We performed a comparison between Cisco Secure Firewall and SonicWall NSa 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 SD-WAN is the most valuable feature."
"It has very easy management and an amazing ETM configuration."
"Fortinet FortiGate's ease of management is the most valuable feature."
"The technical support is great."
"Security, SD-WAN, and Streetscape are valuable features."
"Reliability is the best feature. We faced some issues when we were setting it up, but the service, portal, and administration are good."
"The solution is extremely reliable."
"The solution is highly scalable because they have devices that can handle a large amount of traffic."
"The CLI is the most valuable feature. This solution is very flexible and offers different functionality including firewalls and VPN connectivity."
"The most valuable feature would be the IP blocking. It gets rid of things that you don't need in your environment."
"The remote access, VPN, and ACL features are valuable. We are using role-based access for individuals."
"Network segmentation is the most valuable feature."
"With the pandemic, people began working from home. That was a pretty big move, having all our users working from a home. More capacity needed to be added to our remote VPN. ASA did this very well."
"Even in very big environments, Cisco comes in handy with configuration and offers reliability when it comes to managing multiple items on one platform."
"I like that it is easy to change the settings."
"Firepower NGFW has improved my organization in several ways. Before, we were trying to stamp out security threats and issues, it was a one-off type of way to attack it. I spent a lot of manpower trying to track down the individual issues or flare-ups that we would see. With Cisco's Firepower Management, we're able to have that push up to basically one monitor and one UI and be able to track that and stop threats immediately. It also gives us a little more granularity on what those threats might be."
"SonicWall has all the usual functions, like LAN configurations, security features, word filters, etc., but it also has the CFS agent, which isn't available in any other firewall. Reporting port support is also there."
"The most valuable feature is the sandbox."
"Anti-Spam reduces unwanted mail on corporate exchange services."
"Overall SonicWall NSa is a good solution for our use case."
"Compared to Cisco, SonicWall NSa is much easier to configure."
"With the deployment of the SonicWall NSA solution, we never suffered a problem due to invasion or contamination of any kind."
"Our old firewall was running as HA (High Availability) on two different but identical rack mounted servers. Moving to SonicWall allowed the company to move to one unit, yet accommodate more connections because it had sixteen ports and handled fail-over better than the old firewall solution."
"Support has improved dramatically since their separation from Dell."
"It would be nice if backups could more easily migrate between different models."
"The main aspect of FortiGate that could be improved is load balancing. Our management team does not want to buy another appliance for only load balancing."
"At first glance, the interface for the device is very confusing."
"The central management for the FortiGate Fortinet Firewall needs improvement. They have the manager to do the essential management for both SD-WAN and for the security policy. They should also improve the SD-WAN function."
"The user interface could be improved to make it less confusing and easier to set up."
"It would be nice if FortiGate incorporated some built-in endpoint protection features. I would also like a built-in SOC dashboard for managing multiple Fortinet firewalls."
"I have to say that the initial setup was complex. The deployment took a few days to get set up. Initially, we were using an IPVanish. We switched to this tool since we thought it would be easier. But it turns out it wasn't easier to set up and run."
"The non-error conserve mode has room for improvement."
"Cisco Secure Firewall's integration with cloud providers has room for improvement. We could do more in terms of integration, for example, if we had a tag on an instance."
"It doesn't have a proper GUI to do troubleshooting, so most people have to rely on the command line."
"The access layer of this solution could be improved in terms of the way the devices interconnect with our network. We need to be able to analyze the traffic between the different interconnection in these areas."
"I would like for them to develop better integration with other security platforms."
"It lacks management. For me, it still doesn't have a proper management tool or GUI for configuration, logging, and visualization. Its management is not that easy. It is also not very flexible and easy to configure. They used to have a product called CSM, but it is no longer being developed. FortiGate is better than this solution in terms of GUI, flexibility, and user-friendliness."
"It needs to provide the next-generation firewall features that other vendors provide, like data analytics, telemetry, and deep packet inspection."
"Tech support could not answer all of our questions. I had to do research on the web to solve my issues."
"If the implementation was easier, it would be a lot better for us."
"In terms of improvement, features like App Control do not work properly"
"We have used other solutions such as pfSense and Linux native firewalls. I prefer SonicWall NSa but if you are going to use something for an enterprise you need another solution."
"The dynamics needs to be improved. The solution is not very compatible compared to the market products."
"There are a few areas that need improvement including the VPN, user management, and reporting."
"SonicWall NSa doesn't have a proxy. It also needs a quota management feature in specific scenarios where you must limit user bandwidth for a particular day."
"The reporting feature could be better because most of the companies want to have the analytics included, which is something that you have to buy separately."
"Vendor support needs improvement. The frequency of time and support should be increased."
"SonicWall NSa needs to make their product more user-friendly."
Cisco Secure Firewall is ranked 4th in Firewalls with 404 reviews while SonicWall NSa is ranked 19th in Firewalls with 80 reviews. Cisco Secure Firewall is rated 8.2, while SonicWall NSa is rated 7.8. 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 NSa writes "Great performance and security with reasonable pricing". Cisco Secure Firewall is most compared with Palo Alto Networks WildFire, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX, Sophos XG and Huawei NGFW, whereas SonicWall NSa is most compared with SonicWall TZ, Meraki MX, Sophos XG, Netgate pfSense and WatchGuard Firebox. See our Cisco Secure Firewall vs. SonicWall NSa report.
See our list of best Firewalls vendors.
We monitor all Firewalls 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.