We performed a comparison between Barracuda CloudGen Firewall and SonicWall TZ based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Firewalls solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."You can purchase switches and you don't need to do anything with them. You just put in the firewall and the switches get all the policies and rules that you already have in the firewall. With Fortinet, you just connect the FortiSwitch to the Fortinet and that's it."
"It has improved our organization with control data."
"I have found Fortinet FortiGate to be scalable."
"The most important features with FortiGate are the web filter and application controls. We can control our internet usage and use the web filter for application purposes."
"FortiGate is flexible and easy to use."
"The product is very stable, easy to troubleshoot, and configure, so it has reduced the time it takes for support."
"It's quite comfortable to handle the FortiGate firewall."
"Fortigate's most valuable feature is that it doesn't need a push policy when writing rules."
"The features I find most valuable is the VPN and the fact that we can apply our policies to the program."
"It's great for handling complex items."
"If you have multiple offices, all inter-connected via the internet, you want a single management console through which you can manage all you firewalls. In that case Barracuda could be a good option."
"The most valuable feature for us is the ability to offer firewall support to our clients."
"If an employee tries to get or move a file that is not permitted to them - for example if he wants to copy it to a USB - he will not have the right to do that, because Barracuda manages who has the right to copy, and what you copy to a USB. The USB is encrypted with a specific code from Barracuda and will only be decrypted into any other laptop in the company if they allow it to see it."
"I think Barracuda CloudGen Firewall is one of the most advanced firewall platforms. I also like that it's easy to get top-level support right away. You get that security, and if you make a mistake, it doesn't break."
"Barracuda is very prompt at blocking any new spam which comes out."
"TINA (Transport Independent Network Architecture) VPN features - Allows automatic VPN configuration with little or no input from the tech. Drag and drop lines between Barracuda units and the VPN is built automatically."
"I've found the technical support to be helpful."
"The most common feature in the firewall, apart from that traditional firewall, would be the security services, like application control, URL filtering, Gateway Anti-Virus, and IPS protection. These are the essential features in the firewalls which I think, has to be enabled and properly used at every network infrastructure."
"Its user interface and simplicity are the most favorite parts for our clients. They find it stable and easy to use. Its performance is also good."
"The solution's VPN is very good for stability and detecting threats."
"It does what it says it is going to do."
"I have found the stability of this product to be excellent."
"The most valuable features have been content filtering, and the interface is easy to navigate and to use."
"Good site categorization and application controls."
"The support from Fortinet FortiGate could improve. They are not easily accessible when we need them. They could improve their response time."
"The captive portal could be improved."
"The solution lacks multi-language support."
"Lacks sufficient security options."
"In the balance between links feature normally you can just choose one option to balance. It would be better for the solution to have more than one option, preferably three."
"Sometimes you do need to know some CLI commands, so it's a bit harder for technicians or new people that don't know it."
"Fortinet FortiGate needs to improve the protection, it did not prevent us from being attacked. Additionally, Fortinet FortiGate could provide more features for WAF devices. I should not have to purchase two solutions, it would be a benefit to combine these features into one solution."
"The Web-filter in this solution is not very good."
"The interface should be more user-friendly and it should be easier to configure."
"It would be better if they had a trace and trap feature. It's hard for me to say anything bad about Barracuda. This is because we had a firewall go down in the town of Kirkland Lake, and it was a blown-out port, and they had an instant replacement."
"The price is a bit higher than other vendors."
"When you do any commit, it locks your next access. If you are making a change to the device, from the security standpoint it's fine, but from the admin side it's not good. When you make changes, after each and every one it becomes locked."
"I would like to see a more user-friendly dashboard and an easier interface."
"The usability for the administrator's experience needs improvement. My system administrator has some questions about its overall connectivity and flexibility."
"The administration UI could be better. It should also have better application detection policies."
"The technical manuals, at times, have images that don't match the actual screens and are not always as clear as they could be on the configuration."
"The technical support has room for improvement."
"The log sections could be done more clearly."
"GUI interface could be improved."
"The user support could be improved because you have to go outside to get that kind of support."
"From a support perspective, if we're talking tech support I think Silver Partners, Gold Partners, Platinum, whatever level, should have a different number to call. End users can call tech support over at SonicWall if they've paid for support as part of their AGSS or whatever services they bought. The end-user can call, or we can call, however, I don't want to be calling the same line that an end user's calling. I don't want the same response time. I need a different level of expertise."
"The VPN that is available in the new version is a bit bulky and slower in speed."
"The monitoring is a little bit confusing."
"The technology in this particular version is very old."
Barracuda CloudGen Firewall is ranked 26th in Firewalls with 35 reviews while SonicWall TZ is ranked 12th in Firewalls with 78 reviews. Barracuda CloudGen Firewall is rated 8.2, while SonicWall TZ is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of Barracuda CloudGen Firewall writes "Feature-rich, robust, and easy to set up". On the other hand, the top reviewer of SonicWall TZ writes "Has efficient user access control feature and good technical support services ". Barracuda CloudGen Firewall is most compared with Netgate pfSense, OPNsense, Sophos XG, Cisco Secure Firewall and Cisco SD-WAN, whereas SonicWall TZ is most compared with Sophos XG, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX, SonicWall NSa and Sophos UTM. See our Barracuda CloudGen Firewall vs. SonicWall TZ report.
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I strongly recommend you SonicWall 5600. Its having lots of feature for network security and Comparison of price and Support it would be great choice.
Fortigate firewalls are quite rugged and offer great flexibility in configuring the policies and managing them. For individuals as well as group level user privileges. The antivirus offered is also very effective and not at all resource hungry. The only drawback is, the admin should be very well trained and aware of configuring the firewall. It’s quite complicated that way. Or the support provider (reseller) should have expert level admins to configure and set these firewalls in the infrastructure.
I would alternatively suggest looking into Sophos firewalls. They are equally rugged and effective. And also have a much user-friendly configuration and management console.
Barracuda: No Presence in the market at all, quite different way to install manage the product. Impossible to find the technical resource. If it is managed by Multinet then it’s a different story.
UTM control was not good back in the days, not sure about recent improvements.
Support Generally good feedback of Barracuda support.
Sonicwall: Very little presence in the local market, will have compatibility issues when establishing VPN with other vendors or any other integration.
UTM should be good, not experienced it first-hand.
Support, Have horrible feedback about support. they don’t respond for months.
Fortinet: Firewall full of features, good market presence with official REPs in the country. It is basically the same Juniper SSG ScreenOS platform with good UTM.
UTM is good
Support, Support in the region from India is poor, fright. A good local partner can make your day. If case is escalated to US/Canada teams, the experience is much better. You need in-country REPs support to escalate the cases.
China effect, the downside of Fortinet is, its QA of new FortiOS release is not good at all. Things running fine on one release fail badly when upgraded to new release. you need to be ready for an alternate solution when faced with such situation.
But it is better than Barracuda and SonicWall anyways.
RMA time is not next day.
Palo Alto: I would recommend Palo Alto, it can do everything typically required from a NGFW/UTM. Price can be expensive. Typically models with high throughput are quoted from most vendors. In reality, the actual required throughput is not that much. PA820 and PA220 can cater 90% of requirement we have in our environments. This way solution will be comparatively competitive cost wise. Compatibility with third-party devices is good.
Per-user bandwidth limit is missing.
UTM is best.
Support is good. The first level is through support partners, but the experience is good.
No rapid RMA, as no in-country depot exists. But On site spare is best, as the customer owns the spare unit on his premises.
Fortinet is a good option, the interesting thing with them is all the other bits you can add. Many of these such as email protection, Sandbox, edge device protection (anti-virus, VPN Connector for PCs), tokens (electronic or hardware), switches, Wireless Access Points all talk to each other so the Fortinet security umbrella covers them as well. Fortinet has a SIEM as well.
Whatever you buy, get training on it. Also, evaluate the reseller's ability to do an install. Some folks just sell the product, other also know how to install - buy from the latter, and get some Pro Services for the installation.
I have always thought Barracuda's marketing was better than the products (it is very good marketing) and SonicWALL R&D suffered under Dell, and I don't know that it is any better now they are owned by an Investment house.
Out of these three firewalls I would, and have chosen Fortinet. Checkout NSS Labs for real world comparisons. I have been using Fortigates for 2 years now in HA configurations and have only once had to use the cli. Also updates and firmware upgrades never bring the network or internet down. These firewalls get new features added at no extra cost and the throughput is amazing. Buying the UTM bundles gets you all of the features you need and more. I heard about support issues but evertime i call i get routed to someone who knows how the features work and actually helps. We added a fortianalyzer and now we can see logs from all of the firewalls in one console and hold them for a year. Fortinet doesn't just manage their antivirus products they are the developers. These firewalls decrypt data on the fly and scan for viruses before it gets to your email, desktops or servers. Within the first week it caught ransomware within a yahoo email before it could infect our systems. We replaced our websense URL filtering with the URL filtering within the fortigates and never looked back.
I could go on and on but the real tilt in Fortinets favor was it was near half the cost of similar features and functions PA had quoted. Write down what you want and then ask if the vendors have these included in their firewalls or if they have separate appliances that can do them. Every appliance has a latency cost associated with it. You might find that all three can do what you want then it will come down to the management of the firewalls and cost.
Good luck.
I've utilized both SonicWALL and Fortinet in many implementations over the years. Fortinet does a better job in large, multi-tenant deployments and has excellent stateful packet inspection throughput. If you're planning to do SSL decryption and inspection, SonicWALL is the way to go (and currently, the product we lead with). I've found SonicWALL to be easier to manage and have also found that if you're a GUI-oriented user, all of the features are there in the UI. On the Fortigate you'll often have to dig into the CLI to enable some features.
The Barracuda products are very good and quite pricey, especially since you mentioned you were looking at the Sonicwall TZ series. The Sonicwall TZ series is meant for a smaller environment. The Fortinet firewalls are great but require a little more training. My experience with Sophos is that they have been a little buggy and support is not great. Since Sonicwall was sold by Dell the support has been better. I work with several small companies and I would say go with whatever product you have the most experience with. The learning curve can be a little much when you don't know what you're looking at. Both Sonicwall and Fortinet have pretty good support and a pretty extensive KB. Good Luck!
fortinet or baracuda and CISCO ASA 5500 series also good