Fortinet FortiGate vs. Webroot Antivirus + Internet Security Complete (SecureAnywhere)

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

Webroot can be great if you have many employees using computers. Sensitive business information can be accessed by malicious threats online if your employees are not trained to avoid these problems. In this case, I think it's important to have software to protect you. If working with a smaller team (and not doing any sort of video production or other intensive software/applications) I can't see a need for anything like Webroot. Learning how to use the internet safely and protecting your file storage are things to be done on the cheap and with smarts.

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.

• Webroot provides a very easy to use web interface with GSM. From a single dashboard we can control all of our endpoints that are currently using Webroot services. This is extremely helpful for central management for my engineers.
• Webroot's new (2.0) plugin for Automate (formerly LabTech) provides us with integration into our RMM platform that allows for a large majority of the daily operational tasks to be completed without ever having to move to a different application and/or the web dashboard. The integration is key for engineers to make changes on the fly and quickly. They have done a good job with the 2.0 plugin after coming from the 1st iteration.
• Webroot interface on the machines is a simple and easy UI to follow and understand. Seeing what the product is doing and how it is configured is very straightforward and doesn't require much hunting with the local interface on machines.

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

• It would be nice if there was a notification when Webroot blocked something. Power users may need to legitimately edit things like their hosts file, but they dont know Webroot is preventing them from doing so. They could easily temporarily disable it to do what they need to do if they were aware. Same thing goes for files that get quarantined without notice, it leaves the user wondering why their legitimate file keeps disappearing.
• While the web based console is nice and easy to use, it could use a little better reporting.
• If an administrator disabled a feature (like the firewall, for example) then the Webroot GUI should not alert the end user about whenever they open it. The software should be aware it is being administratively controlled.

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

It's easy to renew with Webroot, their support is very attentive and highly available. However if you do choose to change products, they even provide means of removing the software from your endpoints via the admin portal which is very convenient.

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

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

We have not had to use Webroot support much over the years. The one or two times we did we were referred to online documentation and in a somewhat condescending manner in one case and in another case, the support person did not demonstrate much knowledge of their product and referred us to the user community for support.

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

As previously mentioned, Webroot is struggling to compete. Specifically, it is struggling to show value when similar products are catching more and offer more complete packages for remediation as well. We have discontinued the use of Webroot in favor of offering more advanced protection tools by default to our contracted clients.

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

Ease of implementation across various devices is easy and efficient regardless of scale. Whether it is 5 devices or 500 the product continually proves its the best in its class.

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 has had a mostly positive impact as we have not had any breaches.
• The only negative impact has been when Webroot Antivirus + Internet Security Complete (SecureAnywhere) changed something on their end that caused one of our business applications to not be usable by end-users. That cost our business a fair amount as it took 4 days before it could be used again.

Incentivized