Fortinet FortiGate vs. Untangle NG Firewall

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

Untangle is very strong in the "traditional" sense of security. That means an edge appliance that either works with an existing router or is the router itself (recommended). This approach has also been adapted well to cloud environments in order to protect virtual servers and VDI workstations. As mentioned earlier, many schools are using cloud-based filtering for their 1:1 solutions for their students. This is an area where Untangle is unable to serve. Some have used an instance of Untangle in the cloud with VPN to serve their remote needs, but it is not the same as solutions that are designed for cloud-based filtering of devices without VPN.

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.

• Web Filtering is strong, and can also do application fingerprinting to allow Facebook, but not Facebook games. Secondly, a separate partition called a "rack" can be set up to give one subnet or group of users different web filtering policies than another. For example, teachers would get more freedom to browse the web than students at a school.
• Built-in SD-WAN connectivity as part of your license. IPSEC tunnel creation is also amazingly easy.
• Will install on any x86 hardware created in the last 5-10 years. Ram and processor requirements per user are very low.
• Reporting is phenomenal, however you can get death by details very easily.

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

• The full suite can be expensive for business but will be powerful enough.
• The full suite for home or small office isn't that bad of a price but may be out of reach for most home users but remember the basics are FREE so anyone can get started with it.
• I would like to see it promoted for mid to large businesses as I think it can handle it.

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

Service renewal is in Feb 2021. We will be renewing!

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

Generally works well but seeing more and more bugs with the OpenVPN app.

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

The phone support reps are highly competent and native-English speakers. big plus vs some other vendors with difficult to understand or less knowledgable support engineers.

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

Untangle NG Firewall has a partnership with third parties to provide an amazing suite of applications. You pay for those. With free software, you have to wait for it to be updated. With Unifi, the hardware was too underpowered to do anything meaningful. I don't mind the monthly fees because these companies update quickly; they have a reputation to maintain.

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

• It's allowed us to be PCI compliant which we need to do business.
• It's allowed us to not only be PCI compliant but follow best practice to be actually as secure as we can be.
• It's really presented us with a lot of flexibility in terms of how we connect to other services.
• There is some maintenance, but it's very minimal.

Incentivized