We performed a comparison between Cisco Secure Firewall and Sonicwall TZ based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Of the two solutions, Sonicwall TZ seems to be the more desirable product because of its easy deployment, great set of features, and affordable price.
"FortiGate Secure SD-WAN includes best-of-breed next-generation firewall (NGFW) security, SD-WAN, advanced routing, and WAN optimization capabilities, delivering a security-driven networking WAN edge transformation in a unified offering."
"UTM/NGFW features and FortiCloud for logs and backups are awesome."
"Some of the key features of the solution is that it has good reporting, you can receive many details from the connection, for example, clients and website information."
"The security fabric is excellent."
"The tool is a nice product and easy to handle. The software's user interface is also good. You can easily implement remote access in the solution."
"Good load balancing feature."
"It's user-friendly and easy to operate."
"The VPN is the most valuable feature."
"With the FMC and the FirePOWERs, the ability to quickly replace a piece of hardware without having to have a network outage is useful. Also, the ability to replace a piece of equipment and deploy the config that the previous piece of equipment had is pretty useful."
"The most valuable feature is stability."
"Because of the deeper inspection it provides we have better security and sections that allow users broader access."
"I work with Cisco and other partners, but the Cisco team is the best team in our country. When I call them, they always help us."
"The best features are stability and scalability."
"Protecting our landscape in general and being able to see logging when things aren't going as set out in policies are valuable features. Our security department is keen on seeing the logging."
"It is a secure product."
"Once configured to suit your needs, these firewalls are rock solid appliances."
"User-friendly firewall solution which scales well, is stable, and has high availability."
"SonicWall TZ is very user-friendly and has network MAC binding. Additionally, the firewall works well."
"The performance has been very good. Overall, the solution is quite stable."
"The feature we found most valuable in SonicWall TZ is that it is user-friendly for an administrator."
"Offers the right amount of control without being incredibly convoluted and frustrating."
"The solution boasts good performance and is easy to use."
"The most valuable feature is the protection available, and then ease of use and flexibility."
"SonicWall TZ is stable."
"There aren't really any negative aspects to discuss."
"The feature which gives us a lot of pain is ASIC architecture."
"Backup can be improved."
"If they could extend their fabric towards other vendor environments for integration, that would be great."
"There are some problems that support cannot give you a logical reason as to why it happened. For example, I had a case where I was dealing with a WhatsApp application that was giving issues. Technical support gave more than one reason it could be giving issues, but none of them solved the problem. Eventually I solved the problem, but it was far from the solutions that support had given."
"Fortinet FortiGate is a stable solution. However, my issue is the performance only. When I use all the profiles, this affects the performance. From the beginning, I should have had a better sizing of the box."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve the user interface. There should be more functionality and options through the GUI."
"Due to its higher cost, Fortinet FortiGate can lead to increased operational expenses."
"Other products are becoming easier to access and configure. They are providing UI interfaces to configure, take backup, synchronize redundant machines, and so on. It is very easy to take backup and upgrade the images in those products. Cisco ASA should have such features. If one redundant machine is getting upgraded, the technology and support should be there to upgrade other redundant machines. In a single window, we should be able to do more in terms of backups, restores, and upgrades."
"The IPS module is combined with the main operating system."
"We have encountered problems when implementing new signatures and new versions on our firewall. Sometimes, there is a short outage of our services, and we have not been able to understand what's going on. This is an area for improvement, and it would be good to have a way to monitor and understand why there is an outage."
"We are still running the original ASAs. The software that you are running for the ASDM software and Java application has never been a lot of fun to operate. It would have been nice to see that change update be redesigned with modern systems, which don't play nicely with Java sometimes. Cybersecurity doesn't seem to love how that operates. For us, a fresher application, taking advantage of the hardware, would have been a better approach."
"I wouldn't give them a ten. Nobody is perfect. I'll give them a nine because they help me with any issues I've had."
"In Firepower, there is an ability to search and dig into a search, which is nice. However, I'm not a super fan of the way it scrolls. If you want to look at something live, it's a lot different. You're almost waiting. With the ASDM, where it just flows, you can really see it. The second someone clicks something or does something, you'll see it. The refresh rate on the events in Firepower is not as smooth."
"The ASAs are being replaced with the new Firepowers and they have a different type of structure in the configuration to be able to migrate from one to the other."
"The stability is not the best."
"The solution's antivirus checking could be improved so that we can have a deeper inspection of the packets."
"I would like to see lower antivirus pricing."
"We have experienced some issues with SonicWall TZ and they are lacking some advanced features other vendors have."
"I would like the solution to build in more redundancy. I"
"We have been facing issues with reporting."
"We encounter issues while generating new reports."
"I would like to see more integration with other platforms."
"Full monitoring obviously needs to be improved. We need full monitoring covered under the security licensing."
Cisco Secure Firewall is ranked 4th in Firewalls with 404 reviews while SonicWall TZ is ranked 12th in Firewalls with 78 reviews. Cisco Secure Firewall is rated 8.2, while SonicWall TZ is rated 8.0. 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 SonicWall TZ writes "Has efficient user access control feature and good technical support services ". Cisco Secure Firewall is most compared with Palo Alto Networks WildFire, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX, Sophos XG and Azure Firewall, whereas SonicWall TZ is most compared with Sophos XG, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX, SonicWall NSa and OPNsense. See our Cisco Secure Firewall vs. SonicWall TZ report.
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