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Fortinet FortiManager vs Skybox Security Suite comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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 FortiManager
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
64
Ranking in other categories
Network Management Applications (3rd)
Skybox Security Suite
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
35
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (42nd), Firewall Security Management (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Fortinet FortiManager and Skybox Security Suite aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Fortinet FortiManager is designed for Network Management Applications and holds a mindshare of 5.0%, down 5.4% compared to last year.
Skybox Security Suite, on the other hand, focuses on Vulnerability Management, holds 0.5% mindshare, down 0.6% since last year.
Network Management Applications
Vulnerability Management
 

Featured Reviews

HamedWasel - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to set up with good integration capabilities but we've had troubles when moving devices
We've faced an issue when we need to move devices. Templates need to be recreated instead of having the policies, et cetera, cut and pasted over. Everything should just move over when we need to move devices instead of recreating everything from scratch. For the IPSEC tunnels, Fortimanager doesn't have all of the features that are available on Fortigate.
NenadMijatovic - PeerSpot reviewer
Efficient in vulnerability management, stable and easy to use
Vulnerability management is the most valuable feature because it lets you focus on the most critical vulnerabilities. That's the important thing. Here in Serbia, there are not so many companies that have too many firewalls inside one company. So, they usually don't buy this model for Firewall Assurance unless there is some compliance. So you can prove that your firewalls are compliant. So, that model is not so important here in Serbia. It's for bigger companies. So, they usually buy network assurance to build the model of the network and vulnerability management to focus on the most important vulnerabilities. Moreover, Skybox can collect data for many vendors. From the endpoint protection vendors to the network equipment vendors to other security vendors. So, it supports more than one hundred vendors to collect data from them.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I pushed templates from FortiManager to our site, and they were deployed successfully."
"Centralized configuration is the most helpful feature. I like the ability to create templates and push them to all the devices at the same time. I also like that I can see the the logs with one device to provide zero touch on all other products."
"It can scale well."
"The solution's most valuable feature is the consolidation and the single point of administration solution."
"The central management feature is the most valuable to me."
"The firmware version upgrades are the most valuable feature."
"It has multiple features in one box, which helps to avoid needing a lot of equipment. This is something that makes them unique."
"The SD-WAN deployment environment, and the SD-WAN templates are particularly useful. Managing the solution is very intuitive. The initial setup of the solution was very straightforward."
"instead of asking for firewall rules which may or may not be relevant, or could already be there, or could be over-permissioned, Skybox can be used to map out the resources that that application is going to use and provide the exact rules that an application would require to function correctly. If the traffic isn't able to flow for the application, if it's erring out, Skybox can be used to troubleshoot that and say, "All right, where is the traffic being stopped and why, and how do I fix that.""
"I am impressed with the tool's change management, firewall and network assurance."
"Aside from Firewall Assurance, we are using Network Assurance and Change Manager for an overview of the whole network and for documenting requests and the recertification of the ruleset."
"The solution offers very nice dashboards and they've recently added a very good Java-based web interface."
"It's given us more visibility in terms of what are the kinds of configurations that are on these devices, and how many of these are stale rules. So it's helped greatly in terms of cleaning up of rules, for sure. And it has definitely given us a more secure way of backing up the configuration on these devices."
"The most valuable features are Firewall Assurance and Vulnerability Control."
"Change Manager is most important because of the impact on each other of a network change or a firewall change. We want to understand this and to know, beforehand, what the impact of a change will be. We are a large network so that is a very important tool."
"Overall, the tool has helped us reduce risks. If any step is missing, it's easier for my team or engineers to identify it. The tool provides accurate recommendations based on the data. Its integration is easy, and I have integrated it with Fortinet firewalls."
 

Cons

"Issues arise when customers experience unstable electricity or poor grounding conditions."
"I would like to be able to manage other products such as Endpoint and FortiAnalyzer through FortiManager. That is, the integration with other solutions needs to be improved."
"The response times from technical support need to be a bit quicker."
"When we have a specific configuration pushed it does take some time to be deployed on the actual firewall."
"There are a lot of bugs that need to be fixed, for example, the ZTP."
"FortiManager could be more user-friendly."
"Fortinet is releasing quite a lot of new versions and I would say that most of the versions are not well tested before they're pushed out. Even the new versions sometimes are a bit buggy before it's all correct."
"Troubleshooting for Fortinet products is more difficult than competing products like Cisco and Palo Alto."
"Skybox Security Suite's attack surface management feature needs improvement."
"There are multiple dashboards but no custom dashboard. It would be good to include a custom dashboard so that we can actually choose which field and what kinds of things we want to look at."
"The price could be cheaper."
"Skybox should improve their UX features by making them easier to use."
"The vendor's support is terrible."
"During implementation, we realised approximately 30 devices were not supported by the Skybox platform​."
"The tool does not offer options for customization."
"The most recent update was not tested with all of the vendors before it was released, so some of the features are misbehaving."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"On a scale from one to ten with one being the highest price and ten being the lowest price, I would rate FortiManager's price at three."
"The price point is very good."
"FortiManager is reasonably priced - I pay around US$40,0000 per year, which covers fifty locations."
"Fortinet FortiManager operates on a licensing system that is dependent on the number of devices being managed. Yearly subscription renewal is necessary to continue using the service. Although there is a cost associated with Fortinet FortiManager, its price is undoubtedly justified by the value it provides in terms of the purpose it serves."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a six out of ten."
"Pricing could improve a little bit so I rate it a seven out of ten."
"The solution requires you to have a license for every device, as well as for any advanced features being used, which makes it costly for high-volume users. However, for a large-scale environment with a lot of customers we have found it to be a worthwhile investment."
"FortiManager isn't expensive, but its cost is dependent on which services are required."
"With licensing, the number of network nodes becomes very expensive to the point where you have to rationalize if the tools are warranted anymore."
"I've seen the pricing of every solution on the market. When you compare apples to apples, where Skybox becomes exceedingly expensive is if you look at it compared to something like FireMon that only does a fraction of what Skybox does. But if you include everything that Skybox does, it becomes way more expensive than the competition, but you're also not comparing apples to apples. If you look at FireMon, and you look at like just the firewall assurance piece, they are fairly comparable and, actually, Skybox comes in a little bit cheaper in some cases, depending on which product you're looking at."
"The price is not expensive."
"The solution is based on a subscription model for annual licenses."
"The licensing fee is paid yearly and is approximately $100,000."
"Licensing is normally on a yearly basis. There may also be a perpetual license. Normally, the customers ask for a lower price. If you want to sell more, you have to think about it."
"Skybox Security Suite has indeed helped us reduce costs. The prices of AlgoSec and Skybox Security Suite are approximately 50 percent different. The tool may require special vendor support from abroad, resulting in slightly higher costs. Its pricing is in the middle."
"When compared with other companies, the license is more costly."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
19%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Energy/Utilities Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Fortinet FortiManager?
The most valuable feature is the centralized management console.
What needs improvement with Fortinet FortiManager?
The graphical user interface could use improvement as it appears complex and not user-friendly. Better integration of Fortinet ADC into FortiManager would be beneficial.
What do you like most about Skybox Security Suite?
Overall, the tool has helped us reduce risks. If any step is missing, it's easier for my team or engineers to identify it. The tool provides accurate recommendations based on the data. Its integrat...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Skybox Security Suite?
Skybox Security Suite has indeed helped us reduce costs. The prices of AlgoSec and Skybox Security Suite are approximately 50 percent different. The tool may require special vendor support from abr...
What needs improvement with Skybox Security Suite?
There is room for improvement in the product's user interface. It could be more user-friendly.
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Black Gold Regional Schools, Amadeus Hospitality, Jefferson County, Chunghwa Telecom, City of Boroondara, Dimension Data
ADP, Blue Cross Blue Shield, BT, USAID, Delta Dental, EDF Energy, EMC, HSBC, Johnson & Johnson
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Fortinet and others in Network Management Applications. Updated: February 2025.
838,713 professionals have used our research since 2012.