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Cisco Secure Firewall vs Fortinet FortiOS comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 8, 2024
 

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
6th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
406
Ranking in other categories
Cisco Security Portfolio (4th)
Fortinet FortiOS
Ranking in Firewalls
28th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
8.4
Number of Reviews
76
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2024, in the Firewalls category, the mindshare of Fortinet FortiGate is 20.5%, up from 17.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Secure Firewall is 5.8%, down from 5.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Fortinet FortiOS is 0.9%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Firewalls
 

Featured Reviews

DineshKumar28 - PeerSpot reviewer
Effective threat prevention with responsive customer support
We are using Fortinet FortiGate as a firewall Fortinet FortiGate has been invaluable. It has helped save costs due to its various features, reliable performance, very good UI, low latency, and stability. The Threat Intel engine in Fortinet FortiGate is highly rated for its effectiveness in…
Daniel Going - PeerSpot reviewer
Is intuitive in terms of troubleshooting, easy to consume, and stable
Licensing is complex, and I'd like it to be simplified. This is an area for improvement. If we could create a Firepower solution that became like an SD-WAN or a SASE solution in a box, then perhaps we could exploit that on remote sites. We've already kind of got that with Meraki, but if we could pull out some of the features from ASA Firepower and make those available in SD-WAN in SASE, then it would be pretty cool.
Saleem Ullah Khan - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to set up, reliable, and good for traffic management
We are not scaling it right now. We bought it sometime back and we didn't need to scale it. We bought a higher end for our use case, which is still sufficient for another few years. We have 200 or so users of different levels and positions on it. We do not have plans to increase usage. This firewall is quite a capable firewall - even up to 1000 users. Due to that, we didn't find any requirement to expand it or replace it somehow. It has helped us build our software-defined WAN, LAN, et cetera. It is sufficient for us. It gives us Gbps throughput, which is good enough. The firewall itself is 32Gbps capable, which is more than what we need.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"​Easy to implement, and it is also reliable.​"
"It increases security posture and is helpful for firewall reporting, intrusion protection, web filtering, and SD-WAN implementation."
"The usage in general is pretty good."
"The most valuable features are the enterprise modeling and the simple interface."
"It's very good and very stable for businesses. It works very well."
"Fortinet FortiGate is user-friendly and affordable."
"The Intrusion Prevention System and the web filtering are both working well."
"Fortinet FortiGate is scalable for our users. Right now, we have almost 70 users. We do not have any plan to increase our usage of FortiGate. For maintaining the firewall solution, one staff member is enough."
"Ease of configuration: It has gotten a lot easier to configure compared to the original Cisco Pix."
"The solution offers very easy configurations."
"Everything is all documented in the file or in the command line script that gets uploaded to the device. It gives us great visibility."
"The most valuable feature is that it has the ability to divide the network into three parts; internal, external, and DMZ."
"The ASA 55-x range is a solid and reliable firewall. It secures the traffic for normal purposes."
"Cisco Secure Firewall is robust and reliable."
"The most valuable features are the provision of internet access, AnyConnect, and VPN capabilities."
"It is a very stable product. I've not had any issues with it. It is a super product, and I won't need to change it anytime soon."
"FortiGate as a product is very easy to configure."
"There are many useful features, such as web security and advanced threat detection."
"The initial setup is straightforward, and it is very customer friendly."
"The most important feature of Fortinet FortiOS is the IPS."
"The technical support on offer has always been quite good."
"Their classification inside of that database of the various threats is typically very, very good."
"All networks are security-driven, we get throughputs and security. We feel that the people at Fortinet are easy to deal with from a support standpoint. If they need to jump in and help us, they're very willing to do that. Their email filtering, their data loss prevention, their intrusion prevention, type of products in the newest OSs has been outstanding."
"The information security features are the most valuable."
 

Cons

"The command line is complicated, and the interface could be better."
"Though the tool's GUI is user-friendly, it can be considered as an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required."
"The pricing could be reduced or include the first year warranty."
"The support system could be improved."
"Compared to some other products, the DLP is not at par for the moment."
"Performance and technical support are the main issues with this solution."
"They sometimes hide some features and if you want to enable them, you have to go in the CLI, enable the feature and configure it through the CLI. Customers, typically, like everything to be done by the GUI."
"Its reporting capabilities can be improved. It should have some out-of-the-box reporting capabilities and some degree of customization. The basic reporting that it currently has is not sufficient to create more usable reports. It needs some sort of out-of-the-box reporting. They try to make customers purchase FortiAnalyzer for this kind of reporting, which is an additional cost. Other firewall vendors, such as SonicWall and Sophos, provide this sort of reporting without any additional cost."
"In terms of what could be improved, I would say the UTM part should be more integrated for one price, because if you buy ASA from Cisco, you need to buy another contract service from Cisco as a filter for the dictionary of attacks. In Fortinet, you buy a firewall and you have it all."
"When we talk about data centers, we are talking about 100 gig capacity or 400 gig capacity. When it comes to active-active solution clustering and resilience and performance, Cisco should look into these a little bit more."
"Cisco suffers from some integration issues with other products... There is a problem with the Cisco Catalyst Switches in terms of assembling bursts and having them interact properly with the Cisco Firepower."
"It has poor performance."
"It seems very clunky and slow. I would like to be able to tune it to be a more efficient product."
"If the implementation was easier, it would be a lot better for us."
"I would like to see them add more next-generation features so that you don't need a lot of appliances to do just one task. It should be a single solution."
"I would like it if they made the newer generation a bit simpler. You can do ASA code and FXOS. It is just a bit confusing with the newer generational equipment on what it can do."
"The solution needs improvement with DDoS protection."
"It could more scalable for the lower end users."
"I want to see a better integration or a better integration with the endpoint protection or with EDR with the security life cycle."
"Real-time threat monitoring is not there."
"The solution needs to adjust its pricing models. With the way they are structured, everything is very disparate and sold separately, and, depending on the solution, it can get quite pricey."
"Their first-level support is often poorly trained."
"I can only compare it with SonicWall, and it is missing many advanced features that SonicWall has."
"There is room for improvement in the reporting part. The reporting is only for logging data, and it's just a tabulation of the log in the report. I would like to be able to take down more information in the event of an incident."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Its price is affordable and lesser than Cisco. Cisco is expensive. In terms of licensing, there is only one issue. If a customer's license has expired a month ago and they do the renewal after one month, Fortinet renews the license from the start of the previous month. The activation of the product is done from the previous month, not from the date of renewal. The customers usually shout and complain that because they are paying today, the renewal should start from today. The support contract renewals or licensing should be renewed from the date of renewal, but Fortinet starts from the day it had expired. It is a loss for customers. They might have had some problems because of which they did not take the license one month before. Fortinet should work on this. Cisco doesn't do this. Cisco always starts from the day they apply for the license."
"These boxes are not that expensive compared to what they can do, their functionality, and the reporting you receive. Fortinet licensing is straightforward and less confusing compared to Cisco."
"The price of FortiGate support is too expensive."
"The price of Fortinet FortiGate is reasonable for an SME."
"Setup costs and pricing depends on many variables, but it's mostly affordable."
"It is a good product from a price perspective versus functionality."
"Its price is reasonable. They have a clear pricing policy. It is not complicated by the number of VPN users at a time. We know what the price is. The yearly subscription for the security license is rather high, but it is all included for whatever number of users you have and the kind of functions you need."
"Licensing for Fortinet FortiGate is on a yearly basis. Pricing for it is a bit high. It could be cheaper."
"Cisco is expensive, but you do get benefits for the price."
"We sell Cisco ASA Firewall as a bundle — the price is very cheap. If a customer were to go for renewal direct from Cisco, then the price would be quite high."
"The price is not too high, but the subscription is a little bit high. We compared the activation of Cisco and Fortinet, and when we activated the whole portfolio of the UTM of Fortinet, the speed reduced. We tested the same situation with the Cisco 2140 series, and there was no reduction in speed."
"There is room for improvement in the pricing when compared to the market. Although, when you compare the benefits of support from Cisco, you can adjust the value and it becomes comparable, because you usually need very good support. So you gain value there with this device."
"Spec the right hardware model and choose the right license for your needs."
"I like the Smart Licensing, because it is more dynamic and easier to keep track of where you are at. If we have a high availability firewall pair and they are deployed in active/standby rather than active/active, I would expect that we would only pay for one set of licenses because you are using only one firewall at any one time. The other is there just for resiliency. The licensing, from a Firepower perspective, still requires you to have two licenses, even if the firewalls are in active/standby, which means that you pay for the two licenses, even though you might only be using one firewall any one time. This is probably not the best way to do it and doesn't represent the best value for money. This could be looked at to see if it could be done in a fairer way."
"Licensing is quite difficult to get your head around. My biggest challenge is to understand the details, the inner relations. Luckily, to some extent, we have enterprise agreements, but licensing for me is a real black box."
"The cost is a bit high compared to other solutions in the market."
"We pay $100,000. That covers the cost of the hardware that we run the VN's on. That also includes any SGNA costs for the internal support tech."
"The software costs roughly half what the hardware costs. Overall, the product is expensive."
"Pricing depends on implementation and licensing choices and is usually not a practical budget choice for small businesses."
"The program is expensive."
"The cost is around $40,000."
"The solution is cost effective. I would rate the pricing a five out of ten."
"It is not cheap."
"The price of Fortinet FortiOS is less than $10,000 annually. The price of the support is reasonable compared to competitors."
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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
35%
Computer Software Company
15%
Government
5%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Computer Software Company
17%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
7%
 

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...
What do you like most about Fortinet FortiOS?
The SSL VPN is fee for use is most attractive.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortinet FortiOS?
Regarding the cost, the initial purchase is relatively cheap because it comes bundled. However, the subscription rene...
 

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
No data available
 

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.
Black Gold Regional Schools, Amadeus Hospitality, Jefferson County, Chunghwa Telecom, City of Boroondara, Dimension Data
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Secure Firewall vs. Fortinet FortiOS and other solutions. Updated: December 2024.
824,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.