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Announcing the Top Rated Firewall Software for 2019

April 3rd, 2019 8 min read

TrustRadius Top Rated

Today, we awarded the 2019 TrustRadius Top Rated badges for Firewall Software. The TrustRadius Top Rated awards are the most trusted in the industry because they are an unbiased reflection of customer sentiment, based solely on user feedback and satisfaction scores. Top Rated awards are the voice of the market and are not influenced by analyst opinion, the vendor’s company size, popularity, or status as a TrustRadius customer.

Firewall Software

Firewall software, or firmware, allows companies to control and filter what types of information can be transmitted across a network. It does this by enforcing a set of rules about what types of data is allowed to flow in and out of the network. Firewalls help companies prevent against viruses and other cyberattacks, ensure company personnel are not able to share sensitive information outside the network, and can be used inside the network to block access to certain websites, such as social media and gaming sites. The two main types of firewalls are host-based and network-based. Host-based firewalls need to be installed on the individual servers that control inbound and outbound traffic, while network-based firewalls can be built into the infrastructure of the cloud itself, or offered as a virtual firewall service. Different types of firewall software is associated with different types of filtering mechanisms; these include packet filtering, proxy service, stateful inspection, and more recently, next-generation firewalls.

Common firewall software features include traffic classification and control, threat identification and protection, LDAP and active directory integration, physical and virtual environment support, network address translation (NAT), port address translation (PAT), access to client virtual private networks (VPNs), URL blocking, and application visibility and control.  Additional features that not all firewalls may offer include application awareness, identity awareness (at the user and group level), integrated intrusion detection and prevention systems, and SSL and SSH inspection.

Here are the winners:

Cisco Meraki MX Firewalls

cisco meraki mx firewalls tr scoreCisco offers the Meraki MX identify-based next-generation firewalls (NGFW) solution along with a host of other security appliances. The firewalls feature layer-7 traffic classification and control, allowing companies to control network access from evasive, encrypted, and peer-to-peer applications. With Meraki MX Firewalls, companies can prioritize use of applications such as video conferencing software, while blocking internal access to sites like Netflix or Facebook. The firewall also includes an integrated intrusion detection and prevention (IDS / IPS) engine based on Sourcefire’s Snort technology, and identify-based and device aware network access controls. Just over half of Meraki MX Firewalls users (52%) on TrustRadius are from midsize businesses. Reviewers appreciate Meraki MX Firewalls’ ease of configuration and management, and feature availability.

“We use the Cisco Meraki MX Firewall for our whole organization and utilize their firewall, switches, and wireless APs at a branch office and also for remote employees to connect everyone on a single VPN. They could not be easier to setup initially nor easier to manage, both on site and remotely. They have had every feature we could think of and again, I can’t undersell how easy they are to manage.”

Jonathan Tanis | Director of Product Development | BeyondPay, Inc

[easy-tweet tweet=”Cisco Meraki MX Firewalls: They have had every feature we could think of.” user=”trustradius” template=”qlite”]

FortiGate

fortigate tr score

From Fortinet, FortiGate offers companies an enterprise-grade NGFW solution available via appliance, virtual machine (VM), or the cloud. FortiGate firewalls provide companies with threat protection and SSL inspection, visibility into cloud applications and IoT devices, ultra low latency network optimization, and auditing tools. Fortinet also offers FortiGaurd Security Services, which users often paired with FortiGate firewalls. These services include application control, web filtering, antivirus, intrusion prevention, content disarm and reconstruction, virus outbreak protection, and IP reputation & anti-botnet security capabilities. The majority of FortiGate firewalls users (54%) on TrustRadius are from midsize businesses. Reviewers value FortiGate’s easy to use GUI, responsive customer support, and feature-rich firewall.

“[Fortigate] is being used across the entire organization. We are using it as our primary Internet facing firewall… VPN client is easy to use and can be customized for your organization… All features are enabled on the firewall with little to no impact on performance… Easy to configure interface on the firewall but also has a command line available for high level admins… Excellent technical support department – very quick response time.”

Verified User | Manager in Information Technology | Construction Company

[easy-tweet tweet=”FortiGate: VPN client is easy to use and can be customized for your organization” user=”trustradius” template=”qlite”]

Cisco ASA

cisco asa tr score

Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) is a firewall and network security platform that is suitable for distributed network environments, and provides companies with enterprise level firewall capabilities in the form of a standalone appliance, blade, or virtual appliance. The product offers features such as a next generation intrusion prevention system, access to a client VPN, identity-based firewall technology, dynamic routing and site-to-site VPN, support for next-generation encryption standards, and integration with Cisco’s Cloud Web Security solution. A large portion (46%) of Cisco ASA users on TrustRadius are from midsize businesses. Reviewers consistently highlight Cisco ASA’s hardware reliability and stability, frequent and smooth software updates, and firewall performance.

“We have about a dozen Cisco ASA models deployed from 5505-5545… The problems these units address are two-fold: to protect our internal network from foreign networks that we have no control over, and to protect the foreign networks from the chance of getting infected by something on our internal network. Cisco is pretty good about putting out security-related updates so we can rest assured that the networks can be as safe as possible. The hardware is very reliable and I don’t recall any hardware related issues in the 5+ years of using them.”

Verified User | Technician in Information Technology | Information Technology and Services Company

[easy-tweet tweet=”Cisco ASA: we can rest assured that the networks can be as safe as possible” user=”trustradius” template=”qlite”]

Congratulations to the winners of the Top Rated Firewall Software Award!

Top Rated Criteria

Products included in the 2019 Top Rated Firewall Software list must have been in the top tier of their category TrustMap as of March 15th, 2019. To qualify for the Firewall Software Top Rated Award, products must have at least 10 reviews written within the past year, a TRScore of at least 7.5 out of 10, and must receive at least 1.5% of the traffic in their category.  Every reviewer is verified and every review is vetted before publication. Products are plotted on the TrustMap based on end-user data, including users’ likelihood to recommend scores as well as buyer research patterns. To learn more about TrustMaps and Top Rated methodology, check out this page.

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