Fortinet FortiGate vs. SonicWall Secure Mobile Access (SMA) vs. SonicWall VPN Clients

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'.

Incentivized

SonicWall Secure Mobile Access (SMA) is well suited as a solution for VPN on your phone. It allows our agency's employees to access our data and system from almost any device at any time. SonicWall Secure Mobile Access (SMA) is less appropriate if you need to implement the product in a very short time frame, as it took longer than expected for rollout to staff.

Incentivized

It is well suited in places or scenarios where a VPN client is needed to be used either by IT staff or other employees. SonicWall's VPN Clients are very similar to VPN clients of other companies. SonicWall VPN Clients are meant to be used with SonicWall firewalls.

Incentivized

• 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.

• Secure remote access
• Control what access users can have
• Protect from harmful sites and downloads

Incentivized

• Exceptional security
• Relatively easy configuration

Incentivized

• 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

Incentivized

• SMA is limited to only SSL VPN , it should have support for hybrid VPN (SSL + IPSEC)
• There are different specs and features for Enterprise and SMB. Features should be same for all devices.
• It does not have URL filtering, content filtering, AV/IPS and Threat Prevention features. For achieving the same, we need to deploy another product like firewall or proxy.

Incentivized

• doesn't have ability to name specific IPs, which gets burdensome when you have 50+ sites you access

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

Does not have a renewal that we pay for by itself. It comes with our firewalls, which we are going to renew.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

SonicWall VPN Clients work for the most part. The Global VPN client has had its issues over the years. Also, NetExtender VPN client has had its share of issues. It is nice that SonicWall VPN Clients has updated the GUI of the NetExtender client within the last year, which has made it easier for our users to use.

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

Good performance and really good integration. We have integration with Microsoft AD.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

Phone support has been very reliable and useful, but there have been times when better support documentation would have made that call unnecessary. I like to tackle problems internally if I can, as it tends to save time and usually money. The SonicWall VPN Clients system seems to be pretty locked down as far as being accessible to self-manage.

Incentivized

I received it a couple years afters use it and it was just to confirm my knowledge about the tool.

Incentivized

Make sure that you have the most current version of FortiOS. Make sure all Fortigates are on the same version

Incentivized

[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.

Incentivized

Both Citrix Gateway and Sonic Secure Mobile Access are great for providing your workers with the ability to work remotely during the pandemic to access their office network. Both have secure networks and are stable systems to use. They both perform well for employees and provide helpful customer tech support when needed.

Incentivized

We started the process of vetting Norton VPN, but since it wasn't available from our preferred vendor, we ended up going with SonicWall VPN Clients by default.

Incentivized

No changes needed to terms and conditions.

Incentivized

My environments are pretty small (less than 100 users per location) so no issues here.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• Security incidents went down by about 30%.
• With the new world of hybrid work, this SMA functions well and is a necessity.
• We've had a few issues with patches breaking functions.

Incentivized

• Allows for remote work to boost employee productivity
• Allows for IT to access large volumes of sites from a central location. We have about 50 buildings that I VPN into every so often for troubleshooting.

Incentivized