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Cisco Secure Access vs FortiSASE comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 10, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

iboss
Sponsored
Ranking in Secure Access Service Edge (SASE)
8th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (5th), Internet Security (3rd), Web Content Filtering (1st), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (7th), ZTNA as a Service (7th)
Cisco Secure Access
Ranking in Secure Access Service Edge (SASE)
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
43
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (6th), Firewalls (11th), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (3rd), ZTNA (6th), Domain Name System (DNS) Security (2nd)
FortiSASE
Ranking in Secure Access Service Edge (SASE)
6th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
5.3
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) category, the mindshare of iboss is 2.3%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Secure Access is 3.6%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of FortiSASE is 7.6%, up from 7.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco Secure Access3.6%
FortiSASE7.6%
iboss2.3%
Other86.5%
Secure Access Service Edge (SASE)
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2701851 - PeerSpot reviewer
Managing Director
Enhances web security with a single pane of glass and flexible deployment
I don't see any need for improvement; one of the really good things about iboss as a company is that they listen to customer feedback. I have suggested enhancements, and they are responsive, making changes for the better, and they do a lot of testing. To improve iboss, although we haven't used it, we considered the VPN solution that comes with the highest tier licensing, which includes DLP and various other add-ons. We prefer using another product which automatically logs you back onto your network when turning on your PC. With iboss, the connection is manual, which doesn't meet our needs. Additionally, sizing can be tricky because, although the initial recommendations may seem adequate, actual usage may require more gateways than anticipated.
Kartik Amin - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Operations Engineer at Redex IT Limited
Secure access has unified zero trust and web protection while AI assistance automates tasks
From a feature perspective, I have not experienced any issues, drawbacks, or shortcomings. However, the cost of Cisco's products and licensing is high. My clients usually prefer cheaper options if possible. Mid-size or smaller businesses typically cannot afford Cisco Secure Access. Additionally, there is a steep learning curve, as it is very intensive. Someone with significant knowledge can work on it, but a new professional would have to spend considerable time to get accustomed to it. It is hard to find engineers who can work on it. Overall, we get what we pay for, as it is a pretty good feature and service. The pricing of Cisco's products and licensing is higher than competitors. If they could be more reasonable, that would help. The support offered for two years also has higher costs. Overall, the client's IT budget gets affected. It was challenging to learn because, as mentioned, it has a significant learning curve and requires considerable training to become proficient.
LK
Head Vice President, Delivery at Gehnax Technologies LLP
Implementation complexity challenges are addressed and bundled solution offers significant ROI
For other solutions such as FortiAnalyzer and FortiSIEM, integration is easy, but it's not straightforward due to license complexity. As FortiSASE is new in the market in India, if you want to use a Delhi data center, you need a separate license, and if you have a different kind of firewall, you cannot transfer your license from one box to another box. FortiSASE implementation is too complex where other products take two to three months or maximum four months to implement, FortiSASE took more than double that time. The product appears to have been launched without being tested properly in real market conditions. While testing may have been done in lab environments, real-time scenarios seem to be missing from this solution. The SPA licenses are limited to the box UTM, UTM make and model. If someone has a UTM currently and plans to upgrade or downgrade in the coming year after procuring the SPA license for three years, they cannot transfer those licenses to another box, which is a challenge that needs improvement.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The security aspect of the solution, particularly the malware behind it, is excellent."
"Because of iboss, I did not have to assign web filtering tasks to my techs on a daily basis."
"iboss has significantly lowered the number of security incidents. It is crazy how much it blocks and how much it is aware of the outside danger."
"It was a very easy product to install. It can be deployed very fast."
"iboss is easy to use despite its complexity. Multiple engineers manage it, but it's significantly more straightforward to administer than traditional VPNs and web proxies."
"iboss is pretty scalable. They provide good support. The case managers you work with to coordinate what you need are pretty good."
"Technical support is pretty sharp and very responsive."
"Granular setup, which was able to set different levels of filters using the OUs in the AD."
"It is very flexible, a very competitive solution, very helpful, and very secure; it includes everything a business needs, and the pricing is also available."
"I find the posture checking feature of Cisco Secure Access the most valuable."
"Cisco Secure Access is more than a mature product at this point."
"The most valuable feature of Cisco Secure Access is the VPN, which I find very easy to use."
"After implementing Cisco Secure Access, I observed complete automation, a complete Zero Trust architecture, and complete automation of security."
"The overall success of Cisco Secure Access has significantly improved my organization's security posture in terms of security and usability compared to the previous solution, which was fairly convoluted with several different hops required to log in every day from home."
"Cisco Secure Access has had a positive impact on protecting our organization from threats such as phishing and ransomware."
"I find it an amazing product, and as it is an upgrade for Umbrella, it has all the good sides of Umbrella while removing some bad sides."
"It is highly scalable."
"Overall, I'd rate the product eight out of ten."
"I feel that it is a stable solution...It is a scalable solution."
"We built a local node in Jordan, which is the main advantage. The data is localized in-country."
"We utilize the web filtering part of FortiCASB for our network security."
"We built a local node in Jordan, which is the main advantage, and the data is localized in-country, giving FortiSASE a significant edge compared to others where data is outside the country."
"This advantage is having the ability to create an SPA unit of FortiGate."
"The best feature of FortiSASE is SD-WAN."
 

Cons

"The reporting feature needs improvement."
"Sometimes the agent stops working in iboss, and we have to reinstall the agent."
"SSL decryption: We had issues with learners using apps instead of using web browsers. This type of encryption is tough for any appliance in a BYOD environment."
"One thing I would like to see differently with their Zero Trust platform is that some of the AI aspects related to high-risk activities have more false positives."
"Its pricing could be better."
"File integrity monitoring would be very advantageous as an additional feature."
"The area I would like to see improvement in is the ability within the reporter to navigate directly to the content the user is traversing."
"To scale up, a new iboss Node Blade Chassis must be purchased."
"Cisco Secure Access can be improved with more integration; the more integrations, the better. There are always third-party products that you might have, such as Carbon Black."
"I have had experience with customer service and technical support already. It was not very good because we always have to escalate to engineering with our problems, so the TAC cannot help us."
"The worst part was the migration from Umbrella to Cisco Secure Access; we experienced some difficulties during that process."
"This is my first time in healthcare after being in commercial space for a long time. It's always a challenge because we can't just turn stuff off as we could in the commercial space, since it may interfere with patient care. It takes longer to understand what's going on, so anything that could help give us a faster understanding of what's happening, why it's there, and if it's a risk to us would be helpful."
"Cisco Secure Access may not seamlessly integrate into such settings, although it performs well in a Cisco-based environment."
"For pricing, I consider this one of the few drawbacks of Cisco; Cisco is known for its high pricing, so I would give them a six."
"I received support from the team for Cisco Secure Access related to web services. There were occasional delays of up to two working days."
"To improve Cisco Secure Access, I would suggest simplifying the need for different components that Cisco has tried to implement; for example, to have Cisco Secure Access, it is necessary to have AnyConnect, ISE, and Duo, meaning there are various products that need to integrate to achieve the same result, unlike the all-in-one compact products from other vendors."
"While connectivity from outside to inside is okay, inside to outside is not."
"FortiSASE is a work in progress. One area where there is room for improvement is the ability to use FortiSASE on an endpoint that doesn't have the client on it. Other solutions do that by building a VPN tunnel from their on-prem router into the SASE environment. FortiSASE doesn't have that feature yet, but it is on the roadmap for Q3 of this year. I've seen it in their development environment."
"The current high-tech version of FortiSASE is not recommended due to its heavy loading."
"Improvements should focus on security. Although FortiCASB performs well in many areas, I believe its security aspects could be enhanced further."
"While stability is generally good, we faced some difficulties during updates."
"There are some issues at the agent level, and then we have to sign out and sign in."
"They need to have more concise or precise ways to come up with the return on investment for convincing or presenting this to customers."
"Stability issues persist."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The overall pricing for iboss is very competitive and transparent."
"It is expensive compared to one of its competitors."
"We had the cost of purchasing a new appliance along with the implementation and licensing costs. However, the following year, the cost of just licensing was similar to what was paid the previous year for a new appliance along with the implementation and licensing costs."
"It is not expensive, and it is also not cheap. iboss is priced right in the sweet spot for the number of features it offers."
"We have not priced the solution recently, but they were competitive with other vendors in the past."
"It is probably in line with other solutions, but I do not deal with the financial side."
"It is confusing. When you look at the prices, you have different licensing and years of licensing that you have to purchase. Additionally, it's unclear what service you get from those licenses regarding end-user support. We have a representative who has to walk me through it every time."
"The pricing, setup costs, and licensing for Cisco Secure Access have been very competitive compared to other platforms. I believe that if Cisco continues to improve costs or offers something similar to a Cisco credit, it would attract more customers."
"For what you get, it's a fair price in comparison to other products."
"I rate the product price an eight on a scale of one to ten, where one is high price, and ten is low price."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a three out of ten."
"I rate the product's price a six on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price and ten is high price."
"I can only speak about the pricing for education users because we get discounts. Other users aren't going to get the same price, but FortiSASE is competitive with the other products out there. All the solutions came in at the same price, so it just came down to the product that works best for us."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
Construction Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Construction Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise27
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise5
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with iboss?
For zero trust implementation, we encountered complexity issues, especially with a large infrastructure company Exxon...
What is your primary use case for iboss?
Previously when I used iboss, we did the POC for iboss for ExxonMobil. Four or five people wanted to move from our ol...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for iboss?
Regarding pricing, setup costs, and licensing, iboss is not cheap, and that's my only concern. There are cheaper alte...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco Secure Access?
My experience with the pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Cisco Secure Access is that it is part of our security ...
What is your primary use case for Cisco Secure Access?
Cisco Secure Access has many features, and I want to clarify whether the discussion pertains to Cisco ISE or the Cisc...
What advice do you have for others considering Cisco Secure Access?
Cisco Secure Access always requires monitoring for updates and signatures, similar to a health check, but not intensi...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for FortiSASE ?
The pricing, licensing, and setup costs of FortiSASE are very advantageous if you are already a Fortinet customer. If...
What needs improvement with FortiSASE ?
Areas of FortiSASE that could be improved or enhanced in future releases are related to being more open to supporting...
What is your primary use case for FortiSASE ?
FortiSASE is typically used by customers with two major concerns: many branches or stores and sometimes remote worker...
 

Also Known As

iBoss Cloud Platform
No data available
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

More than 4,000 global enterprises trust the iboss Cloud Platform to support their modern workforces, including a large number of Fortune 50 companies.
1. IBM 2. Microsoft 3. Amazon 4. Google 5. Apple 6. Cisco Systems 7. Oracle 8. Intel 9. HP Inc. 10. Dell Technologies 11. Verizon Communications 12. AT&T 13. Comcast 14. T-Mobile 15. Sprint 16. Vodafone 17. Orange 18. BT Group 19. Deutsche Telekom 20. Telefonica 21. Nokia 22. Ericsson 23. Samsung Electronics 24. Sony 25. Panasonic 26. LG Electronics 27. Siemens 28. General Electric 29. Ford Motor Company 30. General Motors 31. Toyota Motor Corporation 32. Volkswagen Group
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Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Secure Access vs. FortiSASE and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
885,376 professionals have used our research since 2012.