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FortiGate

FortiGate

Overview

What is FortiGate?

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.

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Recent Reviews

Best NGFW firewall

10 out of 10
January 11, 2024
If I think of a firewall, first word comes to my mind is Fortinet FortiGate. Best in the industry, as well as in reliability and …
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TrustRadius Insights

FortiGate is a versatile product that has been widely used by various organizations to address their network security needs. Users have …
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Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

Popular Features

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  • VPN (38)
    9.8
    98%
  • Firewall Management Console (38)
    9.6
    96%
  • Policy-based Controls (38)
    9.6
    96%
  • Reporting and Logging (38)
    8.2
    82%

Reviewer Pros & Cons

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Pricing

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What is FortiGate?

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.

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://www.fortinet.com/corporate/abou…

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

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What is pfSense?

pfSense is a firewall and load management product available through the open source pfSense Community Edition, as well as a the licensed edition, pfSense Plus (formerly known as pfSense Enterprise). The solution provides combined firewall, VPN, and router functionality, and can be deployed through…

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Product Demos

Fortinet Fortigate Firewall SSL VPN Demo

YouTube
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Features

Firewall

A firewall is a filter that stands between a computer or computer network and the Internet. Each firewall can be programmed to keep specific traffic in or out

9.3
Avg 8.5
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Product Details

What is FortiGate?

Fortinet’s FortiGate is a firewall product with high integrability. It can be deployed on-premises or as a Virtual Machine in a variety of modules. The granularity of the product enables buyers to tailor their purchase to their business needs. FortiGate integrates into multivendor environments, including IaaS cloud platforms and public cloud environments.

FortiGate’s functionality includes the core firewall features, such as intrusion prevention, anti-malware, and web filtering. It also includes SSL inspection, threat protection, and scalable segmentation, all within low-latency standards.

FortiGate Video

FortiGate Demo

FortiGate Technical Details

Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

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.

Reviewers rate VPN highest, with a score of 9.8.

The most common users of FortiGate are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(359)

Community Insights

TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!

FortiGate is a versatile product that has been widely used by various organizations to address their network security needs. Users have reported that FortiGate serves as a reliable firewall solution, providing advanced security features and protecting the infrastructure from known and unknown attack types. It is not just a firewall but a full Unified Threat Management solution, offering security checks for risks like SPAM, infected attachments, and spyware.

FortiGate has proven to be suitable for different use cases, such as small office connections, enterprise proxy, threats management solution, and routing and layer 3 management. It offers excellent routing and VPN performance, making it an ideal choice as the core of a company network's layer 3 and routing infrastructure. Additionally, FortiGate is highly regarded for its ease of setup and management, delivering intuitive visibility into multiple network activities that aid in troubleshooting network and security issues.

Virtualized FortiGates are also available, making it a suitable option for companies with strong virtualization infrastructures. The product line includes devices that can withstand environmental extremes, making it viable for industrial environments. Organizations have utilized FortiGate for securing external services, inter VLAN routing, protecting users' internet access, segmenting internal networks, and creating a security fabric using Fortinet switches and APs.

FortiGate provides robust VPN capabilities for remote workers, including site-to-site VPNs for larger sites. Users have praised its user-friendly interface for policy creation and selection of security profiles. The solution is also utilized as the primary internet-facing firewall, protecting networks from outside threats while allowing secure remote access through SSL VPN.

Customers have recommended FortiGate as an alternative to more expensive solutions due to its cost-efficiency without compromising on performance or functionality. With its powerful technologies and extensive support ecosystem provided by Fortinet, FortiGate has enhanced security and resolved issues across organizations of all sizes.

In summary, FortiGate has proven to be a reliable and versatile network security solution, addressing a wide range of use cases such as firewall protection, VPN establishment, threat management, routing infrastructure, and secure remote access. It provides advanced security features, intuitive management interfaces, and cost-efficient solutions for organizations of all sizes.

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-25 of 44)
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January 11, 2024

Best NGFW firewall

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
If I think of a firewall, first word comes to my mind is Fortinet FortiGate. Best in the industry, as well as in reliability and scalability. This firewall has a wide range of features and an infinite number of applications which can be used according to the requirements of an individual. This firewall is suitable for large scale organizations as well as for small and mid scale organizations. Easy to use with very effective GUI which supports almost all security profiles such as Web filtering, Application Control, IPS, IDS etc etc.
  • Best thing that Fortinet team does really well is their support to the customers which is exceptionally well
  • Supports both GUI & CLI
  • Customization of security profiles is possible
  • Another great feature is their detail log report which is also available on FortiCloud
  • Unified application for all features (Forticlient)
  • Sometimes Forti DNS server becomes unavailable.
  • Their log service has some scope for improvement.
  • Upgrading the firewall version should be done without downtime. Although downtime for Flash formatting the firewall is less but it is there.
Let it be a small office, home or a Multi National Company, Fortinet FortiGate can fit there very well. Performance capability of the firewall is really at the next level. The traffic analyzing feature of the firewall is really efficient and also at a very high rate. The throughput of the firewall is very good.
Jesse Bridgelal | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Fortinet FortiGate is a Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) that provides state-of-the-art security for your Network. Fortinet FortiGate provides the full Unified Threat Protection (UTP)Suite for our Company and includes powerful network protection services such as IPS, Anti-Malware, Antivirus, Flood Detection, BotNet Detection, Web Filters, and other security services. Fortigate provides a powerful first line of defense for our network, with proactive alerting and intrusion prevention. Fortigate and the FortiClient combine to provide versatile and secure VPN services for our Remote workers. the Site to Site VPN is also a powerful full-time VPN for larger sites that need WAN Connectivity. Fortigate provides a very intuitive interface which allows our Team to configure and utilize the most powerful features of this Firewall with ease.
  • Powerful and reliable SDWAN Services
  • Unified Threat Protection with powerful features such as IPS, Anti-Virus, Anti-Malware, Anti-Spam
  • Powerful IPS Services backed by industry validation
  • Provides Reliable Publishing Services for providing secure remote access to internal services
  • Provides excellent Remote Access Services via IPSEC and SSL VPN Tunnel technologies.
  • Features a simple and intuitive user interface which is well designed and easy to follow.
  • There could be some improvement to the Logging Services to include more details
  • 10 Gigabit Interfaces should be available for the lower models as well.
  • Simpler installation of the FortiAP services when being used.
Fortigate Firewalls models are designed to be used in networks of any size. They come in sizes varying from Entry Level to large enterprise. Fortinet FortiGate is best suited tot he Corporate Network environment where high security is required. The Devices also offer powerful WAN services and SDWAN features which make them an excellent alternative for your basic WAN Router. With features such as OSPF and BGP and SDWAN, they provide advanced network services and enhanced security at a lower cost. Because these boxes are purpose built and include Security Processor (SPU) technology, they outperform other devices in their class.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We have been using multiple Fortinet FortiGate products. Fortinet 500D is a perimeter firewall that is on HA and protects our internal and external traffic from emerging threats. The throughput of the devices is completely appreciable and easy management, Remote SSO login, Web filtering, and Gateway antivirus security makes it different from others. Technical support is perfect and well trained to support you in any case.
  • Gateway security/IPS/ContentFiltering/Botnet/AntiMalware scanning
  • Routing and Access rules management
  • Remote connection management
  • Wireless Access point Management
  • Nothing as such as of now. But there is always scope for improvement
We are connected to the outworld internet which needs special protection for our internal infrastructure and to manage the internal multiple subnet and routings. Access Rules are a must to configure for different sorts of users and departments. There is always a requirement for users to connect while traveling and outside the office premises. All these above needs can be achieved with a UTM Firewall device and Fortinet FortiGate solved these issues for any organization.
February 19, 2022

Getting to know Fortinet

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Fortinet FortiGate was used to provide different product solutions, the company specializes in internet and telephony solutions for corporations. Especially when the customer needed some security at his network.
  • Filtering information
  • High Availability services.
  • Strong security.
  • The path to upgrade. Sometimes its way to tedious.
When you offer internet solutions as a company, you have to consider security measures, and the Fortinet firewalls are a good tool to achieve this. Therefore, to implement security on networks. This is perfect, however, if you don't need that much security, is not as necessary.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Being an IT consultant and Software Development Centre (Lab) for our Parent Company, we are very specific and skeptical when we choose a product that will be implemented across many other daughter companies. 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 [Fortinet] Fortigate as our main Firewall. Fortigate has a very well refined and functional SD-WAN solution when it comes to load balancing for normal Internet Traffic, be it web browsing, Application traffic, IPSec or SSL VPN traffic. Some of the top NGFW still lacks the basic load balancing feature (to be practical) in small and mid scale organizations where budget is a constraint in selecting the technologies. Another feature is to have the traffic shaping (QoS) or bandwidth allocation to users, Application, subnets with all possible variables in configuration. Explicit Proxy is also a great feature, to be configured on the Firewall itself. SSL VPN configuration on firewall is also very easy with the help of Wizard.
  • 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.
  • Though, I think Fortigate is one of the best options for small and mid-sized organisations, 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.
  • Scalability - this is something that I personally have faced twice in the same organization. Fortigate is not easy on scalability part, you have to change the hardware box in order to scale the firewall as organization grows.
  • Fortigate sometimes stucks on GUI, which is basically happens due to Disk error. And the only way to mitigate the issue is to reboot the firewall. Which is very hard if you have a 24x7 production running behind the firewall.
  • HA switch over in certain conditions is also have some room to improvement. Basic internet link flapping can cause HA switchover, if not configured wisely and with custom settings. HA switch over also takes more than normal time, approx 4 minutes sometimes.
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.
Chantel Moreno | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
FortiGate is a robust network security solution that provides us with a reliable Unified Threat Management environment for legacy, cloud, and hybrid systems. It is proven that it is great for our business because we deal with sensitive data or run several cloud instances. Fortinet provides several data security options. This minimal investment is inciting because we don't have to keep a large IT staff. This firewall program offers powerful intrusion prevention systems that are easy to configure to recognize trusted employees, customers, and partners, and also keep the system secure from different types of harmful malicious programs. This product enhanced our company's security amazingly.
  • This robust network malware scanner program does not interfere with data transmission, and the detailed analytics provide security with a wealth of information to help us to fine-tune our network operations.
  • Despite its technical competence, whether it's a hardware firewall or a cloud security layer, Fortinet is simple to download, install and operate.
  • The most appreciable feature is that it provides not only Windows version, but also can be easily installed on macOS and Linux.
  • FortiGate has the advantage of being able to be implemented in the cloud or on-premises.
  • This product is quite pricey.
  • I wish that their monitoring and reporting could be more stable and better.
FortiGate products are doubtlessly appropriate for any company or corporate as this robust platform offers a lot more than just protection. FortiGate should be heavily considered by business owners who are eager to need complete protection for their business networks and data centers, especially if they want that their business grows more fastly.
Binita Kharbanda | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Fortinet's FortiGate solution is being used in my organization and we are able to achieve the security with this cost efficient firewall. It comes with powerful technologies to secure the infra from known and unknown both attack types. On the top of that, it has an user friendly user interface where policy creation is easy and we can select the security profiles per rules.
  • IPS
  • Remote VPN (Forti VPN)
  • Advanced Malware protection
  • Logs
  • Cost effective
  • CLI Commands
  • Documentations
  • High Availability
  • Content filtering
Fortinet's Fortigate is a Firewall which can be suited to all the types of organizations starting from Small/ mid size to Large enterprises. Due to its cost effectiveness even a Small organizations can afford it. In the return Fortigate will give you the industry best technology to secure your organization infra.
Tony Dous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
This device is being used across the entire organization. We are using it as our primary internet-facing firewall. It is protecting our network from outside threats and ensuring that the users inside the organization are protected as well. Some sister company authorized users have access to the FortiClient VPN software so they can access resources from remote locations.
  • SN-Wan is so powerful.
  • Application control is so powerful also and updated everyday.
  • Web control
  • IPS
  • VPN remote control is so easy.
  • SLA should have more HTTPS on target.
  • The traffic logs should be faster on the box. I read it's better on Forti Analyzer.
SD-Wan VPN site to site is very well suited and saves much time and cost by transferring site to site tunnels on MPLS, IPSEC and Dial-up Tunnels all by this function. I can't see less appropriate scenarios.
Vinit Sharma | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are using Fortinet FortiGate in our Remote area locations because it has one of the best features of remote VPN for connecting remote sites to the main branch. Also, they are providing the UTM feature that is giving the best outputs as compared to other firewalls we have in our enviorment. Fortinet FortiGate resolved our Security & remote VPN issues.
  • Real UTM
  • Remote VPN
  • DLP
  • Email filtering as well as content filtering
  • Anti-Spam
  • No advance routing feature available
  • Nating customization options not good as compare to other market available firwall's
  • CLI needs to be more easier for begineers
Fortinet FortiGate Provides a Deep Scanning feature identifies malicious traffic over network easily & also having advance level of such security feature in a cost-effective manner. It also helps us to content filtering & anti-spam over data.
Basant Gupta | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Fortinet FortiGate firewall provides you ultimate threat protection for your organization. This is only one and [many] powerful firewall offers UTM. Most of firewall offers UTM but most of main features is missing but in Fortinet we have web filtering, anti virus, content filtering, application control, which help you organization from external threats so your business will not [be] harmed from any cyber attack. I have this product in one of my location. I am satisfied with [its] high performance and advanced protection.
  • High performance threat protection.
  • Web filtering.
  • Anti virus.
  • Application filtering.
  • Content filtering.
  • Email control.
  • Highly protected with advanced security features.
  • Command line is not easy so you will face problem to remember the commands.
  • Not good technical support and issue with SLA.
  • Not easy to configure and implement.
I am using this firewall in my one location which we have limited users but our client data is very critical, we need deep security and we want to scan the every packet deeply, so I chose this one. I am really happy with UTM features. I am using email and DLP features for more control on my users.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
It used as our first layer of security and often used as a Site-to-site VPN connection in our AWS environment. It helps the business to secure live or on premise environment to the outside world or to the public while connecting to our cloud environment. We also able to filter and alter who will manage the appliance.
  • Secure your network
  • Use as a mode of VPN
  • Manages employees access to the internet
  • Have an option to remove presets ports
It is best suited to secure your private networks at filtering packets from the outside world. It also good for managing and limiting your employees to access certain websites and limit application access. It is best suited as your front line of your security systems inside your organization. You can also use it as a VPN.
Andrew Meyer | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I am using the FortiNet FortiGate 60D Firewall as my main internet connection. Implementing this gave me faster networking throughput than I had with my previous device and easier security policy enforcement. The ability to create L2L VPN tunnels with this device made it a lot faster to configure/program.
  • Configuration
  • management
  • flexibility
  • publishing API
  • automation support for legacy devices
  • cleaner web ui.
Fortinet devices are well suited for all applications. They meet security standards and HIPAA compliance. I have not found any issues where using their devices is truly a make or break set up.
December 04, 2020

FortiGate Firewall

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Fortinet is our main firewall. We use it for IPS, Network Antivirus, application control, and web filtering. The FortiGate is used across our entire school district. It does a tremendous job of safeguarding our district from cyber threats.
  • Intrusion protection.
  • Application control.
  • Web filtering.
  • Reporting could be better.
Fortigate is an excellent firewall for all sized businesses from SOHO to large enterprises.
Michael Singh | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Coming from a Cisco background, I first brushed this off as some knockoff. But in all honesty, it is far superior to the products I have used in the past.

My department (Enterprise Managed Services) currently uses Fortinet FortiGate in tens of thousands of locations. We use the whole suite with FortiAP and FortiSwitches. The whole family intertwines fluidly with great features and support. Even better is its policy and configuration management with FortiManager or logging and reporting with FortiAnalyzer. The web interface is so intuitive and the CLI is a breeze to use. The current offerings of FortiGates range from small branch office sized firewalls to large multirack datacenter beasts. The VPN capacity, SSL inspection, and other traffic metrics are insane for the purposes we use them for. The high availability and SD Wan features that customers want are so easy to use and configure. I highly recommend FortiGate as an alternative to more expensive solutions that are still 5 years behind.

Another side note, the support and training portals are very very informative. Even the certification exam materials are now free. FortiGate is definitely pushing boundaries with its UTM devices. Many job listings in Denver are now asking for FortiGate experience! Highly recommended.
  • VPN
  • IPS/IDS
  • UTM
  • SD-WAN
  • IPv4 Policies
  • Web content filtering
  • Firmware stability
  • Traffic Shaping policies
  • Better wizards as it can be cumbersome to some new engineers.
FortiGates are very well suited when used in conjunction with FortiManager for scalability and management reasons. Larger model FortiGates are not necessary for smaller environments. The basic models do just fine.
Mauro Osvaldo Sepulveda Gutierrez | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We have been working with this solution over 5 years and we are very satisfied. We use it for one of our offices and the configuration is very easy and intuitive. You can apply policies by address or by user, the integration with Active Directory is not complicated, the cost of the solution is cheaper in comparison with other vendors and including the same solutions.
  • Ease to configure policies
  • VPN performance
  • Active directory integration.
  • Not so scalable, if you need more performance you need to buy another device
  • The traffic shaper could be better
  • The Wan load balance could be better
Fortigate works pretty well if you choose the correct device based on the number of your users. If you need to apply policies by application this solution can help you. Their other features like web filter, VPN connections, traffic reports, etc work well too. In general terms, the solution is very complete and the cost of this device is cheaper than other vendors.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Fortinet FortiGate is used to secure our network across 17 buildings. We also use it for home filtering of devices and VPN connections for a few home users.
  • Filtering.
  • Firewall protection and monitoring.
  • Interface can be not as intuitive for those not specializing in firewalls.
  • Proxy is cumbersome.
FortiGate is well suited for people who want a firewall setup and don't want to have to do much managing beyond that. Partner network is great.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use our FortiGate as the primary firewall for our centralized district-wide Internet as well as a secure VPN for the few users that use this within our organization. It addresses the need we had for a Next Generation Firewall that was easy to transition to, very secure, full featured, well supported and at a reasonable price.
  • Very effective firewall. If set up correctly, creates a very secure environment.
  • Amazing price when compared to same feature set as other prominent firewalls.
  • Updates. I have an HA pair but I always lose connection for a minute or two when upgrading.
  • Interface display. I have a bug where I have to refresh several times to view policies and objects.
We started with a new Palo Alto because it was so well recommended but when we moved the circuit from 2GB to 10GB the price rose to astronomical heights. We heard about FortiGate being very comparable if not better. I attended a Firewall Shootout and the FortiGate clearly came out on top. The price savings for such a high quality product made this an easy choice. It's great that it also has built in features such as VPN, web filtering and access point controller. Because we are a school district, we really need a dedicated web filter but it's likely a great option for a non-educational company.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use this software to protect the company in various ways. For example, as a content filter, and also as a firewall to administrate inbound and outbound traffic by closing ports. Finally, with the reports we do some useful analytics in order to make decisions and better understand the final users in the network.
  • Web filtering.
  • Command line interface is a little bit hard to use.
  • Lack of AI.
FortiGate is very well suited when we need to block some dangerous websites in order to protect our network from threats like viruses, data loss, and hacking in general. Also, we use it to block some traffic like virtual desktops.
January 15, 2020

Easy-to-use firewall

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
FortiGate devices are used in our organization as firewalls and VPN servers. Main internet connections used Palo Alo firewalls, FortiGates are used on the secondary ones, as the cost of the FortiGates is significantly lower. SSL client-server VPN is used with Fortinet's Forticlient software as a client piece on PC and Mac computers. Fortinet subscription services are used for web filtering.
  • Compared to Palo Alto, FortiGates are significantly less expensive. I would advise organizations to use them in cases where funds are limited.
  • FortiGates are easy to configure via GUI - it is very simple and logical. Compared to Palo Alto or Cisco ASAs, Fortinet products are easier to work with for less experienced admins.
  • Web filtering subscription services are not as good as Palo Alto's. Palos had a smaller number of false negatives in my experience.
  • Log filtering is better on Palo Altos. It is easier to find log entries for particular events on the Palo Altos.
I haven't worked with a higher-end offering from Fortinet, so my experience can only apply to smaller devices (80E and 60E). These units are less expensive than similar offerings from Palo Alto, making them a good choice for small businesses and branch offices. Also, FortiGate is the easiest firewall to configure, in my experience (among Cisco ASA, Palo Alto, pfSense, etc.). Ease of configuration is also a big advantage for organizations with limited resources. Palo Alto firewalls have better filtering and logging capabilities, though, so organizations with complicated requirements should consider investing in Palo Alto NGFW instead of FortiGate.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Reseller
We have deployed the FortiGate firewall in all our 5 branches. There is site-to-site connectivity between all the branches over IPSEC and MPLS. We have enabled the IPS, web filter, application filter and have written the policies based on the IP and user group. A self-signed SSL certificate has also been pushed through AD to decrypt the HTTPS traffic. We are able to monitor and block the malicious URL. We have done both source NAT and destination NAT successfully.
  • The GUI is very simple and understandable.
  • It is a very cost effective firewall with all the enterprise grade features.
  • There are some bugs in the newer versions and patches.
  • Sometimes the firewall gets stuck we need to do a hard reboot which impacts the production.
Fortinet is best suited to SMB customers if the customer has 20 to 500 employees with multiple branches. This is the best cost-effective firewall with a great level of security. But if you are looking for an application-based firewall where you need to define the policy based on the applications, opt for another firewall.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Fortinet Fortigates as perimeter and WAN firewalls nationally and use them for intrusion prevention, web filtering, application filtering, VPN, and proxy.
  • Ease to deploy and manage.
  • Very cost effective when compared to competitors.
  • Good, local, reactive support.
  • Upgrades are always "risky" (usually wait for 2 upgrades before upgrading).
  • Some of the settings don't make sense at first look.
Having used all the big-name players in the market, Fortigate is up there in terms of functionality and adaptability but with the benefit of a lower cost and ease of management that no one else offers.
October 22, 2019

Great product so far!

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Right now Fortinet is being used in our labs for training and testing. Since we wanted that environment off our normal and production network we implemented Fortinet in our training and testing environment.
  • Was easy to implement in our large enterprise environment
  • Flexible
  • Everything included ie antivirus, web-filtering, etc.
  • Might not be practical in our environment
Worked great as a stand-alone in our testing and training environment.
September 21, 2019

Close your FortiGate

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We like to use it between physical servers and virtual servers to create a stricter zone of security, but it is also well suited in a top-down architecture network.
  • Secure the network from botnet, spyware.
  • You can use URL filters to block certain pages by content or categories.
  • Great site-to-site VPN.
  • Command line interface is a little bit hard to use.
  • HA is not reliable.
I recommend putting Fortinet in a top-down or left-right network architectural. We use them between barebone servers and virtual servers in a vertical scheme.
September 10, 2019

Fortinet FortiGate

Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Fortinet FortiGate throughout our organization to protect our internal network for its IPS, web filtering, and application control.
  • Long list of alliance partners
  • Threat Protection
  • SSL Inspection
  • Performance
  • Cloud features
Setup two firewalls and configure them as active- passive. This configuration ensures that all packets to and from users are managed and controlled work well. Site to site VPN not so well.
September 10, 2019

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Score 10 out of 10
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We normally use FortiGate to make a secure connection between our sites and for remote users (employees) to continue working when they travel. We configured HA on them to prevent any disasters in the case devices fail.
  • VPN - Great for remote users.
  • Site-to-site VPN.
  • Prevent any unwanted connection from outside.
  • Firmware releases - Sometimes you have to follow an upgrade path. If you don't follow it, you could brick it.
FortiGate is well-suited if security on your tunnels and VPN connections is a must for the organization. You can also use URL filtering to keep users navigating to specific categories, increasing the security of what they see and what they download.
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