We performed a comparison between Cisco Secure Firewall and WatchGuard Firebox based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: The two solutions are very comparable. WatchGuard Firebox received slightly better ratings because it is easier to deploy than Cisco Secure Firewall.
"It's a user-friendly firewall. Most of the tasks are very simple. It's simple to configure and troubleshoot this firewall."
"Overall security features and performance routing is good."
"Provides good firewall security and has great VPN features."
"We purchased Fortinet because of the pricing, its functionality, because it met our requirements, and the total cost of ownership over five years was quite reasonable. In the market, Fortinet is rated quite well."
"The features that I have found most valuable are the SD-WAN and their IP4 policy."
"FortiGate is flexible and easy to use."
"Fortinet FortiGate is a stable solution."
"It is user friendly, and has all the features you need."
"Cisco's technical support is the best and that's why everybody implements their products."
"For business purposes, it's a very detailed solution, which is it's greatest benefit, as you can get almost any piece of information you need from the solution. It allows for admins to be able to troubleshoot pretty easily."
"Cybersecurity resilience has been paramount. Because there is a threat of losing everything if ransomware or another sort of attack were to happen, the cybersecurity resilience has been top-notch."
"For companies prioritizing security, the optimal choice is one that offers a range of feeds to cater to diverse needs. This is particularly crucial for organizations implementing DDoS mitigation. The preferred solutions typically align with the top server vendors, with Cisco, Forti, and Barracuda consistently ranking among the top three vendors we collaborate with."
"The configuration capabilities and the integration with other tools are the most valuable features. I really like this product. Cisco is one of my favorite brands, and I always think Cisco solutions are very reliable, easy to configure, and very secure."
"If you have a solution that is creating a script and you need to deploy many implementations, you can create a script in the device and it will be the same for all. After that, you just have to do the fine tuning."
"Malicious URLs are being blocked."
"The solution offers very easy configurations."
"The most valuables feature of WatchGuard Firebox are the VPNs, and web filtering where we can stop users from going to malicious sites."
"I like intrusion detection the most."
"The ports that I have assigned appear to be unattainable to outside 'mal-actors,' unless they have an address registered on the internet that this thing is expecting. That's a layer of security."
"One of my favorite features is the Geolocation service, where you can actually block specific activity or IP addresses registered to certain countries. For example, I don't want any web traffic from Russia or North Korea. I may even lock down certain policies down to 'I only want U.S. IP addresses.' I find that very useful."
"It saves us time in the respect that we now have the template built for it so we can get in and get it done. We've had much less problem supporting Voice over IP technologies from different companies. Because our client base has grown over the years, we're probably saving 20 to 30 man-hours a month now that we've got this on a good stable level."
"Policy VPN, site-to-site VPN, traffic monitoring, anti-spam filters, and all other advanced features are valuable."
"All of the features have been valuable. There's nothing on my M270 that I'm not using. If you have remote access, you can see how many users are coming from the outside world to be connected to the systems, through the virus systems that we have behind the firewall, in order to gain access to their files and do their work. We can also see how long they stay online and whether these connections are closed forcefully or for any other reasons, such as a glitch or some kind of misbehavior, to see if internet traffic is optimized and if that particular traffic is under company policies, concerning which websites were visited."
"The most valuable feature for small and medium businesses is the support for various protocol proxies."
"They should make the rule sets more understandable for the end user. When you're trying to explain to somebody how a computer network is secured, sometimes it's difficult for an end user or customer to understand. If there was a way to make the terminology more accessible to the end user, the set up could be easier. They should translate the technical jargon to an easily relatable and understandable conversation for the end user, the customer, that would be brilliant. Particularly in an environment where the IT structure is audited regularly, there's always pressure from the auditor to up the standards and up the security and you get your USCERT's that come out and there's a warning about this and the customer will want to lock out so much and when you apply it they run into issue where they can't search the internet or print to their remote office. Of course they can't print to your remote office, they just locked it up. They should make the language more understandable for the customer. If there's a product out there that made the jargon understandable to John Q. Public, I would buy that."
"We were not able to build a full-mesh VPN; however, I am not sure if this was the fault of Fortinet FortiGate."
"A sandbox would be good in order to be able to inspect the emails containing spam and be able to validate the emails that contain malware, prior to delivering to the customer."
"Fortinet FortiGate needs to improve the protection, it did not prevent us from being attacked. Additionally, Fortinet FortiGate could provide more features for WAF devices. I should not have to purchase two solutions, it would be a benefit to combine these features into one solution."
"They can do more tests before they release new versions because I would like to be more assured. We had some experiences where they release something new and great, but some of the old features are disabled or they don't work well, which impacts the product satisfaction. The manufacturer should be able to prove that everything works or not only that it might work. This is applicable to most of the other services, software, and hardware companies. They all should work on this. We cannot trust every new release, such as a beta release, on the first day. We wait for some comments on the forums and from other companies that we know. We always wait a few weeks before we use the updated version. They should also extend the VPN client application, especially for Linux versions. Currently, it has an application for Linux devices, but it doesn't work the way we want to connect to the VPN. They use only the old connection, not the new one. They have VPN client applications for Windows and Mac, but they can add more useful features to better manage the devices and monitor the current health of each device. Such features would be helpful for our company."
"Its reporting can be improved. Sometimes, I don't get proper reports."
"Compared to some other products, the DLP is not at par for the moment."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve by having more capabilities for troubleshooting VPN connections. For example, I do get some feedback about the current status, but I could use some history and logging of important events. The information is logged in our Syslog server, but I could use that information from the device. If they could provide a GUI to have some more insight on what's going with my VPN would be useful."
"Cisco ASA is not a next-generation firewall product."
"We have more than one Cisco firewall and it is difficult for me to integrate both on the single UI."
"The ability to integrate (as options) all-in-one features -- like anti-spam, anti-virus, etc."
"We are Cisco partners, and when we recommend Cisco FirePower to customers, they always think that FirePower is bad. For a single installation of FirePower, if I have to write about 18 tickets to Cisco, it's a big problem. There was an issue was related to Azure. We had Active Directory in Azure. The clients had to connect to FirePower through Azure. We had a lot of group policies. After two group policies, we had to make groups in Azure, and they had to sign in and sign back. It was a triple-layer authentication, and there was a big problem, so we didn't use it."
"I would like for them to develop better integration with other security platforms."
"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."
"When we first got it, we were doing individual configuring. Now, there is a way to manage from one location."
"Cisco should redo their website so it's actually usable in a faster way."
"The pricing could be improved. It is definitely one of the more expensive products."
"The reporting is a little on the weak side. I would like to see a better reporting set and easier drill-down options."
"The performance of the solution's processor needs to be faster."
"They are working on cloud-based options. However, they do not have the options fully functional in their solution at this time."
"I would like to see the devices made more flexible by adding modules to increase the ports that we can use."
"The solution's pricing could be improved."
"The UI is not as user-friendly as the model that I had used before, which was from Check Point. The design of the Firebox UI is restricted and needs an experienced network guy to understand the format and settings."
"I'm not really impressed with the reporting side of it. It may be something I just haven't figured out very well, but it's hard to filter down on reporting of the actual valuable information that you would want. There is a lot of information out there so you have to have some kind of tool capture it and then filter through. So far, I haven't found the reporting side of the WatchGuard to be that user-friendly."
Cisco Secure Firewall is ranked 4th in Firewalls with 404 reviews while WatchGuard Firebox is ranked 13th in Firewalls with 79 reviews. Cisco Secure Firewall is rated 8.2, while WatchGuard Firebox is rated 8.4. 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 WatchGuard Firebox writes "Offers a streamlined deployment, intuitive interface and robust security features". Cisco Secure Firewall is most compared with Palo Alto Networks WildFire, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX, Sophos XG and Sophos UTM, whereas WatchGuard Firebox is most compared with Netgate pfSense, Sophos XG, OPNsense, SonicWall TZ and Sophos UTM. See our Cisco Secure Firewall vs. WatchGuard Firebox report.
See our list of best Firewalls vendors and best Firewalls vendors.
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