Fortinet FortiGate-VM Reviews

We installed Fortinet FortiGate-VM for security purposes. Our main motivation is for security reasons and improving networking.

The most valuable features are network security, VLAN, network protection, and encryption are very valuable to us.

Integration could be better. Whatever devices I'm using with FortiGate are all compatible. The access points and switches are also FortiGate, so I can easily integrate them. But it would be better if we could embed other devices as well. There are compatibility issues with other brands, and we need that. We can only integrate universal brands with FortiGate. The initial setup could also be easier.

I have been working with Fortinet FortiGate-VM for three years.

It's stable, and our customers aren't giving us much of a problem.

Our customers are very happy with its scalability.

Technical support is good. However, we're not satisfied with partner support, and we're looking to diversify. We have signed up, and we're training our engineers.

The initial setup is a little complex. Not too complex, but it's good because we like to work. It takes half an hour at most to install and deploy this solution.

We're a reseller, and we implement this solution.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Fortinet FortiGate-VM an eight.

It's an edge firewall that provides failover and redundancy management with the SD-WAN. We also use it for its traffic shaping capabilities and visibility through a central orchestrator.

It improves an organization because it's a single vendor solution for edge management.

It allows us to handle multiple types of connections at the edge and provide the proper routing and firewall services.

I really like that it's internationally deployable.

There should be more options to use lower-end models in a high availability configuration.

They should continue to improve the traffic shaping; they should add some AI to the traffic shaping. They should also consider learning from other organizations as opposed to just internally. They should follow patterns instead of everyone having to recognize patterns and make adjustments on their own. Instead, they should add some form of intelligence to guide administrators in best practices with traffic shaping. I think this will become very important as we move more toward a SaaS-type world. 

I have been using Fortinet FortiGate-VM for the past three years.

Stability is also high to very high. 

I'd say scalability is somewhere between high to very high.

The initial setup depends on the types of connections that you're bringing into it and the complexity of the business requirements for individual networks. It depends on how you want to route across the company. Overall, I'd say it's less complex than Cisco but it really depends on who's doing it. 

My advice would be to look to the anticipated growth of the network before starting the implementation so that you are appropriately sizing the scope and size of the equipment.

Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give this solution a rating of seven — it's a solid product. Depending on the solution you need, some of the appliances can be a little cost-prohibitive at the high end, but at the low end, they're very cost-effective. Plus, the interface is simple to use. For the right customer, I think it's a solid play.

We use the solution for IPS, internal segmentation, inspections, and VPN.

The most valuable features we have found to be the VPN, ease of use, and overall simplicity.

Web filtering is a feature that needs some improvement. There should be some additional features to allow active users to change their own passwords.

Additionally, the secure web gateway and the inspection feature need more security improvement in the next release.

I have been using the solution for approximately one year.

The solution has been reliable in my experience.

We have approximately 250 users using the solution in my organization and we plan to increase usage.

The technical support has been good.

The solution is easy to install.

We are on an annual license for this solution and it could be cheaper.

Previously we evaluated other solutions, such as Check Point and the Palo Alto firewalls. This solution is easier to understand than the others.

I would recommend this solution to others. Especially if they are new to these types of solutions, it is easy to understand.

I rate Fortinet FortiGate-VM an eight out of ten.

We primarily provide the solution to our clients. We typically use it in the financial services industry.

The solution is very easy to set up. It doesn't take a lot of time and offers a quick deployment, so you can start using it almost right away.

It's a very secure product. The security provided is excellent and an organization can feel very safe while using it.

The scalability of the solution needs to be improved.

The price model is not transparent by any means and should be made more clear. What's included in the packages is often not very obvious.

I've been using the solution for two years at this point.

The stability of the solution is pretty good. We don't have any blocks and we don't have problems with the solution in terms of bugs or crashes. We have a monitor. We have an aux for many services. It really is problem-free.

The solution has some issues with scalability. I wouldn't say it's easy to scale at all.

Also, with the pricing model being so confusing, companies can't really wrap their arms around what the final pricing would be when they scale up, which makes it difficult for budgeting purposes. 

We don't use technical support from Fortinet. Rather, we get it from a local company. They are okay. They aren't terrible, however, they could be better. Their service is average at best.

The initial setup is straightforward. We didn't find it to be complex at all. 

Deployment is quick and easy. It takes a maximum of two hours to handle everything.

The pricing of the solution is strange. We don't understand exactly how it's calculated or how it works.

We recommend this firewall often and we've actually used many solutions previously. Since we chose this one, we've been overall quite happy with the results. We recommend it largely due to the fact that we use the solution ourselves. 

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. If it wasn't for the pricing model and the scalability issues, I would rate it higher.

In terms of what features should be improved with Fortinet, I feel it should give better reports. They provide some basic reports in the entry-level and middleware products but I would love this product if they gave more reports, including more MIS from the traffic because they capture everything in the UTM. They don't produce a team value report. They don't produce a usable report where the IT manager, IT head or CTO can analyze where the attack happened or figure out where the bridge is down, etc. The reports are basic. There are engines which make everything on the GUI. All the user can potentially access for the risky function in the Fortinet but it should be on the GUI, it should not be behind the command line. They could definitely provide the FortiAnalyzer with the basic UTM in a bundle pack.

People should not have to ask for another FortiAnalyzer. It's an entry-level product. I understand that FortiAnalyzer is an expert level product but the functionality should be available at the entry-level as well. Fortinet should think about the entry-level and give it managing capabilities. That's why I selected Sophos because, for a small or medium office, all the reports are available there.

Secondly, Sophos is cost-effective. It is comparatively much cheaper. Sophos is available for a much cheaper price than Fortinet. Also, they have some other functions like sandboxing and others. FortiGate should be more customer-friendly and budgeted better. If I am a buyer, I do not want multiple appliances to manage. It should be one box, one appliance. One mobile should do everything. Multiple products require IT to create a workaround. You have to buy two products and then there is actually another one with that, one plus one, and then there is multiple management, so the product is definitely cumbersome. The beauty of the product is implementation and maintenance without it.

I have my own team to maintain this product. We are very happy as a Sophos user, as we get whatever we want from the reporting point of view. There are no glitches. There is no one issue in particular. When I ask, or my team asks, how the network is working and why there is network latency there are reports about where the traffic is going and I do not have the input after moving or switching to Sophos. I can get the support regarding which IP is working where and which IPs are making traffic, and more.

I have been personally using FortiGate-VM for two years.

We already procured Sophos. I already ordered two devices from our Indian partner.

We are now partners with Sophos. We were partners with FortiGate for the last year.

The first reason that we switched is because of our work use cases. We moved 80% of our infrastructure to AWS outsource. So we do not require a big firewall anymore. We are a 50 to 70 employee organization so a different firewall is required. We have a 310 exchange enterprise-level firewall. So we moved to 83210 Sophos. The reason why we are changing to different technologies is the comprehensive reports that Sophos provides at the very basic entry-level firewall. In the FortiGate, we have to also have another plan for data analyzer.

The second thing which I believe is that FortiGate has some special functions in the CLI (command-line interface) mode. Sophos does not support that and all its functions are on the UI. So it's easier management in Sophos compared to FortiGate. 

In terms of ease of use, if you implement FortiGate in your organization, you must have a FortiGate person who knows FortiGate and then three, four, or five years to learn to maintain the FortiGate device. Whereas Sophos doesn't require that much because all the things are on the UI. So anybody can understand it from the UI.

I can give you an example of the issue with UI. This is a basic thing. In the UI, you could go to the FortiGate console and work directly in the command. You can manage it from the command but you must have command line experience to manage the FortiGate device. If I want to see the traffic and where it goes and where it's from or any attack, in case of an attack, you need FortiAnalyzer to analyze, to track the packet, to protect the traffic. So that's easily available in other products like Sophos 83210. 

The cost of Sophos and other players is better compared to the FortiGate. FortiGate is a more important product in the industry. It is recommended, but the cost is also a major point in evaluating Fortinet's firewall solutions in our niche.

On a scale of 1 to 10, I'd give it a 9. 

FortiGate is a nice and very good product but the implementation and post-implementation of the product are cumbersome. You have to manage four devices instead of two devices if I go for FortiAnalyzer. For a small, entry-level business, Fortinet should give the entire reporting on the UI so that end to end engineers can manage efficiently. So as technology is concerned, I give eight out of 10, but because of reporting, I would give five out of 10. I am just giving an example: if I know everything or you know everything but if you can't explain it, how do other people come to know that you know everything? FortiGate clearly captures each and everything for the backup capture and everything but it doesn't show what it is acquiring. Analytical reports are missing from there.

We use Fortinet FortiGate-VM as a firewall, for intrusion detection and prevention to protect our Azure data center, principal operation sites, and our mobile users. 

Together with the FortiAnalizer we have a better grasp of our security position and understand the type of adversary attacks our installations.

The thing that I like the most is that they're very willing to work with us to resolve issues that they haven't taken care of before in their product. 

The end-user protection suite is very good, including the log analysis feature that they now have.

The Fortinet solution has resolved the issues with Microsoft Azure active directory.  This integration allows us to build rules based on Grupo membership for access to data center assets on individual bases.

We have used the Fortigate and Forticlient solutions for three years and they have proven to be very stable solutions.  

Fortinet FortiGate-VM is very stable.

The solution has proven to be scalable to all our requirements. In the years using Fortinet, we have had no cases of scalability due to Fortinet. We have had to increase the firewall resources to deal with a large increase in Forticlient connections.

The technical support is very good.

Positive

We previously used Check Point. Though it is a good solution, the license costs became too high for our organization and obliged us to look for another option.

The initial setup was a little complicated due to our engineers working on knowledge of Checkpoint and trying to replicate the same configurations.  Hindsight finds it may have been less complicated to build the rules from the ground up rather than importing them.

Mostly through a vendor team at first, however, the process was plagued by miscommunications and inadequate scope definitions.

Be very clear with your security consultant who is proposing Fortinet as a solution regarding all the features and integrations you expect to achieve with the solution.

We reviewed Palo Alto, Barracuda, and Sophos.

Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give this solution a rating of eight.

FortiGate is an Exhibition Firewall that comes with the Antivirus, IPS, and Web Applications

The most valuable features are the IPS and Antivirus.

The firewall functionalities are fine.

It has a lot of features.

It needs an Application Inspection. The threat landscape is very high. Anyone can exploit the flow-based policies. It is always better to have intern-based policies.

I have been using Fortinet FortiGate-VM for more than two years.

We are using the latest version.

Fortinet FortiGate-VM is a reliable product.

It is easy to scale this solution, but there are some challenges with Azure and high availability.

My experience with technical support was good.

We are also using Palo Alto.

The initial setup was simple.

We don't require a lot of maintenance. Most of the maintenance is carried out by Microsoft.

It is a custom operating system that is available on FortiGate Firewall, and Palo Alto Firewall.

Microsoft doesn't do anything in terms of upgrades of the patches. They only do basic maintenance at the host level and the VM level.

We only have one person managing the device.

We were able to complete the installation on our own.

Pricing is somewhere in the middle. It's a mid-ranged product.

There are additional fees with this solution.

I would recommend this solution to others. It is a stable firmware, with many releases. It has a lot of features. Apart from the firewall, it comes with antivirus, IPS, and Web Application Firewall.

It has a lot of integration with external connectors, such as Teams, that are protected from threats that come from external sources.

I would rate Fortinet FortiGate-VM an eight out of ten.

We primarily use the solution for the firewall capabilities and security.

The solution is easy to use. It's not overly difficult.

The product is quite stable. We didn't have any issues related to stability at all.

The performance overall is very good.

The installation process is straightforward.

The pricing is okay.

We've found the scalability to be good.

There should be a bit more automation.

There could be more integration capabilities.

Technical support could be better.

The solution needs more features surrounding event log management.

We used the solution for three or four years.

The solution is very stable. It's reliable and the performance is good. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze.

The solution is quite scalable. If a company needs to expand the solution, it has the capabilities to do so.

We have about 500 people on the solution currently.

We've since moved away from the solution to a cloud-based product. We don't intent to increase usage for that reason.

We would like the technical support to be slightly improved. We aren't completely satisfied with it at this time.

The initial setup is not complex at all. It's very straightforward. It's simple.

I can't recall exactly how long the deployment process took.

We had two technicians that handled the implementation. It doesn't take a lot of people.

We found the pricing to be okay. It's reasonable and not too expensive.

We were customers and end-users of the product. That is no longer the case.

We've moved off of the product recently. We wanted a cloud-based option and therefore we switched. 

Overall, I would recommend the solution. I would rate it at a ten out of ten.