Fortinet FortiClient vs Symantec Endpoint Security comparison

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Fortinet FortiClient and Symantec Endpoint Security based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.
To learn more, read our detailed Fortinet FortiClient vs. Symantec Endpoint Security Report (Updated: May 2024).
771,170 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"Fortinet FortiEDR's scalability is quite good, and you can add licenses to the solution.""The setup is pretty simple.""he solution is an anti-malware product that integrates well with other vendor products such as firewalls, SIEM, etc. It captures threat intelligence and gives you better visibility. The product also has sandboxing features.""Additionally, when it comes to EDR, there are more tools available to assist with client work.""Forensics is a valuable feature of Fortinet FortiEDR.""The stability is very good.""It is very easy to set up. I would rate my experience with the initial setup a ten out of ten, with ten being very easy to set up.""Fortinet FortiEDR made our clients feel secure and more at ease, knowing that they had an EDR solution that would close the gap in their security posture."

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"The solution offers great stability.""It is a feature-rich product that is easy to use and install without sacrificing security.""Fortinet FortiClient's scalability is very good because it has no limitations.""It supports securely connections for VPN users from outside our environment during the lockdown.""The configuration is the most valuable feature.""The solution has inexpensive scalability, works very well and can communicate with other Fortinet devices.""The return on investment was very reasonable. It was low cost and it functioned, so the return on investment was excellent.""FortiClient's most valuable features are that it's easy to install and connect and has OTP on email IDs and two-factor authentication."

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"Endpoint protection has improved our operations by protecting our servers from potential cyber threats.""SEP, the entire suite of components, provides good endpoint protection.""The valuable features are device control, SONOR, and anti-virus.""The solution offers very good security features and is comparable to Sophos.""I have found the solution to be very scalable, we have 700 employees using the solution in our organization.""The scheduled scans and the active protection were the most valuable because it allowed me to have the systems protected in real-time and also be able to schedule scans so that as new definitions would update, machines could be scanned to make sure that everything was in tip-top shape and there was nothing lurking in the background.""The application and device control are valuable features, and the live update is another one. We have a schedule to check every four hours for the live update.""The product has valuable features for insights."

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Cons
"The only minor concern is occasional interference with desired programs.""The SIEM could be improved.""I haven't seen the use of AI in the solution.""The amount of usage, the number of details we get, or the number of options that can be tweaked is limited in comparison to that with other EDR solutions""ZTNA can improve latency.""There's room for improvement in the quick response time and technical support for integration issues, especially when dealing with multiple vendors.""Cannot be used on mobile devices with a secure connection.""The dashboard isn't easy to access and manage."

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"I don't think FortiClient is bad, but it's very buggy. We ran into some issues with the EMS, which amounted to more than 10 cases last year.""When we change our endpoint, we have to connect again, which means having to enter our credentials and permissions.""The deployment status is not good in Mac devices and sometimes in Windows-based devices using GPO, like Active Directory, that are not on the local network.""Initially, the support was very poor. It is getting better, but they should continue to improve this.""We'd like to see a deployment wizard to help implementation become streamlined.""With Fortinet, some clients have to wait two to four days for a response. That is the biggest complaint from end customer about Fortinet's technical support.""An area of improvement could be better integration with the active directory. I did not find it easy to configure.""It would be interesting if the solution offered a way to try to investigate and create a use case to trace vectors."

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"We are not satisfied with this solution. It needs a lot of improvements. It doesn't detect the most recent malware and unknown threats. With most of the users working from home these days, there is also a need for some extra security layer. That's why we are thinking of going for a better solution that will take care of all of our endpoints and work from home situation. Symantec also has to work on EDI technology. Vendors like Palo Alto and Cisco are coming with their own intelligence and cloud infrastructure in which unknown threats are regularly watched and monitored, and they are reported to the admin.""They provide the updates of the client, and those clients need a reboot after the upgrade, which is something we don't like. We don't like to reboot the server after the upgrade because we have live applications. If we do a reboot, it can impact the business as well.""I would like to be able to migrate to the cloud so that the end-users outside the company offices don't need a VPN to connect to the Symantec server to update the policies. They should be able to connect to the admin center directly through the internet to get updated policies. There is some integration issue with the other security appliances or tools. Other hardware, firewall, or Network Detection and Response (NDR) solution vendors are not willing to integrate with Symantec. They only mention products from other vendors such as CrowdStrike and Carbon Black. Symantec is not there. Symantec should work on integration with products from other security vendors.""We had trouble with the advanced features, such as the firewall builder and all the network protection modules. We were having a lot of issues because it would sometimes block users or the printing, or it would create issues with the network access resources.""It would be nice to see more antivirus features for USB control.""The Sandboxing and ATP functionality does not integrate very well, improving this would be helpful.""There are a few negative points. They should separate the feature for each separate solution for mobile devices. The second one is about the price, it's expensive. Finally, the third would be the complexity of implementation.""The support can be wanting. Sometimes the time to resolution is longer than I would expect."

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Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "I know it is tough to get big budget additions up front, but I highly recommend deploying environment wide and adding the forensic service."
  • "There are no issues with the pricing."
  • "The price is comprable to other endpoint security solutions."
  • "The pricing is typical for enterprises and fairly priced."
  • "I'm not familiar with pricing, but it looks a bit costly compared to other vendors I think."
  • "The pricing is good."
  • "I would rate the solution's pricing an eight out of ten."
  • "The hardware costs about €100,000 and about €20,000 annually for access."
  • More Fortinet FortiEDR Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "Licensing was free up to ten users and after that, it was pretty reasonable."
  • "Anyone can download this product for free, but you have to have a FortiGate gateway that you are connecting to."
  • "An annual license costs about 1.5 to 3,000 US dollars. There are no additional costs."
  • "The price is okay and competitive."
  • "Fortinet requires you to buy a lot of product in order for you to have proper protection."
  • "FortiClient is quite reasonably priced."
  • "The pricing is reasonable."
  • "The pricing is good because you get and end-to-end security solution in one package price."
  • More Fortinet FortiClient Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "I’d say SEP deserves the money."
  • "Regarding the licensing, it was important negotiate a long contract to get a more attractive price, including advanced support in case of crisis."
  • "What we have paid for this product is good value for the work and the services that they are providing to us."
  • "Licensing is per user. Therefore, it makes it easy to do licensing."
  • "It is the better product, even if it is a little on the higher side."
  • "It's not cheap."
  • "Pricing and licensing are important to us when choosing a product."
  • "Pricing and licensing for our country is very good. It's not that expensive and the endpoint security is very good. It's not as cheap as some others, but they are not as good."
  • More Symantec Endpoint Security Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:I suggest Fortinet’s FortiEDR over FortiClient for several reasons. For starters, FortiEDR guarantees solid protection… more »
    Top Answer:We have FortiEDR installed on all our systems. This protects them from any threats.
    Top Answer:We license it per employee, so as long as the employee count remains the same, the licensing won't change. We have it… more »
    Top Answer:Fortinet FortiClient is a feature-rich solution that is easy to use and deploy without sacrificing safety and security… more »
    Top Answer:Aqua Security is easy to use and very manageable. Its main focus is on Kubernetes and Docker. Security is a very… more »
    Top Answer:We use Symantec because we do not use MS Enterprise products, but in my opinion, Microsoft Defender is a superior… more »
    Top Answer:The tool has predefined rules, like which actions to block or allow. This makes it easy because I don't have to figure… more »
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    enSilo, FortiEDR
    FortiClient
    Symantec EPP, Symantec Endpoint Protection (SEP)
    Learn More
    Overview

    Fortinet FortiEDR is a real-time endpoint protection, detection, and automated response solution. Its primary purpose is to detect advanced threats to stop breaches and ransomware damage. It is designed to do so in real time, even on an already compromised device, allowing you to respond and remediate incidents automatically so your data can remain protected.

    Fortinet FortiEDR Features

    Fortinet FortiEDR has many valuable key features, including:

    • Easily customizable
    • Real-time proactive risk mitigation & IoT security
    • Pre-infection protection
    • Post-infection protection
    • Track applications and ratings
    • Reduce the attack surface with risk-based proactive policies
    • Achieve analysis of entire log history
    • Optional managed detection and response (MDR) service

    Fortinet FortiEDR Benefits

    Some of the key benefits of using Fortinet FortiEDR include:

    • Protection: Fortinet FortiEDR provides proactive, real-time, automated endpoint protection with the orchestrated incident response across platforms. It stops the breach with real-time postinfection blocking to protect data from exfiltration and ransomware encryption.

    • Single unified console: Fortinet FortiEDR has a single unified console with an intuitive interface, which makes management easier. The solution automates mundane endpoint security tasks so your employees don’t need to do it.

    • Cost savings: With Fortinet FortiEDR you can eliminate post-breach operational expenses and breach damage costs.

    • Flexibility: Fortinet FortiEDR can be deployed on premises or on a secure cloud instance. With Fortinet FortiEDR, endpoints are protected both on- and off-line.

    • Scalability: Because Fortinet can be deployed quickly and has a small footprint, it is easy to scale up to protect hundreds of thousand endpoints.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by Fortinet FortiEDR users.

    An Owner at a security firm says, "The features that I have found most valuable are the ability to customize it and to reduce its size. It lets you run in a very small window in terms of memory and resources on legacy cash registers. The customer has literally about 800 cash registers. That was the use case for Fortinet FortiEDR - to get that down into a tiny space. The only way to do that was to use this product because it had that ability to unbundle services that were a surplus.”

    Chandan M., Chief Technical Officer at Provision Technologies LLP, mentions, “The ease of deployment and configuration is valuable. It's very easy compared to other vendors like Sophos. Sophos' configuration is complex. Fortinet is a lot easier to understand. You don't need a lot of admin knowledge to do the configuration.” He also adds, “The security is also very good and the firewall response is good.”

    Harpreet S., Information Technology Support Specialist at Chemtrade Logistics, explains, "It notifies us if there's any suspicious file on any PC. If any execution or similar kind of thing is happening, it just alerts us. It doesn't only alert. It also blocks the execution until we allow it. We check whether the execution is legitimate or not, and then approve it or keep it blocked. This gives us a little bit of control over this mechanism. Fortinet FortiEDR is also very straightforward and easy to maintain."

    DeAndre V., Senior Network Administrator at a financial services firm, states, “The dashboard is easy to follow and use. The deployment and uninstalling were easy. I like the detailed information about the path of a file that might be suspicious. Being able to check that out was easy to follow. Exceptions are easy to create and the interface is easy to follow with a nice appearance.

    FortiClient is a fabric agent that delivers endpoint protection, endpoint compliance, and secure access in a single, lightweight, lightweight client, providing visibility, information, and control to your endpoints. In addition, it enables secure, remote connectivity to the security fabric. It also integrates network and endpoint with segmentation and automation. FortiClient enables unified endpoint awareness by sharing endpoint telemetry with the security fabric. It is compatible with third-party EDR (endpoint detection and response and anti-malware solutions.

    The FortiClient fabric agent can:

    • Report on the status of a device, including firmware version and applications running.
    • Send all suspicious files to a fabric sandbox.
    • Enforce USB control, application control, URL filtering, and firmware upgrade policies.
    • Provide application firewall service and malware protection.
    • Enable devices to connect securely to the security fabric over either ZTNA tunnels or VPN (IPsec or SSL), both encrypted. The connection to the security fabric can be either a SASE service or a FortiGate next-generation firewall.

    You can purchase FortiClient with one of three levels of capability:

    Zero Trust security - The ZTNA edition enables both VPN and ZTNA encrypted tunnels, as well as USB device control and URL filtering.
    Endpoint security - The EPP/APT edition adds AI-based NGAV (next-generation antivirus), application firewall, endpoint quarantine, and support for cloud sandbox.
    Cloud-based endpoint security

    Benefits and Features

    • Fabric agent leverages integrations and provides telemetry information to the rest of the Fortinet security fabric.
    • SAAS control and web/content filtering
    • Dynamic access control helps with automation and simplifies compliance.
    • Software inventory management enables visibility as well as management of licenses.
    • Automated response detects and isolates any endpoints that may be compromised.
    • ZTNA delivers better remote access and consistent application access policies
    • Managed endpoint security services remotely assist with setup, configuration, deployment, vulnerability monitoring, and overall monitoring of endpoint security.

    Reviews from Real Users:

    PeerSpot users like that FortiClient is easy to use and integrates well with other solutions. They also appreciate the richness of its features and find it to be inexpensive in comparison to other products that require separate purchases for separate features.

    Symantec Endpoint Security is a robust and reliable product that provides complete protection against viruses, malware, Trojans, and malicious files. It offers application and device control, ease of use in deploying and updating, a central control console, stability, scalability, auto-discovery capabilities, patch management, endpoint detection and response capabilities, intrusion detection module. 

    The Symantec Global Intelligence Network (GIN) provides threat intelligence and detection across endpoints, email, and web traffic. It has helped organizations reduce downtime, increase productivity, and improve security posture. Symantec Endpoint Security is easy to use, has a flexible administration, and offers more value than expected.

    Sample Customers
    Financial, Healthcare, Legal, Technology, Enterprise, Manufacturing ... 
    Black Gold Regional Schools, Amadeus Hospitality, Jefferson County, Chunghwa Telecom, City of Boroondara, Dimension Data
    Audio Visual Dynamics, Red Deer Advocate, Asia Pacific Telecom Co. Ltd., Kibbutz Ein Gedi, and AMETEK, Inc.
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm21%
    Comms Service Provider11%
    Manufacturing Company11%
    Educational Organization5%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company16%
    Government8%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    Financial Services Firm8%
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company23%
    Financial Services Firm15%
    Comms Service Provider15%
    Retailer6%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization35%
    Computer Software Company11%
    Comms Service Provider6%
    Government5%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm17%
    Computer Software Company12%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    University5%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company15%
    Financial Services Firm12%
    Manufacturing Company9%
    Government8%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business52%
    Midsize Enterprise15%
    Large Enterprise33%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business31%
    Midsize Enterprise19%
    Large Enterprise50%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business52%
    Midsize Enterprise22%
    Large Enterprise26%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business21%
    Midsize Enterprise46%
    Large Enterprise32%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business43%
    Midsize Enterprise20%
    Large Enterprise38%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business25%
    Midsize Enterprise16%
    Large Enterprise59%
    Buyer's Guide
    Fortinet FortiClient vs. Symantec Endpoint Security
    May 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Fortinet FortiClient vs. Symantec Endpoint Security and other solutions. Updated: May 2024.
    771,170 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Fortinet FortiClient is ranked 15th in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) with 86 reviews while Symantec Endpoint Security is ranked 5th in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) with 140 reviews. Fortinet FortiClient is rated 8.0, while Symantec Endpoint Security is rated 7.6. The top reviewer of Fortinet FortiClient writes "Easy to set up and user-friendly with good support ". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Symantec Endpoint Security writes "The solution has given us visibility into compliance within our whole system and helped us ensure everything is updated". Fortinet FortiClient is most compared with OpenVPN Access Server, Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, Microsoft Azure VPN Gateway and Kaspersky Endpoint Security for Business, whereas Symantec Endpoint Security is most compared with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, CrowdStrike Falcon, Trend Micro Deep Security and Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks. See our Fortinet FortiClient vs. Symantec Endpoint Security report.

    See our list of best Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) vendors.

    We monitor all Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) 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.