We performed a comparison between WatchGuard Firebox 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."Offers good security and filtering."
"I only deal with it from a security analyst's point of view. I don't really get into the features of the actual FortiGate. From the security point of view, it works, and it does its job."
"The initial installation is very straightforward."
"The features that I have found most valuable are that it is good to use, and most importantly, the pricing. The customer especially likes the discount when they trade up or something like that."
"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."
"The solution is easy to configure and maintain remotely."
"The most valuable features are that it is very simple to configure and to manage."
"Its performance in fulfilling our requirements has been satisfactory."
"The most valuable features of the WatchGuard Firebox are all the security and updated features. You are able to configure the solution from the cloud platform and the application and web interface are very nice."
"They've done a lot of work with their SD-WAN, which we do use, to have our old internet service with our new internet service. If anything goes down on a particular interface, I can have different rules applied. Most of my users don't even know when our primary internet goes down anymore... I don't have to be here to do anything to switch it to our backup internet or to switch it back."
"It's hard to pick one feature over another. But if I had to pick one, the UTM would be the most valuable because of the notification. I get notified via email if there is any type of threat detection or alert, telling me something is wrong."
"This product offers great protection using the default settings."
"The set up of the VPN is pretty straightforward. Being able to build VPNs on the fly for certain users, if need be, is also valuable."
"Firebox's best feature is the access portal."
"The reports are detailed."
"I like that this product has very few issues."
"In terms of management and visibility, there is a single panel where you can configure the policies for your entire organisation worldwide."
"Zscaler Internet Access's roaming user feature is most valuable and is much better compared to other secure web gateways."
"There is no lag in service when accessing the internet."
"Zscaler Internet Access has helped us reduce the time that we spend managing security policies by about four hours a week. We can use this time to focus on other things, especially the IT team."
"The solution has reduced cyberattacks."
"The most valuable feature is bandwidth control."
"The solution replaces multiple vendor technologies with one which makes it worth the cost."
"The most valuable features of Zscaler Internet Access are it's on the cloud, high network performance, and the interception of users is very easy."
"The updates Fortinet provides are sometimes unstable."
"It should provide better visibility over the network and more information in the form of reports for the end users. Its installation should also be easier."
"I haven't had a single issue since using Fortinet."
"The solution could have licensing fees reduced in the future."
"The sniffing packets or packet captures, can be simplified and improved because it's a little confusing."
"While FortiGate is cheaper than most other solutions, we're seeing increased license renewal costs. Most of our clients are asking for more significant discounts because the price is going up."
"As far as wanting more scalability or things in the network diagram, it's going to cost you."
"To some degree, it's almost a question as to why some of this stuff isn't simpler. For example, for an AP deployment, while it's integrated, the number of steps that you have to go through in order to get the AP up, seems like a lot."
"I would like to see more training become available for us."
"There are a couple of things I wished that it would do, but I can't think of those off the top of my head."
"We use WatchGuard to manage our failover for internet. If a primary internet goes down, it does a failover to the secondary the internet. However, what it doesn't do so well is that if the primary internet has a lot of latency but it's not completely down, it doesn't do a failover to the backup in a timely manner."
"The solution can improve by adding a feature to tag a MAC address of a computer system in the policy and more IP configuration settings."
"The solution needs to improve its accessibility."
"I don't think I can get a full-blown DNS client from it. I've been trying to have DNS services. It has forwarding, but I don't get the services of a full DNS client. My main difficulty with it is that I can't run a complete service. I need NTP. I need DNS. I need DHCP for my domain, but I only get forwarding. As far as I can tell, I don't get caching and the kinds of reporting and registration needed to host a DNS for a domain. I have to have a separate solution for that."
"When working with WatchGuard, specifically in configuring Panda Security on the portal for the first time, it was challenging for me."
"In WatchGuard Firebox, the antivirus and malware detection systems are areas with shortcomings that require improvement since they are the most important elements of a cybersecurity tool."
"The interface for administration could be better. They should upgrade the management portal."
"The OS capabilities and WSL support could be improved."
"They block Zscaler IPs when the traffic origin is from Zscaler IPs. They've been blocked by certain government organizations so the end users are not able to visit those websites unless we ask them to unblock those IP. This is a bit problematic."
"There are some performance issues when we add on additional controls."
"One thing that needs to be improved is their presence in China. I'm not sure if that's a Zscaler thing or if it's a problem with all vendors in this space, but it would be nice to have better coverage in China. This concern is a common one for vendors across the board when dealing with the Chinese market."
"The price of the solution could be improved."
"Another thing that I would like to see is if Zscaler could have a separate product for direct access. I looked at a private access solution, but I understand there's a separate product that isn't integrated with this."
"If they can also integrate with the multi-factor authentication to prompt users to do another, second-factor authentication, that would be ideal."
WatchGuard Firebox is ranked 13th in Firewalls with 79 reviews while Zscaler Internet Access is ranked 2nd in Secure Web Gateways (SWG) with 46 reviews. WatchGuard Firebox is rated 8.4, while Zscaler Internet Access is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of WatchGuard Firebox writes "Offers a streamlined deployment, intuitive interface and robust security features". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Zscaler Internet Access writes "Provides integrated CASB and file sandboxing but could be less expensive ". WatchGuard Firebox is most compared with Netgate pfSense, Sophos XG, OPNsense, SonicWall TZ and Meraki MX, 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 WatchGuard Firebox vs. Zscaler Internet Access report.
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