Fortinet FortiNAC Reviews

It is mainly used by clients in the healthcare sector. In certain instances, the solution is implemented to address specific scenarios involving the deployment of devices within the IT infrastructure.

Our users seek control and validation for devices connecting to their location. They require information about the specific devices connecting to the network, and they want to be notified when certain triggers occur. Additionally, they emphasize the importance of having security features implemented on their end to ensure a robust overall security posture.

Our clients aim to streamline their environment by opting for a unified brand provider, ensuring synchronization and compatibility within the entire system.

Our users have been asking for simpler documentation and training materials to facilitate the deployment process. I would suggest focusing on enhancing essential features, as our customers typically need to implement basic scenarios rather than advanced functionalities.

I have been working with it for approximately five months.

It provides excellent stability capabilities. I would rate it eight out of ten.

We are very satisfied with the level of scalability provided. I would rate it eight out of ten. In Taiwan, our clientele primarily consists of small to medium-sized enterprises, with a limited presence among larger companies. On a global scale, our customer base is predominantly composed of medium-sized organizations.

I would rate its customer service and support eight out of ten.

Positive

While we are familiar with the product and find it straightforward to deploy from our perspective, our clients may find it challenging. Therefore, we believe it's essential to offer the simplest implementation methods and documentation to assist them effectively.

Typically, we can complete a project in one to two days. However, there are instances where we assist our partners, who may require additional time, such as when applying a solution or utilizing a specific tool. The duration of the deployment largely depends on meeting the unique requirements of each customer.

The price is fair and reasonable for our clients.

I would recommend this solution primarily because, in the majority of cases, we have observed significant improvements in the security posture of our original customers and enterprise users. It effectively addresses issues arising from endpoint connections to the network, contributing to an enhanced overall security solution for our clients. I would rate it nine out of ten.

We use this solution for network access control to ensure that access into our environment, especially our endpoints, is controlled. We have 23 sites in different geographic locations, so we want to make sure that a person can't just sneak into a branch, plug in a device, and connect to the network.

We also want to reduce the risk of connecting endpoints that have vulnerabilities, for an added layer of protection. If you're missing patches of security, you basically have no firewall because those are potential entry points for attackers. We want to control and manage them from a central point so that, if there are any potentially hazardous connections, we are able to block the user but also remediate in the case of Microsoft updates or if updates are missing on their PC.

It's a very good solution and one thing I have noted is its simplicity and the ease of the set-up process. Of course, we worked with experts from Fortinet who helped us set it up, but if you look at how easy it is to follow the instructions, like the simplicity of the UI, it's like a daily language. If I want to block an access and I think it should flow a certain way, I can do it that way easily. In other solutions, like maybe Cisco ISE for example, I think you need to be a bit more technical to really understand what you are doing.

I hope that Fortinet can add a feature with a remediation mechanism when you find a broken piece so that you can click on something and download the needed update or resolve the firewall issue more easily. Currently, we have to use an external remediation server to download updates. For example, the Kaspersky antivirus was originally built just for threat detection and prevention. Still, they've gone to another level where the solution can point to a vulnerability, and you can click a button to remediate it, and the solution goes and pulls the download and fixes it.

I have been using this solution for three to four months.

So far, from what I have seen, it is a stable solution.

The solution is scalable. When we expand our network, we expand the solution.

Their remote support is great. Plus, there's the fact that they have 24/7 support services, so if we need anything, we're able to get the support that we need.

The initial setup was okay because we had help from the Fortinet experts. It was a new application for us, so obviously, there was lots of learning involved. However, we were able to explain what things needed to happen, and they were able to actually show us, "Okay. That one, we do like this. This one, we can do like that." Also, we had some additional things that weren't included in our environment, and the support engineers were able to provide those solutions for us. We continue to buy more solutions from them that work with what we have procured already, including firewalls, radio servers, and a variety of plug-ins.

We had help from the Fortinet team and we deployed in about two to four weeks. We had a time zone issue because I'm located in Zambia and we needed to be available on this side for them to set up the solution, so we set up Teams meetings to work together online. Also, they offered training to us so that we could get certified to manage the product ourselves.

It's a pricey solution. I don't know if it's maybe because the local partner overcharges me, but when I was researching other solutions, Cisco ISE is cheaper. My current license is about $60,000 to $70,000 thousand, while the equivalent through Cisco would be around $15,000.

It is a brilliant solution. My advice to those looking into the product would be to ensure that you get trained on how to use the solution so that you can fully appreciate and understand how to effectively implement and manage it. Then, secondly, you should do your research on the price. I don't know what the pricing is like from Fortinet, but we are not allowed to deal directly with them so we had to go through a distributor, which increased the price. Sometimes, if there is only one distributor in an area, you can get exploited.

On the technical side, I would rate this solution as a ten out of ten, but I'm not happy with the price, so as a whole, I would rate it as an eight out of ten.

We are using Fortinet FortiNAC as a competitive solution to Cisco. We are doing a POC for the solution.

The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiNAC are user device management and there are plenty of policies.

The training from Fortinet FortiNAC could improve. Fortinet has to plan for better training for its partners. Additionally, device management should have more integration with other devices, such as new and third-party devices.

I have been using Fortinet FortiNAC for approximately four years.

I rate the stability of Fortinet FortiNAC an eight out of ten.

The solution is highly scalable and can be done with ease. The solution is suitable for small to large enterprises.

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

The support from Fortinet FortiNAC needs to be improved around the world. The response time is too long. The support from other vendors is a lot better, such as Cisco. 

I rate the support from Fortinet FortiNAC a six out of ten.

Neutral

I have used Cisco solutions and Fortinet FortiNAC has better performance. Additionally, I have used Huawei, Palo Alto, and Juniper.

The initial setup of Fortinet FortiNAC is easy.

The price of Fortinet FortiNAC is less than Cisco's solution. However, the price could improve by being reduced.

The main competitors for Fortinet FortiNAC are Forcepoint and ClearPath. The main diffidence is Fortinet FortiNAC is more expensive but has better stability.

I rate Fortinet FortiNAC nine out of ten.

My use case involves a next-generation firewall and SIEM. My primary focus is on the next-generation firewall, VPNs, and URL filtering for my local employees. Additionally, I use other Fortinet tools like FortiAuthenticator, FortiNAC, and several other Fortinet products.

The support is excellent when I encounter a problem or need to implement a new product. The support team is always helpful and responsive.

You can update and upgrade the solution every three years with support by making a three-year contract. However, you cannot modify the solution's hardware. Fortinet continuously improves its support and technology. Regarding vulnerabilities, one of the concerns is with the SSL VPN. Instead, I use another VPN that doesn't have the commonly exploited vulnerabilities.

I have been using Fortinet FortiNAC for five years.

Fortinet is very user-friendly and helps maintain network security. It is both easy to use and affordable, especially considering the level of network security and reliability it provides.

I use other tools like XDR with SolarWinds, not directly with Fortinet. However, I am aware that Fortinet offers its products for SDR.

The initial setup is straightforward and took three months to complete. Security technicians do this job.

It is best for protection as it is more secure than others. ROI is very good.

The pricing is lower. It costs around 49$.

I recommend the solution.

Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

The primary use case that I have with the FortiNAC is allowing non-domain machines onto the domain Wi-Fi. Windows machines are easy to get onto a secured internal network because we control them, but for other devices such as Macintosh devices, TVs, and printers that we need to get access to the network, we want to be able to do that without having to hand out a password.

I also use it to condense my SSIDs down to one. We have a number of different wireless devices that require their own separate network, and instead of having three or four, or even five different SSIDs, one for each use, I am able to have a single SSID for all of them. This means I can have four or five different devices all with four to five different internal networks, but they all connect to the same wireless network. That has been helping me clean the air and also secure the connection with non-Windows devices into the internal domain.

The FortiNAC features I found the most valuable are security and the ability to consolidate wireless networks.

One of the biggest issues with Fortinet FortiNAC is that it is not intuitive and has a high learning curve.

I have been using Fortinet FortiNAC for a year.

I did not have any issues with the stability of this solution. I have a single instance that is pushed out across 20+ campuses and some use it more while others use it less. Once a device has been connected, set up, and programmed for, I've got little to no complaints about it. So, once it's up and running and set up correctly, I have had no issues with it.

My impression is that it is a scalable solution, but you have to either plan it or pay for it. You can buy additional instances and scale out more that way. The scalability becomes more of a network-wide logistical issue.

This product is quite complex to set up and you have to purchase two or three days' worth of professional installation, which is an added initial expense. This is understandable because it is not something you can pick up and just run with.

I can do the maintenance and updates myself, but I have been able to push some of the basic deployment tasks down to local technicians. I am able to do everything else on my own.

The biggest return on investment has been the security part of the solution. I can be sure that no one gets on my wireless internal network except for the devices IT people add on there because you can't add it with a password.

The other point on ROI is that it saves us time and money by enabling us to not have to come up with alternate solutions and other specialized hardware if I need to connect anything that does not easily fit in.

We have limited the licenses to only specific users and specific roles. We are using around 250, but we have a license for up to a thousand, and I am hoping to be able to expand that at some point.

When you buy the initial product, you pay for a license per device. They are perpetual licenses, so once you purchase them, you are good. Support after that is optional. When we got support, we got it for the appliance. There are hardware appliances, but we just went with a virtual appliance. A thousand licenses for up to a thousand users and three years of support, all came out to around $22,000.

I would rate FortiNAC a nine out of ten.

Fortinet FortiNAC is very easy to use, and we can run the proof of concept in one day. The main part of the configuration is to create the policies. We can present more of the solution and protect more clients with it.

One of our customers had a network segmentation project on which they were going to segment their network with new VLANs. They would have to spend a lot of time configuring around 500 switches if the segmentation was done without a NAC. We presented Fortinet FortiNAC to them, and we were able to help them with the VLAN segmentation project. With the Fortinet FortiNAC, you don't need to do the segmentation because the solution helps with the VLAN micro-segmentation. We could do all the segmentation they were planning by creating policies on the Fortinet FortiNAC. They only had to create the VLANs on all the 500 switches, which was easy because they have their network management solution and Aruba switches. All they needed to do was create the SNMP configuration. We had to discover all the switches because NAC has this feature on which you discover all the network devices, point the IP range, and then the NAC tries to find network devices in the environment. We created the policies the way they wanted. For instance, if it is an IP phone, it should go to the IP VLAN; if it is a Windows desktop, it should go to the desktop VLAN; and if it is a Windows server, it should go to the server VLAN. We created such policies using Fortinet FortiNAC, and we were able to help our customers reduce their expenses with their network project.

The most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiNAC is compliance, which we can do with the clients and the endpoints on the network. We can specify many rules to check if the device is on the domain and if there is any allowed process running on the endpoint. We can use the Fortinet FortiNAC to monitor if the antivirus is working and is up-to-date on the endpoint. If there is something wrong with the endpoint, we can quarantine it so that the endpoint won't have access to the internet or will only have access to the NAC portal that tells the user what is wrong with their endpoint.

Fortinet FortiNAC's documentation should be improved because there's not much debugging or troubleshooting documentation for the Fortinet FortiNAC. We had to open a ticket with Fortinet for an issue we faced on the FortiNAC. During this ticket handling, we were able to learn a lot of troubleshooting comments which are not properly documented. If it is documented, it's only internally on Fortinet, not as a public document. Fortinet FortiNAC must work around this and allow partners access to those troubleshooting documents.

I would like to see a more refined way to customize the portals. We are not able to do a lot of customization on the Fortinet FortiNAC portals. We cannot change anything or create a title for the Fortinet FortiNAC portal as we can on other portals.

I have been using Fortinet FortiNAC since 2018.

I rate Fortinet FortiNAC an eight out of ten for stability because I had issues with its previous versions.

I rate Fortinet FortiNAC a ten out of ten for scalability. We have plans to use Fortinet FortiNAC even more in the future. We have three ongoing projects, two projects that we just closed, and ongoing proof of concepts for another project.

Fortinet FortiNAC's technical support is very good. There are not a lot of Fortinet technicians enabled to troubleshoot FortiNAC. However, when we find one, they are very helpful.

It is straightforward to deploy Fortinet FortiNAC until you reach the compliance part. If you have a simple compliance rule, you have just one policy. However, with Fortinet FortiNAC, we can create layers of compliance, and that's when it gets complicated since there is no visual way to see those layers. You need to know your configuration to understand the layers. If someone new accesses the Fortinet FortiNAC solution and tries to look through your policies, they will need time and training to understand how the layers of compliance work.

One of our customers was going to spend more than 100 hours with technical people to configure all the segmentation they were planning for their network project. With the help of Fortinet FortiNAC, we reduced it from 100 hours to 10 hours of effort.

We are using the Fortinet FortiNAC 9.2 version. Since Fortinet FortiNAC is a network access control solution, it is better to have it on-premises, and closer to the devices it will manage.

Sometimes we have a lot of issues either because of the old models of switches the customers are using, or the customer is using a type of switch that is not manageable. However, that's more of a design issue.

You must have a good network for you to be able to use Fortinet FortiNAC. If you don't have a full network project with new devices and router switches, you must first fix your network.

Overall, I rate Fortinet FortiNAC a nine out of ten.

There are some features that are working well.

Technical support tries to be helpful, however, they just don't understand the technology.

We have tried to do a small POC and it failed. 

I had a bad experience with FortiNAC. The customer was asking for a NAC solution. I suggested FortiNAC. The switch with the customer was Cisco and it was not integrated with Cisco. We tried to provide him with a FortiSwitch as the core switch and the solution worked. It's working, however, not the expected way for the customer. The issue is it just doesn't integrate with Cisco switches. 

They need to change or upgrade the technology in the product.

The solution is not stable.

We have not been able to scale the product.

It's very hard to set up.

The solution is not stable. We've had some issues with the performance. It hasn't gone well. 

The product does not scale. 

The technical support is not the greatest. Some of the people need more training in the product. They aren't very helpful. 

The technical team from Fortinet, they are working with us. They have supported us. However, the problem is they don't have the knowledge on this product. This is the problem. The support team is good and is the best support team in all the products I work on it. However, the problem is they don't have knowledge about the FortiNAC. 

Neutral

It's not easy to set up. In terms of the ease of setup, I'd rate it at a one out of five. It's very difficult. 

I'd rate the pricing at a three out of five. It was not expensive, however, it is also not cheap. 

I've also looked at HP and compared the two solutions. HP is less expensive, however, it's not a huge difference. We're talking maybe a 1% to 2% difference in price if you compare them. A customer will pay more for HP if they do a POC. 

We are a partner and reseller of Fortinet solutions.

We did not have good luck with this product. It didn't work for my client. Maybe it works in other setups better, however, for us, it just was a disaster. 

I'd rate the product at a three out of ten.

I was a distributor and system integrator of FortiNAC. We were opening a lot of tickets and there were lots of bugs, so I replaced it with Forescout very easily. Within two days, I replaced everything. With FortiNAC, I was just doing the implementation, making things work properly, and beginning testing after five days.

FortiNAC is deployed on-prem. They're not major enough to be on cloud. Even on-prem is not doing good.

Version 9.1 has been an improvement on previous versions. It's a good solution for SMB.

Any NAC solution has three to four phases. The first phase is discovery and classification. They do discovery, but they are lacking a lot of features in terms of classification. Also, they don't do a lot of classifications. They cannot help you if, for example, you're classifying Windows, and you want to check which Windows version it is, like Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10. It's a little bit difficult. It's not easy like the other products. 

Classifications and visibility need to be improved a lot. They have to start work on being agentless. Agentless means they need to have strong integration with Windows. They need to use the RTC. They cannot force people to have an agent for people who are going to the domain. There needs to be compatibility with switches. For any NAC solution, all the inputs will be through switches. So if it is not compatible with switches, this is a big disaster. When I was doing their switches, there were a lot of customers whose switches were not compatible with FortiNAC.

If these things are well-designed, then they can compete in the NAC market. And also in terms of IOT, they cannot discover the IOT things perfectly or the OT, operation technology, things.

In terms of HA, they're having a lot of problems. You just need to put the HA between two clients, and you have a lot of problems. There are problems with the classifications. In terms of control, they're not doing well. They cannot do integration with SCCM, for example. They have a lot of things missing.

I started using FortiNAC since Fortinet bought it in 2018. They bought it with Bradford, and I was one of the few people in Saudi who knows FortiNAC. I have known FortiNAC since it was 7.2, and there were a lot of bugs. Even now, 8 has a lot of bugs.

Now they have jumped to 9.1 and 9.2. I used version 9.1.2. They just changed the dashboard, but it's still agent based. I deeply know what FortiNAC is doing, and it's not doing good. I used to work with them, and then I left. Now, I'm purely working with Forescout technology.

It's not a stable solution. If you want to do the HA, suddenly both appliances will be gone. Both FortiNAC and Forescout are being built on CentOS Linux. Doing HA with FortiNAC, which should be very simple, is just a disaster. I know three customers who are complaining.

I have switched to Forescout because in regards to technology, application, visibility, and control, Forescout is unbelievable. Forescout is a great platform for OT things.

I would rate this solution 5 out of 10. 

It's a difficult solution. I used to be the FortiNAC guy, so I will be tough on them. In Saudi, I was the number three FortiNAC guy.

I can recommend FortiNAC for SMBs: small and medium businesses, but they will still suffer. I would recommend Forescout more.