Fortinet FortiAnalyzer Reviews

We are an IT company. One of our clients utilizes FortiGate, FortiAnalyzer, and FortiManager. Thus, this is the sole customer in our portfolio using Fortinet FortiAnalyzer. Among our other clients, some exclusively employ FortiGate. Our responsibility encompasses network management for these clients.

What I like the most is the monitoring system. For example, it can track who is accessing through VPNs. The monitoring features are quite impressive, including maps, source IP, country codes, and geolocation – all of which are really cool. Additionally, the logging functionality is also excellent.

The UI can be more user-friendly for new users.

I have been using Fortinet FortiAnalyzer for seven years.

Fortinet FortiAnalyzer is highly stable. In the seven years of usage, we have never needed to reinstall it or perform troubleshooting. We have not had to make any support calls to Fortinet either. We successfully performed upgrades from version five to six and from six to seven, all of which went smoothly.

Fortinet FortiAnalyzer is scalable.

The technical support is excellent. I have never encountered any problems with FortiAnalyzer, but the issues we faced with FortiGate, which I was unable to resolve on my own, were promptly resolved by their team.

Positive

The initial setup is straightforward. We can choose to install either a single node or a cluster. We run it in a virtual environment on firmware, and the process of installing the RPA takes around 15 minutes. Afterward, some configuration is required, including the installation of certificates and similar tasks. Thus, the entire process usually takes approximately one to two hours.

Once the installation is complete, we need to connect all the FortiGate Firewalls to the FortiAnalyzer. This step also involves configuring them securely. When I deploy this solution for a customer, it typically takes me about four to eight hours to complete the installation and configuration. 

The price is not expensive when compared to other solutions like Palo Alto.

In addition to the licensing, we pay for a support contract.

I would rate Fortinet FortiAnalyzer eight out of ten.

Fortinet FortiAnalyzer is only valuable for organizations that utilize ten or more FortiGates.

I recommend Fortinet FortiAnalyzer to others.

We collect the logs from Fortinet in order to search and get a better view of everything that's coming from FortiGate because the overview on FortiGate isn't the same. FortiAnalyzer provides an overview of the logs and everything that's happening there. We integrate FortiGate and FortiAnalyzer with the SOC that we're working on, which is an open-source security solution.

The other use case is to have logs. Because otherwise, in FortiGate, you don't have logs for a long period of time. You only have seven days if you don't have an account in FortiGuard. So, FortiAnalyzer provides a better understanding of what's happening there. And for our clients, we always recommend FortiAnalyzer.

FortiGate by itself is a good choice, but without FortiAnalyzer, you lose a lot of features. Even the free version of FortiAnalyzer provides some useful features.

It is easy to integrate Fortinet FortiAnalyzer with other products. You have a better overview of what's going on. For example, you get a smaller alert for an infected workstation if it causes some suspicious traffic, you see it right away in Fortinet.

The only issue that I can see is with the cost. For example, if you buy support for one year, you are messed up next year. It's better to buy another gateway.

I have been using Fortinet FortiAnalyzer for one year, and I am currently working with the latest version.

It is a very stable solution and integrates perfectly.

It is a scalable solution. Our company is very proud of FortiGate solutions.

The support team is good. We have some cases open with them, and they resolve them very quickly. Even when there is a breach of security, they patch it quickly.

It is very easy to set up and deploy. Even someone with little networking knowledge or a manager can quickly understand what's happening in the network, such as an increase in traffic from specific endpoints or which websites are being browsed, including social media.

You get a gateway, but without support, it's not worth much. We've also tried FortiGate virtual machines, but the price is so high that it's better to buy other appliances than to buy the license for the VM. 

We also work with third-party solutions. However, this solution is not for everyone, and even though it's free, it's easy to implement when you have money.

Overall, I would rate it an eight out of ten.

I would advise buying FortiGate and FortiAnalyzer together. They get it free of charge. When you buy FortiGate, you can put in a FortiAnalyzer VM for free. Although the free version has its limitations, you should get it because it doesn't cost you anything. When you try the free version of FortiAnalyzer, you'll see its potential, and you'll want more.

We use this solution to actively pick up and report on all activities and connectivity going through the FortiGate firewall.

We like the fact that we can run minute-by-minute reporting form this solution.

We also appreciate that the interface of this solution is very good, and doesn't require a lot of configuration, updating, or maintenance.

We would like to see some improvement on the upgrade process around this solution. There are sometimes communication issues when a new version of the firewall is implemented, and it fails to report back to this product.

We would also like to be able to pull off incident reports and display them graphically using this solution.

We have been using this solution for about three years now.

The stability of this solution is okay. There is some room for improvement, and so we would rate the stability as an eight out of ten.

We have found this to be a fairly scalable solution.

The initial setup of this solution is very easy, and takes around three hours to complete the implementation.

We carried out the implementation using in-house resources.

The renewals for this solution are carried out yearly.

We would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

Our customers are working with this product in their companies.

I haven't really played around with it so much. Basically, we're just doing log reviews, and that's it.

The initial setup is easy.

It's a very stable product.

We can scale the product as well. 

Support has been good in general. 

It offers pretty good documentation.

I like the interface they offer. 

I'm a reseller and integrator.

I can't really tell if anything is missing. Maybe we'll find something in the future, however, I'm not sure at the moment.

Their pricing model is not the best and needs work. 

It would be nice if there were more third-party integration capabilities. 

I've been using the solution for six months. It hasn't been that long. 

Like all Fortinet products, it is pretty stable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

The solution is scalable and expandable. It's not an issue at all. 

We have three people working on it in our organization. 

Technical support is fairly good. I haven't really needed to call support just yet.

Our company is a Fortinet supplier. We don't deal with other solutions. 

It's an easy initial setup. The implementation is not overly complex. The deployment is pretty fast and only takes two or three hours. 

I'm not a fan of the licensing system in general. I don't like their pricing model. 

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

Our primary use case of this solution is to deep-dive and get deep visibility analyzing of logs and proxy of the network. In other words, to get good customized reports.

The solution allows us to see what our users do on their computers. Some way they work all day long, but then we see that they have been surfing on net, using YouTube, streaming or looking at Facebook. It is therefore a very handy program. 

I am very impressed by the new version's security - on-premise or on the cloud. We have integrated the program with FortiView to get a better-customized log and more scalability on the application. The newer version is also much faster than the previous one and we have more visibility on whatever is happening on our system. 

Reporting wasn't very good in the previous version, but I believe it has greatly improved. The newer version has more features and the quality of reporting is better too. 

I would also like to see an improvement in the rebooting.

The stability of the solution is good - better than the previous version. Even the hardware had changed from DCVs to some STVs so now the hardware and software are more powerful compared to the previous version. We are now able to do 14-hour functionality. The program is disabled on the FortiManager by default, but we can enable it via the console in order to get the same visibility on the FortiAnalyzer. 

The scalability of the program is good and we are hoping to increase our usage. I would like to see new features and better functionality, though. For the scalability of the FortiAnalyzer, we need to take into consideration the time it will take to load 30 users instead of only 14. So maybe we would perhaps need an upgrade license for FortiAnalyzer deployment in that case.

The technical support isn't very good, I rate it a 2 out of 5. I don't really rely on their support because in the past I had some issues and the support team could not help me. 

The initial setup was really straightforward. The duration of the deployment depends on the requirements of the customer and the kind of reports they want to get. It can be customized to the client's specifications. Some only use it for visibility while others want to get detailed reports. If the requirements are complex, it will take around two days. Otherwise, it will take a few hours. It is very easy to deploy the FortiAnalyzer. 

This program is quite expensive. We have to renew the hardware every year and the hardware is very expensive. And we need to renew the licensing for application control too. 

I rate this solution a 6 out of 10. It is a good security firmware for automation. From a single dashboard we can get all the logs and traffic information on our firewall. We can get more visibility, so there is no need for the engineer to go in each and every firewall to get information. 

Even if we don't use the FortiAnalyzer, we can use a FortiCloud to send a log. But we are still using a cloud-based solution. We are using our internet bandwidth to send logs. That's in real-time or scheduling. If bandwidth is the key factor, I will not recommend the customer to use a FortiCloud. And even if you are using the FortiCloud, the basic free version, you have a retention log for only seven days. If you want to have a longer retention log, let's say for one year, then you need to create a subscription with FortiGate. In that case, it is better to have a FortiAnalyzer on-premise. Always try to listen to your customer.

My clients mainly use Fortinet FortiAnalyzer for the log and automation.

This solution can be deployed on-premise and on the cloud.

The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiAnalyzer are the GUI and there is automation that can be done with playbooks and mini-books.

Fortinet FortiAnalyzer can improve by introducing integration with other Fortinet solutions with automation with one interface would be helpful.

I have been using Fortinet FortiAnalyzer for approximately four years.

The stability of Fortinet FortiAnalyzer is good.

I rate the stability of Fortinet FortiAnalyzer a ten out of ten.

The solution is scalable.

This solution is suitable for all sized companies.

I rate the scalability of Fortinet FortiAnalyzer a nine out of ten.

My clients had a mixed experience with the support from Fortinet FortiAnalyzer. Some had good experiences and others had poor experiences.

I rate the support of Fortinet FortiAnalyzer a ten out of ten.

Neutral

My customers have tried Palo Alto Panorama and we only had positive feedback from Fortinet FortiAnalyzer.

The initial setup of Fortinet FortiAnalyzer is simple.

The price of Fortinet FortiAnalyzer is expensive.

I rate the price of Fortinet FortiAnalyzer a ten out of ten.

I rate Fortinet FortiAnalyzer a ten out of ten.

The normal use case for FortiAnalyzer is log review, log analysis, etc.

FortiAnalyzer makes it much easier for us to find an apparently compromised host on the network.

FortiAnalyzer has a robust ability to find a compromised host on your network, and when you identify a compromised host, you can address it.

Though FortiAnalyzer has improved over the last few versions, the user interface still has room for improvement. It's a bit dated-looking. I guess that's the nicest way to describe it. In FortiAnalyzer, I would like the ability to turn off some of the services. So, for example, FortiAnalyzer can take data from FortiCamera products and turn off the FortiCamera stuff to lighten the load on the box or turn off the FortiSock product.

I've been using FortiAnalyzer for about seven years.

FortiAnalyzer is really stable. It runs very well on its own and doesn't really need much TLC. It's a good product.

It's pretty scalable. The units that we have are the right size for the amount of stuff that we're running, but they do have products that scale up to handle significantly more Fortigate firewalls in log stuff than we do. I would say about 20 people use FortiAnalyzer. There's me, the security engineer, and the network engineering team, which uses it to look at stuff on the firewalls or check the firewall logs. And our information security group uses it to look at stuff that's going on with the firewalls as well as compromised hosts. It is being used pretty well as we get further down the path of deploying our FortiGate-managed endpoint product. There'll be more users and probably more use cases for it in the future.

I haven't really used a different solution previously. We've always used FortiAnalyzer in concert with Splunk.

FortiAnalyzer is a pretty straightforward product to deploy. It took half a day to deploy a pair of FortiAnalyzers and set them up in high availability mode. I deployed it by myself. These are hardware appliances, so there were a couple of devices that needed to be racked, powered, and configured.

I believe that these devices were procured with a five-year maintenance and support license up front. I work at a university, so the vendor provides a considerable higher ed discount.

It's all part of our Fortinet ecosystem, so we didn't really consider alternatives. I have a significant investment in FortiGate firewalls, so it just made sense to add FortiAnalyzer.

I rate FortiAnalyzer eight out of 10. It does an outstanding job of what it does. But the vendor doesn't necessarily live up to the hype, which is why it only got an eight out of 10. There's a lot of hype about the Fortinet security fabric. But for the large customers that buy their large firewalls and deploy them in infrastructure components, the Fortinet fabric does not work. If you are considering FortiAnalyzer, I suggest having a complete understanding of how your firewall infrastructure works in terms of what data you're going to and from it for analysis and what you're looking for in that analysis.

As part of a company, we manage customers of Fortinet FortiAnalyzer. The solution is used to analyze and locate traffic in a particular network. 

Fortinet FortiAnalyzer has helped my organization improve operational efficiency. The company has been using it for ten years. 

Report generation is very easy when using Fortinet FortiAnalyzer. Checking and reading the logs becomes seamless with the solution. Fortinet FortiAnalyzer also allows fast logging on a license when requesting information. For example, when you are trying to locate a logged destination or using the tool to find an error or fault, the basic networking is very fast. 

The upgrade process for Fortinet FortiAnalyzer is slow. 

I have been using Fortinet FortiAnalyzer for four years. 

Fortinet FortiAnalyzer is a stable product. 

The solution is highly scalable. 

It's easy to deploy Fortinet FortiAnalyzer. The solution needs to be upgraded every two or three years. The product is very easy to maintain. 

Due to the multiple features and the large environment compatibility, the solution is quite expensive. I would rate the pricing an eight out of ten. 

At our company, Kibana is sometimes used to pull logs and develop graphical representations from it. 

I would rate the solution an eight out of ten. I would advise others never to jump into upgrading to the latest firmware; wait until the present environment products are being used. There have been bad releases in the past, so everyone needs to carefully analyze options.