Cisco Secure Firewall could be simpler. It would be good to make reporting simpler. For those who don't use SecureX, it would be good to make Umbrella really simple to use upfront. It's not a difficult product, but it can be daunting for someone who isn't exposed to it because there are so many options."
"The solution is very expensive in Brazil."
"Its reliability and the response time of the support team can be better."
"There are cheaper solutions in the market"
"I would like for them to continue building on IPS and IDS functionalities."
"I would like to have more applications being recorded."
"It could be improved by having a local data center and caching, which can provide protection support. I would like to be able to channel my intel and my network traffic to their clouds, and this feature is not available. Advanced protection or any malware file support, which might be required, is not available."
"FortiGate's reporting features could provide a better picture of what is happening in the box."
"The graphical user interface of Fortinet FortiGate SWG is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"The initial setup is medium complex and takes between five days and a week."
"Integrating OpenVPN with FortiGate would provide a powerful combination of secure remote access and comprehensive network security."
"One area of improvement I've noticed is the lack of built-in monitoring capabilities in the firewall. Currently, we rely on third-party solutions for monitoring purposes. However, I believe the firewall itself has the potential to do a better job in this aspect. Another aspect of Fortinet that concerns me is related to redundancy. We have a setup with two firewalls working in parallel, which requires a highly adaptable configuration. However, it feels unfair that clients need to purchase two licenses, especially when one of the firewalls serves as a backup. We have noticed that other manufacturers have different policies on this matter."
"The solution is expensive."
"Fortinet FortiGate SWG should be localised to specific regions to comply with local data privacy regulations because of the data privacy rules in the countries. In the Middle East, data organisation and KFA requirements are stringent."
"FortiGate needs to be elastic to the market's trends. It should be easy for SMBs to get the solution."
Cisco Umbrella is ranked 1st in Secure Web Gateways (SWG) with 108 reviews while Fortinet FortiGate SWG is ranked 4th in Secure Web Gateways (SWG) with 39 reviews. Cisco Umbrella is rated 8.8, while Fortinet FortiGate SWG is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Cisco Umbrella writes "Protects endpoints wherever they are, always pushing people to the right locations to avoid malicious intent". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Fortinet FortiGate SWG writes "Non-IT people could plug it in, connect it to the fiber, and get it running without IT help. ". Cisco Umbrella is most compared with Zscaler Internet Access, Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps, Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks, Palo Alto Networks DNS Security and Infoblox Advanced DNS Protection, whereas Fortinet FortiGate SWG is most compared with Fortinet FortiProxy, Sangfor Internet Access Gateway (IAG), Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway, Netskope Next Gen Secure Web Gateway and Axis Security. See our Cisco Umbrella vs. Fortinet FortiGate SWG report.
See our list of best Secure Web Gateways (SWG) vendors.
We monitor all Secure Web Gateways (SWG) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
