Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center vs. Fortinet FortiGate

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center (formerly Firepower Management Center) are a firewall policy and intrusion detection appliance management system, providing an administrative nerve center for managing critical Cisco network security solutions. It provides complete and unified management over firewalls, application control, intrusion prevention, URL filtering, and advanced malware protection. Easily go from managing a firewall to controlling applications to investigating and remediating…N/A
FortiGate
Score 8.5 out of 10
N/A
FortiNet FortiGate is a firewall option with high integrability. It offers a variety of deployment options and next-gen firewall capabilities, including integration with IaaS cloud platforms and public cloud environments.N/A
Pricing
Cisco Secure Firewall Management CenterFortinet FortiGate
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Cisco Secure Firewall Management CenterFortiGate
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsFortiGate pricing starts at $250 for home office use, up to $300,000 for large enterprise appliances. Must contact sales team for pricing.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Cisco Secure Firewall Management CenterFortinet FortiGate
Considered Both Products
Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center
Chose Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center
FortiGate and maybe a little bit behind Palo Alto. But I do like the telos is probably has better backing than from a security perspective than Palo Alto. So they're almost even
Chose Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center
We selected Cisco due to the availability and reputation of their products. We had checked a few others, and found issues that may or may not have affected our company negatively. Cisco's devices, however, have proven to have their own issues and challenges.
Chose Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center
Utilized across the entire organization as a single point of entry to the Internet. It provides a secure solution for internal and external users, ensuring secure access to all applications. The AnyConnect solution provides a secure method for remote users to connect into …
FortiGate

No answer on this topic

Features
Cisco Secure Firewall Management CenterFortinet FortiGate
Firewall Security Management
Comparison of Firewall Security Management features of Product A and Product B
Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center
8.2
19 Ratings
1% above category average
Fortinet FortiGate
-
Ratings
Policy planning and rule management8.519 Ratings00 Ratings
Automated Policy Orchestration7.117 Ratings00 Ratings
Device Discovery8.017 Ratings00 Ratings
Policy Compliance Auditing7.617 Ratings00 Ratings
Attack Path Simulation Testing8.814 Ratings00 Ratings
Anomalous Event or Behavior Deviation8.217 Ratings00 Ratings
Vulnerability Scans8.314 Ratings00 Ratings
Firewall Rule Cleanup9.016 Ratings00 Ratings
Firewall
Comparison of Firewall features of Product A and Product B
Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center
-
Ratings
Fortinet FortiGate
8.6
52 Ratings
0% below category average
Identification Technologies00 Ratings8.850 Ratings
Visualization Tools00 Ratings8.250 Ratings
Content Inspection00 Ratings8.851 Ratings
Policy-based Controls00 Ratings8.852 Ratings
Active Directory and LDAP00 Ratings8.649 Ratings
Firewall Management Console00 Ratings7.751 Ratings
Reporting and Logging00 Ratings8.152 Ratings
VPN00 Ratings9.051 Ratings
High Availability00 Ratings9.347 Ratings
Stateful Inspection00 Ratings9.250 Ratings
Proxy Server00 Ratings8.438 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Cisco Secure Firewall Management CenterFortinet FortiGate
Small Businesses

No answers on this topic

pfSense
pfSense
Score 9.4 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Palo Alto Panorama
Palo Alto Panorama
Score 8.6 out of 10
pfSense
pfSense
Score 9.4 out of 10
Enterprises
ServiceNow IT Operations Management
ServiceNow IT Operations Management
Score 8.8 out of 10
Palo Alto Networks Virtualized Next-Generation Firewalls - VM Series
Palo Alto Networks Virtualized Next-Generation Firewalls - VM Series
Score 9.5 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Cisco Secure Firewall Management CenterFortinet FortiGate
Likelihood to Recommend
7.9
(22 ratings)
8.7
(79 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(1 ratings)
7.0
(5 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(4 ratings)
8.6
(20 ratings)
Availability
10.0
(1 ratings)
8.0
(3 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(2 ratings)
Support Rating
8.0
(7 ratings)
9.0
(27 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.0
(1 ratings)
5.0
(5 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
7.0
(2 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Ease of integration
8.0
(1 ratings)
7.0
(2 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
7.0
(3 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(2 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(2 ratings)
User Testimonials
Cisco Secure Firewall Management CenterFortinet FortiGate
Likelihood to Recommend
Cisco
FMC is feature-rich and user-friendly. Cisco firewalls can run on standalone mode (FDM) but fewer features are supported on FDM. FMC is a must when working with Cisco Firewall. Migration from Cisco ASA to Cisco FTD is easy. There is a tool (FMT) that converts and imports the cisco IOS configuration file to FMC. FMC runs in VM or can be purchased as a physical appliance. The downside is that FMC is not quite fast and has bugs, especially when running in the older version 5x. and 6x.
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Fortinet
Fortinet FortiGate addressed an immediate security issue we had a few years ago. The device gave us a much clearer picture of the activities on our network and also more importantly, increased our awareness of threats from the internet as a whole. Fortinet FortiGate helps us to mitigate these threats with regular signature updates from Fortiguard labs, identifying certain characteristics which, once recognised by Fortinet FortiGate, can be harnessed to deploy powerful 'playbooks'.
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Pros
Cisco
  • Great protection and security against the multiple digital virus attacks.
  • Provides detailed logs to track any threat and helps to secure the network promptly.
  • VPN service for remote access of important organizational applications.
  • Best management tool for controlling data and bandwidth resources.
Read full review
Fortinet
  • SD-WAN - Load balancing of Internet traffic is a USP of Fortigate and makes it stand tall in the competition. Be it 3 or more Internet Links, multiple Subnets/segments of users to distribute and bandwidth load balancing for links and users. SLA based monitoring of Internet Links / MPLS links, makes it even better to choose the links on the basis of performance (Latency, packet loss, Jitter etc).
  • SSL VPN configuration - As we all have WFH force (to some extend or all employee) during Covid-19, it is impossible to plan BCP without having a SSL VPN. In Fortigate, the SSL VPN configuration is very easy with the help of wizard. The deep CLI-level debugging is also very helpful in troubleshooting. Type of tunnel can be easily configured - Full Tunnel or Split Tunnel for SSL.
  • Explicit Proxy - This is also a great feature to shape and re-route the traffic, configuring the Proxy on the Firewall itself. We are using this feature in Pilot for now, and planned to rollout in few weeks looking at the success rate of the POC.
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Cons
Cisco
  • Stability when managing firewalls, we're having issues with Firewall 01 and Firewall 02 remaining in sync
  • Reporting when it comes to access control policy rules - there is no way to export a report of the rules easily. Using a custom Python script on the Cisco forums is the only way to easily export a CSV.
  • Support for policy and route-based site-to-site VPN was not available until 6.6.0 and later. This forced us to purchase ASAs to bridge that gap.
  • Dashboard reporting - when clicking a link for more information, nothing displays. Currently working with Cisco on the support case, which has been escalated.
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Fortinet
  • Documentation is missing a great deal of detail and assumes the customer and just guess and fill in the blanks themselves
  • Fortinet has lots and lots of video guides on topics that only a small percentage of customers would ever need
  • The documentation and video guides do not get updated so most is only relevant to older software versions
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Likelihood to Renew
Cisco
We are very satisfied with SecureX and it's adaptive, active nature in protecting or data and systems. It's easy to administer, update, review notifications and update when necessary. Cisco's security practice fits into our needs and continues to evolve as global cyber events change. SecureX is easy to migrate to new cisco gear as we upgrade to newer models when supports ends on older gear. Enabling fast ROI during these capital expenditure projects.
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Fortinet
Fortinet's products have kept improving with new software releases and they continue to deliver great value. Their support is also very good. I believe that as a small enterprise, their products have given us competitive advantage delivering features and functionality that enable us to innovate and do things better. They also continue to be a leader in the markets they serve.
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Usability
Cisco
Overall usability is an eight for me because it is easy to manage the firewall policies and monitor the devices' health. The configurations are all done in the GUI which makes it more convenient and hassle free. You can also see the devices' health and the progress of the task thru its taskbar.
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Fortinet
The firewall runs very well, firmware updates are fairly quick but you must follow the upgrade path. Neglecting this step will cause a lot of pain. If you decide to go with Fortinet FortiGate switches and/or access points, they can be managed within the firewall which is great. We're also using the FortiAnalyzer which easily plugs into the firewall for any reporting you may require.
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Reliability and Availability
Cisco
Since moving to Cisco secure management center from firepower management center we've had no application issues, outages or any other problems. It's always been there for us and always provides us the necessary protection and notification when we need it. Been very happy with all of our Cisco systems over our tenure to date.
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Fortinet
We had didn't any hardware failures at our two main office locations and upgraded our units last year after using them for about 5-6 years
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Performance
Cisco
No answers on this topic
Fortinet
Good performance and really good integration. We have integration with Microsoft AD.
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Support Rating
Cisco
We have the direct support of the manufacturer through its service channels, the attention is 24/7, and the response time is acceptable. The support for this tool is almost nil. It all depends on the level of implementation is carried out so that it can fail and request collaboration. Anyway, the manufacturer backs the entire Cisco Firepower Management Center (FMC series appliances) solution.
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Fortinet
The Support team at Fortinet is excellent. They can not only help you configure the device for what you are trying to do, they offer suggestions on improving rules, and troubleshooting issues. Their response time is fast, ensuring you are up and running immediately with no questions asked. We had a hard drive failure in one of our Fortinet Fortigate appliances. The tech answered immediately, and started rebuilding the drive after some preliminary investigations. After rebuilding, there were still errors and issues, so they dispatched a brand new Fortinet Fortigate appliance. The tech then backed up the configurations for when the new device came in, which showed up in a few hours. A restore of the configuration took less than a minute, and there were no more errors or issues.
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In-Person Training
Cisco
No answers on this topic
Fortinet
I received it a couple years afters use it and it was just to confirm my knowledge about the tool.
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Implementation Rating
Cisco
Cisco secure firewall management center is easy to install, moderate to setup in conjunction with firewall hardware, and administration of policy changes afterwards is pretty straight forward. And flexible to add more advanced security configurations as needed. Cisco support website is pretty good for researching how to documentation too. Cisco secure firewall management center enables integration to SecureX - the cloud security protection service. And AMP which protects packet flow with real time analysis. Cisco secure fmc is the evolved name for cisco firepower management center so for those customers who have firepower this is a simple migration.
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Fortinet
Make sure that you have the most current version of FortiOS. Make sure all Fortigates are on the same version
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Alternatives Considered
Cisco
We are managing multiple customers having a large number of Cisco devices that need to be managed by a single platform. For that reason, we have selected the Cisco Firewall Management Center than checkpoint firewall management. It simplifies and automates newly bought cisco firewalls at remote branch offices to manage, configure and troubleshoot them.
Read full review
Fortinet
[Fortinet] FortiGate is not only cost effective but it gives the comprehensive security against the APT attacks and gives the complete traffic visibility and granular control. You can easily create the VDOMs (Virtual firewall) within a Fortigate firewall and customize the dashboard as per your requirement if you have multiple VDOMs within a single firewall.
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Contract Terms and Pricing Model
Cisco
No answers on this topic
Fortinet
No changes needed to terms and conditions.
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Scalability
Cisco
No answers on this topic
Fortinet
My environments are pretty small (less than 100 users per location) so no issues here.
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Return on Investment
Cisco
  • It's a very straightforward and user-friendly tool that has enhanced the total detection of malware and other threats t from intrusion into our network.
  • Provides stable deep network scanning, security visibility, and protection from unauthorized access.
  • The platform modular allows us to deploy across multiple budget cycles.
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Fortinet
  • The pricing given to us for our firewall was well within what we were already spending for other vendors solutions and had the added value of eliminating a separate expense for a dedicated web filtering appliance.
  • We have also adopted Fortinet's security fabric approach and thus changed vendors for our switch and AP devices. These devices have come at reduced prices as compared to another previous vendor we were using, particularly in relation to ongoing annual maintenance costs.
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