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Cisco Secure Firewall vs Fortinet FortiGate-VM comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 16, 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

Fortinet FortiGate
Sponsored
Ranking in Firewalls
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
317
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (1st), WAN Edge (1st)
Cisco Secure Firewall
Ranking in Firewalls
5th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
407
Ranking in other categories
Cisco Security Portfolio (3rd)
Fortinet FortiGate-VM
Ranking in Firewalls
9th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
120
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Firewalls category, the mindshare of Fortinet FortiGate is 20.3%, up from 17.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Secure Firewall is 5.8%, up from 5.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Fortinet FortiGate-VM is 1.9%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Firewalls
 

Featured Reviews

EhabAli - PeerSpot reviewer
Efficient, user-friendly, and affordable
In the past, NSS Labs was utilized to test files and verify the numbers and datasheets. It would be beneficial to have an organization or testing lab that can verify the numbers in our datasheets since changes are frequently made, which can be inconvenient for review. For instance, when comparing different competitors such as Forcepoint, Palo Alto, and Check Point, the throughput or numbers in the datasheet may be lower than the actual numbers. Conversely, Fortinet typically reports very high numbers, but they cannot be replicated in the real world. Therefore, it would be advantageous for them to partner with a neutral testing organization such as NSS Labs to validate these numbers, thus providing more credibility and comfort to everyone regarding the accuracy of the datasheets. For the migration, everyone has a firewall in use and I am selling Fortinet. Typically, I am replacing another firewall. Previously, there was a tool available to convert configurations from one firewall, such as Palo Alto, to Fortinet, but this tool is no longer free. If it could be made free again, it would be very beneficial. This tool shows a lot of promise and is very good. Making it free would help many companies deliver their products in a more efficient and integrated way. It would also be more valuable to include the tool with the firewall package or license instead of having to pay extra for it. Paying extra puts more pressure on small companies to deliver the firewall and complete the configuration, especially if they have hundreds or thousands of policies. It's very painful to move through these policies line by line. The stability has room for improvement. When it comes to Secure SD-WAN, everything is fine. They are going the right way. SD-WAN is very promising. They can provide the SD-WAN solution separately, but they will not take this approach because even the smallest firewall can support the features, so there is no need to have a separate service or appliance. They are following the right steps, and there is nothing to be improved. Feature-wise, I'm really satisfied with the new release, and the features they have added. For now, it's fine.
Jordan De Sousa - PeerSpot reviewer
Helped with the consolidation of tools and has a great dashboard
We have used different types of solutions. We had Cisco ASA for about 10 years, and then we switched to an on-site firewall to MX from Meraki, Cisco. For our cloud, we have Cisco Services Routers. The migration to the cloud has been a lot of work. Not all of our systems were compliant with being on the cloud so we had to work on some applications and delete some of them. For the old systems, we had to do extra work but for the newer systems, it was fine. The migration took around 18 months to migrate 99%. We had more than 2,000 on-prem firewall sites. Cisco helped with the migration to the cloud with the migration tool. Migrating MX was really easy and the tools helped us to migrate from the old ASA we had to the new MX. The cloud, firewalling, and CSR helped us from the data center on-premise approach to the cloud because at the time we didn't have a lot of experience with the cloud. It was easy to use the Cisco appliances in that space. I think that this solution has saved our IT staff time because of the ease of deployment. When I first started as a network engineer, it took a whole day to configure a firewall because of all the particularities you could potentially have at a site. I think that this solution saved our organization's time because security saves money because. At the end of the day, firewalls block threats. This solution helped with the consolidation of tools as we had all the observability tools in the solutions. Some 10 years ago we all had third-party solutions doing the observability. Now, we have the whole package and not only the firewall. We choose Cisco 10 or 20 years ago mostly because it was a market-leading solution. I also think it's because of MX's user-friendly solution that you can get on board easily. As far as CSA goes, I believe it's because you have a lot of features on the firewalls and it's the stability of course.
Pietro Di Blasi - PeerSpot reviewer
Organize networks efficiently while benefiting from strong reliability and support
The main use is for clients who are migrating to the cloud. We started this journey during the pandemic, and the main case is with clients who are moving to either a private or a public cloud The solution allows us to organize our networks and access within one vendor, using an integrated…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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 UTM feature is quite good. FortiAP is easy to deploy because both Fortigate and FortiAP are under the same brand. Otherwise, you need to do more work on the configuration."
"The usage in general is pretty good."
"Offers good security and filtering."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are the ability to work in proxy mode, which other solutions, such as Palo Alto cannot. There are some features that are better that come at no extra license or subscriptions cost, such as basic SD-WAN. The DLT is useful, other solutions have the same feature too, such as Palo Alto."
"The IPsec tunnels are very easily created, and quite interoperable with devices from other vendors."
"The initial setup is easy."
"FortiGate has a very strong unified threat management system."
"Firepower has been used for quite a few enterprise clients. Most of our clients are Fortune 500 and Firepower is used to improve their end to end firewall functionality."
"An eight because it's a good security solution. It's more mature than its competitors."
"Their hardware can handle substantial amounts of data without causing latency."
"The monitoring dashboard is valuable to us for troubleshooting."
"I like the firewall features, Snort, and the Intrusion Prevention System (IPS)."
"The most valuable feature is the access control list (ACL)."
"Filtering is the best feature."
"The most important feature is its categorization because on the site and social media you are unified in the way they are there."
"It is very useful to make lists for rules and prepare firewall rules."
"The pricing of the solution is good."
"It provides an ease of management and configuration as well."
"Fortinet FortiGate-VM is very easy to create the user of VPN, allowing them to use it quickly. Additionally, the integration and interface are good."
"Fortinet is user-friendly."
"The tool's most valuable feature is its ability to deploy it on live physical hardware. Specifically, when providing firewall services for clients, we can leverage such hardware appliances to support multiple customers on the same hardware."
"The most valuable features are locking applications from in and out of my test network and testing malware on different devices. I use malware detection, antivirus, and basic firewall policies to check for different types of security breaches. The UI is really nice and easy to use."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate-VM are its flexibility and scalability. This solution is available as a license, which allows us to activate it based on the specific needs of the customer. This gives us and the customer a great deal of versatility and customization options."
 

Cons

"The support we receive when we need to upgrade is not satisfactory and has room for improvement."
"The configuration part was challenging, especially converting configurations from another OEM to FortiGate."
"Fortinet FortiGate is a stable solution. However, my issue is the performance only. When I use all the profiles, this affects the performance. From the beginning, I should have had a better sizing of the box."
"If they had better integration with security products, such as Cisco ISE or Rapid Threat Containment, then it would be an improvement."
"The user interface could be improved."
"It should come integrated or have its own type of network monitor tool in a module. There should just be one package, and you are good to go."
"The platform's compatibility with Wi-Fi equipment needs improvement."
"The pricing could be a bit better, especially when you consider how they have the most basic offering priced."
"You have to know the ASA command line very well because not all operations are available in the graphical interface"
"<p>If there is old hardware, or appliances, it does not necessarily work with the new Cisco generation firewalls."
"Its implementation was not straightforward. It was mainly because we were running two projects together."
"The IPS and GUI are outdated."
"The only improvement that we could make is maybe [regarding] the roadmap, to have better visibility as to what we are targeting ahead in the next few quarters."
"The security features in the URL category need more improvement."
"The policies module in FMC specifically isn't the most user-friendly. Coming from Cisco ASA, Cisco ASA is a little bit easier to use. When you get into particularly complex deployments where you have a lot of different interfaces and all that kind of stuff, it's a little bit tricky. Some usability improvements there would be nice."
"It is surprising that you need to have a virtual appliance for the Firepower Management Center. It is not good if you have to setup a VMware server just for it."
"The product needs to focus on cloud-nativeness and pricing."
"Sizing can be challenging for customers interested in using Fortinet FortiGate-VM."
"The costs could be lowered."
"The product has issues with integration. I would like to see better integration in future releases of the product."
"There should be more options to use lower-end models in a high availability configuration."
"Fortinet could improve the availability and delivery of its products. It takes four to six weeks for every purchase to arrive."
"The technical support is not very responsive and is an area that needs to be improved."
"The partner support is quite low, and the end-user support is delayed at levels L2 and L3. L1 support is quick."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price is high compared to some of the other solutions."
"The product pricing is reasonable."
"Fortinet FortiGate is expensive."
"Fortinet FortiGate gives you most of the features in one license."
"Here in Brazil, we're going through difficult economic times and the tax on the dollar is high. All the solutions from minor competitors are growing in the market. The prices have come more competitive."
"There is a subscription-based model to use Fortinet FortiGate. We pay annually for the solution along with the support. If you want to have all the updates, and security patches you will need to renew your support."
"The pricing is flexible."
"It's a very full-featured and it's priced well solution."
"The cost is a bit higher than other competitive solutions on the market."
"Cisco is considered to be an expensive solution."
"The pricing for Cisco products is higher than others, but Cisco is a very good, strong, and stable technology."
"It is extremely expensive compared to its competitors and I would rate it 2 out of 10."
"It is more expensive than the other solutions."
"The enterprise agreement that we have has helped with the pricing because it allows us to consume licensing in more of a consumption model versus a per-user type model. That has helped us a lot."
"Spec the right hardware model and choose the right license for your needs."
"I like its licensing because you buy the license once, and it is yours. We don't have to go for a subscription. So, I liked how they licensed Cisco ASA. Our clients are also very satisfied with its licensing model."
"There is a support fee that can be bought on a yearly or two-yearly basis. I don't think they do five years. The best benefit is that the same pricing is guaranteed for that duration. If you can afford it, I would recommend using the longest possible time span."
"VMs can be affordable, but for high-demand scenarios, I'd still recommend the hardware. For the cost, it's a ten out of ten."
"It is more expensive than its competitor, e.g. Sophos."
"The product’s licensing must be a little cheaper."
"The license we pay is a yearly fee. I can't say it's very expensive; it is a good price and is highly suitable for our usage."
"Of all the firewalls that we compared, FortiGate is the cheapest and most affordable, so we are satisfied with the pricing."
"It is an expensive solution if you are migrating from an open source solution."
"The price of the solution could be less expensive. There are some features that have to be purchased separately that have their own license."
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Comparison Review

it_user206346 - PeerSpot reviewer
Mar 11, 2015
Cisco ASA vs. Palo Alto Networks
Cisco ASA vs. Palo Alto: Management Goodies You often have comparisons of both firewalls concerning security components. Of course, a firewall must block attacks, scan for viruses, build VPNs, etc. However, in this post I am discussing the advantages and disadvantages from both vendors concerning…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
22%
Computer Software Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Educational Organization
37%
Computer Software Company
14%
Government
5%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Computer Software Company
20%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Which is the better NGFW: Fortinet Fortigate or Cisco Firepower?
When you compare these firewalls you can identify them with different features, advantages, practices and usage a...
What is the biggest difference between Sophos XG and FortiGate?
From my experience regarding both the Sophos and FortiGate firewalls, I personally would rather use FortiGate. I know...
What are the biggest technical differences between Sophos UTM and Fortinet FortiGate?
As a solution, Sophos UTM offers a lot of functionality, it scales well, and the stability and performance are quite ...
Which is better - Fortinet FortiGate or Cisco ASA Firewall?
One of our favorite things about Fortinet Fortigate is that you can deploy on the cloud or on premises. Fortinet Fort...
How does Cisco's ASA firewall compare with the Firepower NGFW?
It is easy to integrate Cisco ASA with other Cisco products and also other NAC solutions. When you understand the Cis...
Which is better - Meraki MX or Cisco ASA Firewall?
Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) software is the operating software for the Cisco ASA suite. It supports netw...
Features comparison between Palo Alto and Fortinet firewalls
In the best tradition of these questions, Feature-wise both are quite similar, but each has things it's better at, it...
Which would you recommend - FortiGate VM or Azure Firewall?
Both of these solutions are excellent options that provide flexible scalability and solid security. Fortinet Fortigat...
What do you like most about Fortinet FortiGate-VM?
An enhanced security solution for any kind of alert that we have configured.
 

Also Known As

FortiGate 60b, FortiGate 60c, FortiGate 80c, FortiGate 50b, FortiGate 200b, FortiGate 110c, FortiGate, Fortinet Firewall
Cisco ASA Firewall, Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Firewall, Cisco ASA NGFW, Cisco ASA, Adaptive Security Appliance, ASA, Cisco Sourcefire Firewalls, Cisco ASAv, Cisco Firepower NGFW Firewall
FortiGate Virtual Appliance, FortiGate-VM
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, IBM, Cisco, Dell, HP, Oracle, Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, Vodafone, Orange, BT Group, Telstra, Deutsche Telekom, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, CenturyLink, NTT Communications, Tata Communications, SoftBank, China Mobile, Singtel, Telus, Rogers Communications, Bell Canada, Telkom Indonesia, Telkom South Africa, Telmex, Telia Company, Telkom Kenya
There are more than one million Adaptive Security Appliances deployed globally. Top customers include First American Financial Corp., Genzyme, Frankfurt Airport, Hansgrohe SE, Rio Olympics, The French Laundry, Rackspace, and City of Tomorrow.
Security7 Networks, COOPENAE
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Secure Firewall vs. Fortinet FortiGate-VM and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
831,020 professionals have used our research since 2012.