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Baherathan Kathirgamanathan - PeerSpot reviewer
Assistant Manager - Cloud Planning and Development at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Very good log analysis and reporting with a straightforward deployment
Pros and Cons
  • "The log analysis and reporting are both quite good."
  • "The solution lacks business intelligence features. It's much too basic."

What is our primary use case?

We're a service provider. Our clients use the solution for log management.

We are using physical and virtual end ware. We have a physical and logical virtual environment for using this platform, which we provide to our customers.

What is most valuable?

We are utilizing the previous site end dividers and the IPS, IDS DDoS features. 

The log analysis and reporting are both quite good. 

What needs improvement?

The solution doesn't have online analysis. We can't analyze certain parts of the logs. For example, we can't analyze current logs.

It would be helpful if we could use the system we use to monitor everything to also check the live traffic or live logs.

The solution lacks business intelligence features. It's much too basic.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using the solution for two or three years.

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What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The solution is stable. We've never faced issues.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The solution does not scale easily. It's a hardware solution. We have FortiAnalyzer hardware, and since it has a hardware agent on the storage ware, it requires Forti capacity for analyzing purposes. There's only a finite amount of space in the hardware itself. It isn't infinite.

How are customer service and support?

We've dealt with technical support in the past and we've been very satisfied at the level of support we've received so far.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup varies from company to company. Some are straightforward, some are complex.

Deployment is a simple task. FortiAnalyzer comes with the hardware version and a virtual agent. We just deploy and integrate it with the other Fortinet products.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

There is a lot of competition for Fortinet in this area, including USM and Palo Alto.

What other advice do I have?

We are Fortinet partners.

For those organizations that need to use a product for reporting or some analysis of logs, this is a good solution. 

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten. The features are basic, and there's not too much business intelligence behind them. If it offered more of that, I'd rate it higher.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
PeerSpot user
Head Cyberdefense at a tech vendor with 5,001-10,000 employees
MSP
Top 5
Offers fast report generation and logging with easy deployment
Pros and Cons
  • "Report generation is very easy"
  • "The upgradation process is slow"

What is our primary use case?

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

How has it helped my organization?

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

What is most valuable?

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. 

What needs improvement?

The upgrade process for Fortinet FortiAnalyzer is slow. 

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Fortinet FortiAnalyzer for four years. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Fortinet FortiAnalyzer is a stable product. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The solution is highly scalable. 

How was the initial setup?

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. 

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

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. 

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

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

What other advice do I have?

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. 

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:
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November 2024
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Information security officer at a financial services firm with 1-10 employees
Real User
Top 20
Good value for money, works well with other Fortinet solutions, and has helpful support
Pros and Cons
  • "The log events are quite useful for us."
  • "We'd like to see more embedded features."

What is our primary use case?

The solution is used for grabbing logs. It is designed for log aggregation of all Fortigate firewalls and to give visibility of traffic and usage. 

What is most valuable?

The log events are quite useful for us. The events aggregation from various Fortigate products makes it very helpful.

Technical support is helpful.

The stability is excellent.

This is a highly scalable product.

The setup is straightforward. 

What needs improvement?

We'd like to see more embedded features.

We'd like to see more SIEM capabilities. I'd love to see this merged with FortiSIEM for example. 

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using the solution for around 20 years. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability is great. I'd rate it ten out of ten for reliability. We rarely have any issues. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

You pay compared to the volume of logs you collect. It is very scalable. It's highly expandable. On a scale from one to ten, I'd rate the scalability ten out of ten. 

We have less than five network engineers using the product. 

How are customer service and support?

I've dealt with support in the past and found them helpful and responsive. 

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We use a variety of Fortigate products.

We did not use a different vendor previously. There is no other real option. We did try to use the free version of Splunk. We moved to Fortianalyzer as it works better in Fortinet products. Splunk is harder to fit into other Fortinet products. 

How was the initial setup?

The installation process only takes a couple of hours. It is easy to install. 

The maintenance is very minimal. One person can handle maintenance tasks. 

What about the implementation team?

We do use specialized consultants occasionally. However, I have been able to do it by myself as well in the past.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I cannot speak of the exact price. Someone else manages the contract. However, you do get good value for your money. It's not overly expensive. 

As it is on-premises, you do need some on-prem resources. You need a traditional hypervisor and need the ability to host the solution on your premises. 

What other advice do I have?

We're customers and end-users. 

We are using the latest version of the solution typically. 

I'd recommend the solution to other users. 

I would rate the solution ten out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Vice President of Innovation and Customer Solutions at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
Real User
Useful reports, scalable, and priced well
Pros and Cons
  • "The solution does what it is supposed to. I want it to do reports for Fortinet and it does it well."
  • "The FortiAnalyzer is not good at managing multi-version environments. If all your FortiGate are at different versions in the field, that's difficult. The one thing we didn't like is the fact you have to have 100% of your environment at the same release, which is not pleasant, to have it fully functional. You can have a different release, but to have it fully functional 100% of your environment has to be the same release."

What is our primary use case?

We're a managed service provider and we use Fortinet FortiAnalyzer to generate reports for our customers. We manage our customer's Fortinet environment and FortiAnalyzer allows us to send a monthly report or on-demand report to our customers.

What is most valuable?

The solution does what it is supposed to. I want it to do reports for Fortinet and it does it well.

What needs improvement?

The FortiAnalyzer is not good at managing multi-version environments. If all your FortiGate are at different versions in the field, that's difficult. The one thing we didn't like is the fact you have to have 100% of your environment at the same release, which is not pleasant, to have it fully functional. You can have a different release, but to have it fully functional 100% of your environment has to be the same release.

In a future release, if they could turn they could turn Fortinet FortiAnalyzer into a multi-vendor supporting tool it would be awesome. However, I do not think this will happen.

For how long have I used the solution?

I used Fortinet FortiAnalyzer for approximately two years.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Fortinet FortiAnalyzer is scalable.

Fortinet FortiAnalyzer is easy to scale. We have approximately 50-100 employees using this solution.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We have other log analyzers, but we have found with Fortinet FortiAnalyzerwhen you have a Fortinet environment, it's fully integrated. This was what we were looking for, we were not looking for multi-vendor solutions, we were looking for the best log analysis tool for Fortinet.

How was the initial setup?

The solution is easy to set up.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

We found the price of Fortinet FortiAnalyzer to be reasonable.

What other advice do I have?

I would advise those wanting to use Fortinet FortiAnalyzer to use an MSP, to use a managed service provider, they can call us.

I rate Fortinet FortiAnalyzer an eight out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Microsoft Azure
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
PeerSpot user
Senior Network Engineer at Dejpaad
Real User
Top 5Leaderboard
Easy to set up with good performance and reliability
Pros and Cons
  • "It's easy to set up the product."
  • "The solution costs too much."

What is our primary use case?

We use the solution for just one company for the analysis of the FortiGate switch.

What is most valuable?

The solution is scalable. 

The performance is good.

It's easy to set up the product. 

What needs improvement?

The solution costs too much. 

For how long have I used the solution?

I've used the solution for about three years. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The solution has been stable and reliable. There are no bugs or glitches, and it doesn't crash or freeze. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It's a scalable product and expands well.

Only admins use the solution. There are three to four people with direct access to the product. 

How are customer service and support?

I do not have access to technical support. In Iran, we have sanctions, and so we cannot get support. 

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is pretty straightforward and simple. It's not overly complex or difficult to manage. We can deploy it in about two hours. You only need one person to handle the deployment and maintenance tasks as it is very simple. 

What was our ROI?

We have witnessed a bit of an ROI and find the product to be worth the cost. 

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

We do need to pay for a license, and the payment is made yearly. There are no extra costs associated with the product beyond the main licensing fee. 

It is an expensive solution. 

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We did not evaluate other solutions before choosing this product.

What other advice do I have?

Overall, I'd rate the product eight out of ten in terms of its functionality. I have been pleased with its capabilities so far. I'd recommend the solution to others. 

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Group IT Manager at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Great dashboard with customizable reporting and excellent logs
Pros and Cons
  • "There are customizable workflows that you can work with. You can automate certain tasks in FortiAnaylzer in the incidents and events sections."
  • "It's possible that they could add some advanced analytics and some proactive controls for logging analytics. That will help a lot."

What is our primary use case?

The Primary case is to collect & monitor logs & events from all of our firewalls and appliances in one single interface with analysis

How has it helped my organization?

Our work has been more focused and efficient due to the automatic notifications and reports

What is most valuable?

You can monitor all appliances from a centralized location. 

You have a front dashboard for all our operations and all the logs. If you need to search for anything you can just dig deep into the logs.

For example, if you are searching for an email to find out why it is blocked, you will be able to see the policy that blocked it, which logs were triggered, etc... It gives you all the information you need right there, from the dashboard.

The solution offers excellent customizable reports. In our case, we needed a monthly report of all internet consumption, and we were able to easily create this.

There are pre-defined templates. The logs cover any question or need that we populate within these templates. However, you can also build your own template.

There is great analytics that can be used in different departments. For example, our marketing department can go more into media patterns and not just into browsing patterns.

Everything is easily visible and can be tracked and studied.

SOC is very helpful. It shows which IPs are targeting your environments. It shows you the threat levels of all the threats you're facing - including the locations, which policy was triggered et cetera. It will even tell you if the system blocked the threat or not.

FortiAnaylzer is compatible with all of our web browsers. 

There are customizable workflows that you can work with. You can automate certain tasks in FortiAnaylzer in the incidents and events sections. 

What needs improvement?

It is a pretty big software package. It has a lot of features which maybe aren't that useful. 

It's possible that they could add some advanced analytics and some proactive controls for logging analytics. That will help a lot.

The could be more automation and more artificial intelligence integrated into the solution.

It was a service model application originally. It needs to have some artificial intelligence in dealing with the analysis of the nodes, and not just showing the nodes. I'm one version behind the latest version, so I don't know if they added it yet, however, if they haven't it would be a good thing to put into their roadmap.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using the solution for four years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

My solution is based on VM ova image which is predefined by Fortinet. I don't remember when was the last time I restarted the machine which shows no matter what is the size of logs collected the system doesn't crash.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability is pretty good. It's only limited in the log size. You can buy five gigs or 10 gigs if you need to. It depends on how you're going to handle/store the logs.

That said, it is scalable since you are only billed with the size of logs you are using as per the packages and you don't need to modify the cpu/ram. I have it installed on a VM environment and it's connecting to data all over my sites that are both inside and outside Lebanon.

How are customer service and technical support?

Technical support is perfect whether from the vendor or from the online support. I'm lucky to have a partner in Lebanon who is a preferred platinum partner with Fortinet. Whenever we open a case with them we always get a clear response. They are professional. We're quite satisfied with the level of support we are getting.

How was the initial setup?

It is very straight forward, the only thing that you might do some customization in the report and the event management. Other than this everything is predefined and based on templates, so you are able to add your touch on the reports as well.

What about the implementation team?

I have implemented it with a vendor who is the leader in our region working with Fortinet Solutions.

What other advice do I have?

We're Fortinet end-users.

I was on older versions and now I'm with a newer version. People have faced many issues after downloading the latest update so I tend to keep one update back from the newest one to avoid issues.

I'd advise other potential users that, first of all, if they have Fortinet products in their environment, they should consider FortiAnaylzer. If they don't have it, they shouldn't consider it. They need to have Fortinet appliances.

Secondly, it is a very easy configuration, so companies will not have any problems configuring the FortiAnaylzer. It doesn't require a lot of resources.

We're going to bring a dedicated server for our FortiAnaylzer due to the fact that it is a bit of a predefined virtual machine that we can download from Fortinet's side. If you don't want to go deep in the reports and logs, it can rely on the built-in reporting tools in your appliances.

If you happen to have three Fortinet solutions in your environment then you need to have a FortiAnaylzer as it helps a lot in troubleshooting. It helps a lot with predicting everything that you might see happening on a lot on your network. You will need to have FortiAnaylzer due to the fact that the reporting is not that advanced in the appliances.

Overall, I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. If it was more automated and added in some AI elements, I would rate it higher.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Network & Security Administrator at Diamond Bank Plc
Real User
Simple solution that can is good for log collection but it should be more efficient
Pros and Cons
  • "It is a simple and solution."
  • "I'm looking for something more efficient to analyze different foreign things. That's why FortiSIEM could compete with FortiAnalyzer."

What is our primary use case?

We use the on-prem deployment model of this solution.

My primary use case for this solution is for log collection. I have a lot of FortiGates that I have to collect logs from, so I primarily use it for log collection. We plan to deploy a SIEM and we want to try to see how to integrate all the solutions to our SIEM. We are processing for PCI data specifications. We have to respond to PCI requirements, so that's why we are making some changes and acquiring some new security solutions to deploy. Among them, we have FortiSIEM and other security solutions like antivirus.

What is most valuable?

It is a simple and solution. I can structuralize all my FortiGate logs but it's not so good from the administrative side. I have FortiGate in four countries and I am responsible for securing Fortinet. I also have to manage FortiGate in other countries, not just my own. If I have to go through each FortiGate it's going to be a little bit complicated. FortiAnalyzer is a good product; but, I keep thinking that FortiAnalyzer isn't really what I'm looking for which is why I am looking to acquire a SIEM solution. It will give me more log collection possibilities. 

What needs improvement?

I'm looking for something more efficient to analyze different foreign things. That's why FortiSIEM could compete with FortiAnalyzer. 

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using this solution in this company for three months.

How are customer service and technical support?

I haven't had to contact their technical support yet. 

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is not that complex. I didn't do the initial configuration, it was already set up, I'm only managing it right now. If we're talking about the integration side, like how to integrate FortiGate in FortiAnalyzer, I don't think it's complex. That's why they are known as one of the leaders in security.

What other advice do I have?

I would recommend this solution to somebody considering it. 

The relevance of this solution will depend on the case. If you are considering this solution I would ask what you really intend to accomplish with it and what model you want. It's going to be based on the data you need to protect and analyze.

If I had to choose between FortiSIEM and FortiAnalyzer for log position it's better to go for SIEM. We all know that we can do a lot more with SIEM than just a log collection. Log collection is included in FortiSIEM; so, why acquire FortiAnalyzer is you can have FortiSIEM?

I would rate FortiAnalyzer a 6.5 out of ten. 

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Section Head, Enterprise Solutions & SI Management at HGC Global Communications Limited
Real User
Good performance, reliable, but interface could improve
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiAnalyzer is its performance."
  • "Fortinet FortiAnalyzer could improve the user interface, and the experience of users receiving the reports and tracking could be better."

What is our primary use case?

We are using Fortinet FortiAnalyzer for the managing surface for our customers. We are a service provider and we are focusing on providing a service to our customers.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiAnalyzer is its performance.

What needs improvement?

Fortinet FortiAnalyzer could improve the user interface, and the experience of users receiving the reports and tracking could be better.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Fortinet FortiAnalyzer for approximately three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Fortinet FortiAnalyzer is stable.

How are customer service and support?

The support from Fortinet FortiAnalyzer is good.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup of Fortinet FortiAnalyzer is fine. There is a lot of browsing and a lot of hierarchy that you need to have a particularly good understanding of in order to track the right things that you want to select.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

There is a license needed to use this solution.

What other advice do I have?

My advice to others is they have to assess well what kind of specific function or what kind of solution they are looking for.

I recommend this solution to others, but it depends on their usage.

I rate Fortinet FortiAnalyzer a seven out of ten.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
PeerSpot user
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Updated: November 2024
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Log Management
Buyer's Guide
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