We performed a comparison between Fortinet FortiGate and Zscaler Internet Access 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."The most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiGate is URL filtering."
"It works very well. It has a lot of different functionalities. Its cost is also fine for our customers."
"Fortinet FortiGate appears to be scalable."
"Customers are more inclined towards FortiGate because of application control, web filtering, and anti-spam features. The support from the FortiGate team is good, and price-wise, it is affordable."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are the ease of use and there are several operating systems that can include the hardware capacities. In the newer releases, the resources were more useful because they were included in the operating system."
"The management console is pretty simple, so anyone who understands networking can initially deploy the solution."
"What's most important is the ease of use."
"I like Fortinet's cloud management. It allows me to manage all my devices in different branches for three cloud accounts. Even though I use on-prem devices, I can manage everything on the cloud."
"The best thing about Zscaler Internet Access is the website filtering. In the UAE it's quite an important feature because most of the malware comes through the SQL injection and through downloads from websites. Zscaler helps protect against that."
"I like the granularity of the control of all the traffic, including SSL inspection. I also like the fact that the user interface is intuitive. The latencies with Zscaler are minimal compared to those of any other competitor. Other competitors do not really have the global scale that Zscaler has and cannot promise low latencies."
"We use ZIA for outbound internet connectivity. The internet traffic of on-prem users will be directed to the ZIA cloud for security checks and web filtering."
"The cloud proxy and integration are some of the key features. Since there is cloud waste, we can quickly provision it and start working on the configuration. On top of that, they have added a few more features. They have integrated CASB, and file sandboxing is part of it."
"Tech support is good."
"The most valuable features I found in Zscaler Internet Access are the restriction of users for a particular URL, the security feature related to stopping DDoS, and the VPN."
"The solution is scalable and stable."
"Zscaler Internet Access protects using data loss prevention. If you have a CASB exposing your cloud out into the network, then Zscaler Internet Access will go ahead and control that unknown cloud application in the CASB, protecting it. There is also data detection with exact data match. This improves the data coming into your cloud so you are protecting it."
"Fortinet FortiGate can be integrated with different platforms. They have integrations in place, but I can't say they're 100%."
"The security of Fortinet FortiGate could improve."
"The solution needs to improve its integration with cybersecurity."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve by having a frequent ask questions(FAQ) area for people to receive quick answers to popular questions. Additionally, it would be beneficial to have an SMS notification feature. For example, if you cannot access your email you could receive an SMS message."
"Fortinet already improved FortiGate, but in the current market, many brands of security devices have improved together. Fortinet still needs to catch up with market standards. Fortinet is lacking in features in comparison to competitors."
"Its price could be better."
"The firewall engine is not so strong as of now, in my opinion... My second concern is that, while they have Zero-day vulnerability and anti-malware features, the threat engine needs to be strengthened, its efficiency can be increased."
"Fortigate's hardware capacities could be improved."
"The performance needs improvement. Some areas create performance issues and, depending on the use cases, require reconfiguration to perform again."
"Sometimes, support isn't available."
"The solution can be improved by advancing some of the newer technologies such as the DLP feature, and adding email security."
"There are some performance issues when we add on additional controls."
"They could provide more time for the onboarding the training of an IT person."
"What could be improved in Zscaler Internet Access is its price. It could be cheaper."
"If they can also integrate with the multi-factor authentication to prompt users to do another, second-factor authentication, that would be ideal."
"In terms of usage, here in the GCC, it's still growing a growing market, so the combination of DLP, data leak prevention, to a certain extent is fine. But what it requires is user-based access or role-based access. The solution needs to grow into that, which definitely takes time. There's not an easy way to integrate it, when you have a cloud-based solution."
Fortinet FortiGate is ranked 2nd in Firewalls with 306 reviews while Zscaler Internet Access is ranked 2nd in Secure Web Gateways (SWG) with 46 reviews. Fortinet FortiGate is rated 8.4, while Zscaler Internet Access is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Fortinet FortiGate writes "It's a reliable solution that's easy to install and cheaper than competitors ". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Zscaler Internet Access writes "Provides integrated CASB and file sandboxing but could be less expensive ". Fortinet FortiGate is most compared with Sophos XG, Cisco Secure Firewall, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX and WatchGuard Firebox, whereas Zscaler Internet Access is most compared with Cisco Umbrella, Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps, Netskope , Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks and Appgate SDP. See our Fortinet FortiGate vs. Zscaler Internet Access report.
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Bluecoat and Forcepoint offer credible solutions. Think through where your users are and what they connect to. A mobile workforce may need an agent and a cloud gateway (unless you force them back to base over VPN) but may give problems if connecting to sites that whitelist you by IP. And not all providers have good global breakout points. Be particularly careful if you work in China.
My recommendation is Cisco Meraki MX84 with advanced security license (its have two kind of license Advanced security and Enterprise licenses).
I recommend Fortigate
All FortiGate appliances are powered by the FortiOS™ operating system with the following features and benefits:
Features. Firewall, Virtual Private Networking (VPN), AntiVirus, Intrusion Prevention, Web Filtering, DLP, and anti-spam; AntiVirus /Antispyware
Answer is , it depends... If you do any web based business with Banks or Governments then get a hardware solution like Bluecoat or Fortinet because web based providers can not provide you with a static source IP and you will fail security checks. I've been involved in corporate moves to the "cloud" using Zscaler and both went very wrong, very fast, a year later and they still have monthly outages because of the "cloud" providing random source IP's. If this is for a public internet access outside of your corporate network then you should be fine otherwise I suggest hardware you control.
This is a "how long is a piece of string?" type question. As the other vendors have said it is hard to recommend something fully without knowing all the background. Your background did stipulate that you had multiple sites and you were growing. Having a traditional deployment scenario will mean that you need to have a "box" at each site and add more boxes as you add more sites. Going with a more modern solution like Zscaler will allow more rapid growth opportunities - just add users, no matter where they are - also this allows you to restrict with a single policy in the cloud rather than on each device.
AS others have said, be mindful of the proximity of the Zscaler because of latency, but they do have >100 POPS which you will probably find pretty local.
Overall, there is a lot more research you can do, but I'm leaning towards a cloud offering from the branches. You might consider an SD-WAN device at each branch that also has FW built in. This would give you connectivity resilience at a much lower price, but perhaps this is a debate for another day :-)
Cisco Meraki is an excellent solution in the cloud, has AMP included and can be integrated with Umbrella and Thread Grid.
We use Fortigates for web filtering and security. We are a global company with > 10,000 users.
This protects all users on our internal network. Remote users can use the Fortinet FortiClient for remote AV and web filtering protection.
We used Zscaler several years ago but we were unhappy with latency for complex websites and managing PAC files was difficult.
Since you are going for a web security. Zscalar web security solution will be my recommendation considering its robust features and vast threat intelligence base. It is best you go for the cloud solution since you are working across sites.