Cisco Secure Firewall vs. Fortinet FortiGate

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Cisco Secure Firewall
Score 7.1 out of 10
N/A
Cisco Secure Firewall (formerly Cisco Firepower NGFW) is a firewall product that integrates with other Cisco security offerings. It provides Advanced Malware protection, including sandboxing environments and DDoS mitigation. Cisco also offers a Next Generation Intrusion Prevention System, which provides security across cloud environments using techniques like internal network segmentation. The firewall can be managed locally, remotely, and via the cloud. The product is scalable to the scope of…N/A
FortiGate
Score 8.7 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 FirewallFortinet FortiGate
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Cisco Secure FirewallFortiGate
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 FirewallFortinet FortiGate
Considered Both Products
Cisco Secure Firewall
Chose Cisco Secure Firewall
Because reputation of the brand, but fortinet its easier to operate
Chose Cisco Secure Firewall
Cisco FTD ofers GUI management and overall if feature richer
Chose Cisco Secure Firewall
Palo Alto has better architecture with their multi cpu concept that increases throughoutput.
Cisco has better features and mostly better integrations outside of their eco system.
Overall the products and features of cisco are slightly better but if cisco would implement the …
Chose Cisco Secure Firewall
Cisco FTD poc was more successful on our case
Chose Cisco Secure Firewall
Cisco Firepower is a costlier solution but you get what you pay for, with the added costs Cisco provides a full feature solution to be configured in any scenario. The setup can be complex but sometimes this is needed for challenging setups. This is the full featured standard …
FortiGate

No answer on this topic

Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Cisco Secure FirewallFortinet FortiGate
Firewall
Comparison of Firewall features of Product A and Product B
Cisco Secure Firewall
6.3
46 Ratings
30% below category average
Fortinet FortiGate
9.0
37 Ratings
6% above category average
Identification Technologies6.341 Ratings9.335 Ratings
Visualization Tools5.342 Ratings8.535 Ratings
Content Inspection7.344 Ratings8.736 Ratings
Policy-based Controls6.945 Ratings9.237 Ratings
Active Directory and LDAP7.440 Ratings9.436 Ratings
Firewall Management Console5.745 Ratings9.237 Ratings
Reporting and Logging5.346 Ratings8.337 Ratings
VPN7.540 Ratings9.637 Ratings
High Availability6.244 Ratings9.332 Ratings
Stateful Inspection6.243 Ratings9.235 Ratings
Proxy Server4.726 Ratings8.927 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Cisco Secure FirewallFortinet FortiGate
Small Businesses
SonicWall TZ
SonicWall TZ
Score 8.3 out of 10
SonicWall TZ
SonicWall TZ
Score 8.3 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Cisco Firepower 4100 Series
Cisco Firepower 4100 Series
Score 9.4 out of 10
Cisco Firepower 4100 Series
Cisco Firepower 4100 Series
Score 9.4 out of 10
Enterprises
Cisco Firepower 4100 Series
Cisco Firepower 4100 Series
Score 9.4 out of 10
Cisco Firepower 4100 Series
Cisco Firepower 4100 Series
Score 9.4 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Cisco Secure FirewallFortinet FortiGate
Likelihood to Recommend
6.1
(46 ratings)
9.3
(63 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
4.5
(1 ratings)
9.9
(4 ratings)
Usability
8.2
(2 ratings)
10.0
(6 ratings)
Availability
9.1
(1 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
6.8
(5 ratings)
8.6
(26 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
7.3
(1 ratings)
8.0
(4 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
7.0
(1 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
9.8
(2 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Cisco Secure FirewallFortinet FortiGate
Likelihood to Recommend
Cisco
If you are already using [a] Cisco product like the Cisco ASA Series and you need more security on layer 7 then you can upgrade with firepower. This is well suited for middle and big organizations. If your company deals with credit card information then you should buy this firewall. It provides you all the features to stop any type of advanced attack on your organization
Read full review
Fortinet
For FortiGate Firewall, the basic functionality and requirement is met easily as Fortigate is among market leaders in NGFW. There are some extra points that inclined us to use Fortigate as our main Firewall. [Fortinet]Fortigate has a very well refined and functional SD-WAN solution when it comes to load balancing for normal Internet Traffic. 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 - 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. Though, I think Fortigate is one of the best options for small and mid-sized organizations, there are some areas for improvement. First, the CLI interface is very hard to adapt as the commands and directory hierarchy is very different for common syntax and standards.
Read full review
Pros
Cisco
  • Cisco Firepower NGFW (formerly Sourcefire) shows a very detailed report of traffic that it finds as malicious. From Capturing Pcaps to generating analytics corresponding to an incident it makes it very easy for us analysts to decide the next steps.
  • Cisco Firepower NGFW (formerly Sourcefire) has search functionality that allows us to go very specific while on the managing window, unlike Palo Alto Panorama.
Read full review
Fortinet
  • It is the most reliable NGFW that we have ever been touch with it.
  • You can easily upgrade the firewall cluster firmware without user attention!!!
  • User IDentity based feature is fantastic and intrusion prevention just works with least false-positive possible.
  • Very reachfull and intuitive GUI, just love it
Read full review
Cons
Cisco
  • Support for native VXLAN
  • CLI support on the FTDs
  • Support for all the BGP features, there are commands that show issues with network subnets being received or advertised.
  • Show BGP neighbor x.x.x.x received-routes
  • This shows an issue that soft-inbound is not applied when it is applied.
Read full review
Fortinet
  • When we switched to Fortinet Fortigate, it took some time getting used to and become familiar with the new interface. Being used to strictly command-line interfaces, a full GUI-based firewall was something brand new. Careful planning had to be done when creating rules to ensure we didn't miss anything. However, once we got used to the new GUI interface, going from one Fortinet product to another was simple, as Fortinet used the same interface for all of its devices.
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
Cisco
There are other vendors on the market with highly complimented solutions and based on the feedback received by fellow engineers using them in production in their organizations it sounds like something worth paying attention to. Proof of concept and feature comparison with Cisco Secure Firewall will would be the next potential step. Overall, the user experience with ease of management of solutions might be the key here.
Read full review
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.
Read full review
Usability
Cisco
Solution is highly effective, offers a lot of features with constant improvements and additions of new features over time. It's relatively easy to get familiar with the system, especially if transitioning from adaptive security appliances. If this is not the case, as for learnability there's a learning curve but once learned it is relatively easy to remember the details about the system even after a period of non-use
Read full review
Fortinet
The user interface shared among many simultaneous users is very easy to get around. With shared favorites among users, most tasks are easily bookmarked and can quickly be found and edited. Their strategy for web filter integration is easy to understand and manage as well. With some general direction, setup and maintenance were easy to do and easy to teach others in the organization to do as well.
Read full review
Reliability and Availability
Cisco
As for the availability, in general we did not experience any issues with it, neither in situations where there's only one physical device implemented nor when there's and High Availability pair. Failover works like a charm, no complaints here, it works as it should and so far it has been highly reliable.
Read full review
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
Read full review
Performance
Cisco
No answers on this topic
Fortinet
Good performance and really good integration. We have integration with Microsoft AD.
Read full review
Support Rating
Cisco
Customer service has been great. TAC has been mostly able to identify and fix problems that we may have and have been very responsive. If for some reason something isn't fixed right away, they have been adamant on staying with us and working the issues out before things get escalated up the chain.
Read full review
Fortinet
We live in Turkey. Fortinet's Turkey office [dealt] constantly with us in our every problem or our experience. In addition, global support teams also supported every ticket we opened in every problem we encountered. They support innovative approaches and evaluate and offer solutions. In this context, they were very supportive of the problems we encountered in previous versions.
Read full review
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.
Read full review
Implementation Rating
Cisco
In the beginning transition from Adaptive Security Appliance to Cisco Secure Firewall did not look like the best choice. Solution was new, there were a lot of bugs and unsupported features and the actual execution in the form of configuration via Firepower Management Center was extremely slow. Compare configuring a feature via CLI on ASA in a manner of seconds (copy/paste) to deployment via FMC to Secure Firewall which took approx. 10 mins (no exaggeration). Today, situation is a bit different, overall solution looks much more stable and faster then it was but there's still room for improvement.
Read full review
Fortinet
Make sure that you have the most current version of FortiOS. Make sure all Fortigates are on the same version
Read full review
Alternatives Considered
Cisco
We've selected the Cisco Secure firewall as there is full Layer 7 functionality. You get more features out of the box so to speak with full application visibility and control, Intrusion Prevention, SI (Security Intelligence), Adavanced Malware Protection and a whole host of other feature. Although some of these are available in Meraki, the Cisco Secure Firewall goes into the next level.
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.
Read full review
Scalability
Cisco
No answers on this topic
Fortinet
My environments are pretty small (less than 100 users per location) so no issues here.
Read full review
Return on Investment
Cisco
  • Cisco Secure Firewall has provided a single management interface for all of our devices.
  • We have had issues implementing 1010 in HA where a site was using a dynamic IP previously.
  • Lack of DHCP options has slowed deployment to our smaller sites.
Read full review
Fortinet
  • Fortigates have an interesting bundle model for support and subscription services that make it an attractive option to deploy Firewall, IDS, Ant-virus, anti-SPAM in a single device. The cost of the bundle is pretty much what you pay for the device, not requiring huge expenditures on it's time to renew the hardware.
Read full review
ScreenShots