Fortinet FortiGate Review
I'm a senior network engineer with over 25 years of experience and an MSc in network security and in the last 8 years or so I've worked on …
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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Popular Features
- VPN (38)9.898%
- Firewall Management Console (38)9.797%
- Policy-based Controls (38)9.797%
- Reporting and Logging (38)8.282%
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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…
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- Free Trial
- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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Fortinet Fortigate Firewall SSL VPN Demo
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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.
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FortiGate Technical Details
| Operating Systems | Unspecified |
|---|---|
| Mobile Application | No |
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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- Business Problems Solved
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.
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(1-5 of 5)Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
September 22, 2022
Give your Network a Security Boost with FortiGate and enjoy the benefits of Peace of Mind
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.
- SDWAN
- SSL and IPSec VPN Services
- Provides powerful and reliable protection against malware, exploits, and malicious websites in both encrypted and non-encrypted traffic
- Prevents and detects against known and unknown attacks using continuous threat intelligence from AI-powered FortiGuard Labs security services
- Provides a well designed and meaningful dashboard with up-to-date information on network performance and security parameters.
- Provides an integrated Network Security Fabric allow the Company to manage the entire network fabric from a single pane of glass.
86.36363636363637%
8.6
- The powerful Network Security has allowed the company to detect and stop 90% of known attacks .
- The Remote Access VPN Services have allowed the company to boost Work from Home productivity by 50% and increase usage by 75%
- The SDWAN and reduced network downtime by 95% and increased overall WAN performance
Fortinet FortiGate is an all-round Network Security solution with advanced Next Generation Firewall features. The purpose built hardware provides unparalleled performance when compared to other similar solutions. The licensing model is very flexible and accommodates networks of all sizes as you pay only for the features you need and not by nodes or user count. The ease of configuration allows for a much simpler configuration task with a lower learning curve due to its very intuitive and flowing interface and many wizards that remove the complexity of programming the device.
No
- Product Features
- Product Usability
- Product Reputation
Ease of Configuration. No matter how powerful of feature rich a Solution may be, if its difficult to implement and configure, you stand to lose the value of your investment. Fortigate provides a very intuitive, user-friendly configuration interface that allows the user to maximize on the value by being able to utilize the features easily and confidently.
I would buy the Fortigate Devices again since we have had quite a number of successes from our usage. The devices perform exceptionally and we have become quite familiar with the configuration interface and even advancing into even more technical deployments. The devices have proven their ability to handle all of the demands we have thrown at it thus far without fail.
We use FortiGate mainly for internet gateway and IPS at each of our offices. It offers us IPS, Firewall, VPN and many more features for a competitive price.
We also use Fortigate captive portal with their 2FA (mobile or physical) keys to offer an additional validation before accessing our service backend networks.
We also use Fortigate captive portal with their 2FA (mobile or physical) keys to offer an additional validation before accessing our service backend networks.
- User authentication inside firewall rules. It is practically seamless and really easy to setup.
- Management of firewall rules via the GUI.
- Management of IPS rules via the GUI.
- Forticlient with SSL VPN causes a lot more problems than it solves. Windows and Mac updates keep breaking the Forticlient and it takes weeks to get updates. Fortigate updates also sometimes break the SSL VPN. Forticlient crashes and the only fix is to restart the computer to restart the VPN driver. We had this problem for 3 years and they still don't have a fix for that. We now use L2TP-IPsec and Cisco-IPsec with Windows and Mac embedded VPN clients because of all that.
- Memory issues with IPS. We tried all the firmware versions and IPS engines given to us by the Fortinet support and we are still experiencing memory leaks once in a while with the IPS engine. The only provided solution is to restart the IPS engine via CLI.
- FortiView only works properly if you disable ASIC routing. Their marketing always says that their ASICs is the reason their appliances are better than competition but you can't use it if you want reports or to be able to drill down on network usage.
- Every time they release a new firmware version, it takes 3-6 revisions for it to be free from major bugs. We are still waiting for a 5.6 revision that will not have major bugs within the features we use.
- Active-Active clusters do not offer much resilience when problems are software based. If for example the IPS engine has a memory leak, it will not automatically fallback on the other Fortigate, even if the primary one reboots.
- Everything related to virus, spam and intrusion detection (Forticlient, IPS, mail antispam, etc.) needs a lot of tweaking otherwise you will get a lot of false positive. It is also lacking in the type of actions you can do when those are detected. It is designed more for blocking than anything else.
- Because we use FortiGate in all our offices and all FortiGates run on the same firmware/OS, it is really easy to setup cross-site configuration or deploy firewall/IPS rules company wide.
- Fortinet always does things a bit differently than the rest which sometimes makes it easier to set up but most of times means that you need to contact support or search online to know what options really do. This can cost a lot of man-hour in the long run.
- The man-hour needed to fix or workaround all the small bugs as to be the most impacting thing to consider before buying FortiGate. If you really use most of the features, you will need to put the time into learning this product. Also for some reason their support doesn't seem to be trained on a lot of features they have inside the product. I often have to link Fortinet documentations to the support technician for them to even understand which feature I am trying to implement.
- Sophos Firewall, Palo Alto VPN Appliance, Palo Alto Networks Threat Protection and WatchGuard NGFW
I know I am repeating myself but Fortigate, for the price, is the most complete and customizable product there is. It might not be the best but we always were able to fix or workaround the problems we encountered with the help of their support.
Yes
It replaced an old Cisco ASA which was well due for replacement at the time. We also wanted to have better firewall rule management and implement VPN. We also had in the roadmap the project of implementing IPS and segmenting the networks and wanted to future proof as much as possible for not too much money.
- Price
- Product Features
- Existing Relationship with the Vendor
- Positive Sales Experience with the Vendor
- Analyst Reports
For the features it offers the only thing that can beat Fortigate (at least at the time we evaluated it) was opensource solution with support contract but still Fortigate offers more features for not much more money when you include hardware cost of the opensource solutions.
If we had to do it again now we would probably evaluation the more expensive options that were out of the budget at the time. Now though we have so much time and experience on the platform that the alternatives would need to be an order of magnitude better even with the bigger budget.
Yes
Most of the bugs I reported were only occuring in corner cases (Ex. when using 2 features in a certain way at the same time) but still the ones that got fix took years and didn't matter to us as we found workarounds or we used another product before then.
Our SE always provides support that goes beyond what is expected.
One time we were diagnosing a slowness when doing SMB traffic over L2TP VPN and even though support was trying to help but not finding the problem our SE was continually giving us things to try in parallel and in the end it wasn't even the Fortigate that was causing the problem, it was some regkey in Windows.
One time we were diagnosing a slowness when doing SMB traffic over L2TP VPN and even though support was trying to help but not finding the problem our SE was continually giving us things to try in parallel and in the end it wasn't even the Fortigate that was causing the problem, it was some regkey in Windows.
- Windows and macOS embedded VPN clients
- FortiManager
- FortiAnalyzer
- FortiAuthenticator
Integrating Fortigate with other Fortinet solutions like FortiAnalyzer is for the most part really easy. The only problem I remember having was when trying to use AD users + FortiAuthenticator (2FA) in the Fortigate captive portal. As it was not a supported setup, we had to create a script that syncs AD users to the Fortigate as local users.
For the VPN integration with Windows and macOS embedded client we had to do a lot of trial and error to find the correct settings as this is again not something that is officially supported in their documentation.
For the VPN integration with Windows and macOS embedded client we had to do a lot of trial and error to find the correct settings as this is again not something that is officially supported in their documentation.
- OpenVPN as a VPN client
- Clearpass
To my knowledge, OpenVPN is not supported and Fortinet does not plan to support it as a VPN client and this is why we will probably stop using Fortigate as our VPN server.
Clearpass is support though but as Fortigate only supports some types radius message and not all of them we can't do everything we would like to.
For example, it is not possible to do machine authentication as Fortigate does not support changing the group dynamically which prevents us from using a post-user-auth VLAN to do machine auth to finally send the machine/user in the correct VLAN.
Clearpass is support though but as Fortigate only supports some types radius message and not all of them we can't do everything we would like to.
For example, it is not possible to do machine authentication as Fortigate does not support changing the group dynamically which prevents us from using a post-user-auth VLAN to do machine auth to finally send the machine/user in the correct VLAN.
- File import/export
- Single Signon
- API (e.g. SOAP or REST)
- Javascript widgets
You should probably stick to Fortinet products if you want to use Fortigate as they are not the best at being vendor agnostic. Sometimes they will use standard protocols and it will be possible to use third party but you will need figure out mostly by yourself if it's even possible and then how to do it.
August 27, 2018
High quality experience of network security and traffic control in a single appliance
We use it as our internal and external firewall. It is also used with all security options, including DDOS protection, in our branches.
- Web filtering, which protects the users browsing to non-secure websites
- Network security between different networks
- Traffic shaping control for users and applications
- Traffic shaping options based more on layer 7, so you could have a more detailed control over the exact sites users are browsing
- The transition between different major updates
- More option in fast reports and dashboards
- A more exact measure of bandwidth to show in dashboard and FortiView
- Very positive because it helps us reducing cost by avoiding the acquisition of additional network equipment
- It helps us to easily reach our internal security objectives
- Bandwidth control
We selected it because it is a good balance between a very well positioned company and good pricing
200
They are part of the user who receive fortigate security protection and also the administrator which fortigate helps to solve security in a friendly and simplistic way.
2
We need people with advanced knowledge in network configuration and support, but most of the admin task of the fortigate appliance are very user friendy to configure, admin and support.
- Security protection
- WAN links load balance
- Traffic Shaping
- Wan link Load balance and high availability configuration for main ISP connections at the same time in active mode
- Different ways to apply traffic shaping to the users
- Load balancing options
- Remote site connections
Yes
Cisco Router doing a bad combination of security and shaping
- Price
- Product Reputation
- Analyst Reports
- Third-party Reviews
Fortinet is a very well ranked security company in the market giving to the company a good balance between security and pricing.
I still will keep it as my option.
- Implemented in-house
Change management was a small part of the implementation and was well-handled
There is a lot of testing implicit with the migration to the fortigate to tune as much as possible the browsing experience for the users, it does not matter how much do you test to avoid user issues in production you will have to deal always with small quantity.
- Load balance between WANs connections
- In-person training
- Self-taught
Yes, it was easy, there are a lot of resources in internet that are easy to follow.
Fortigate Cookbook it is definitely a good guide to start and follow
Yes - we have customized the interface extensively
Very easy to do and manage
No - we have not done any custom code
No
Yes
It is a good option always have available premium support hours in case you have a failure, In the last 3 years i never had a major issue that need to request big support help
Yes
yes, definetely.
In some occasion during this year, we experienced a big issue that was causing a degradation in our internet, initially we created several cases requesting support to factory to try to find the origin of the bad internet performance and experience for the users especially in videoconference, after hours of troubleshooting and testing we found that the issue was caused by a security protection of DOS that only was automatically applied during high traffic hours during the day.
- Policy creation to allow communication between networks
- Application traffic Shaping
- Make traffic shaping troubleshooting
Additional hour of support in case of an emergency failure or advanced support
No
Yes
It is very easy to do an upgrade of version and also a rollback in case you have any problem. There is a lot of information even in the same console before executing all the process.
- New Features available
- having access to las network tendencies in market like SDWAN without doing an appliance replacement
November 21, 2017
Forti-UTM
We use Fortigate across the whole organization. It is used for firewall/IPS/Web filtering.
- UTM provides comprehensive security, which is great
- Easy to use GUI
- Great support
- Site-to-site vpn - would like to configure using wizard. currently, I use manual configuration.
- Additional reports on web site usage statistics
- Failover / redundancy
- Easy to maintain, which means less time spent to monitor
- URL filtering is great
- Fortianalyzer is a plus
UTM comprehensive security is a plus.
250
web usage, ftp, e-mail, erp systems
2
firewall/URL filtering/VPN skills are needed
- Geo block
- URL filtering
- IPS/Firewall
- Web filter bypass
- Geo block
- Automatic failover
- Redundancy
Yes
- Price
- Product Features
- Product Usability
- Third-party Reviews
comprehensive UTM security is a plus
none - happy with Fortigate
- Vendor implemented
- Implemented in-house
Yes
Offline configuration, firmware updates, isolated testing, controlled testing, implementation
Change management was a small part of the implementation and was well-handled
documentation is a key
- Before and after network diagram
- Up to date documentation
- Tribal knowledge
Yes
it is a critical system for us
No
We had to come up with a way to block certain web sites for all users but allow it for a few users. support provided a workaround, which worked.
- URL filtering
- Geo block
- Site to site vpn
- Log analyzer
- Wizard for site to site vpn will be a plus
Yes, but I don't use it
December 28, 2015
Fortigate -great product, great price
We use a variety of Fortigate models across our and our customer organizations. We use it as a firewall/security/VPN appliance and also as a high availability gateway at several locations. We needed to find a product that was quick to setup, easy to manage, and provided advanced security features. Netflow/S-flow are built into Foritgate, which met another one of our requirements for traffic monitoring. We also needed a company that had a product line that could tolerate environmental extremes in an industrial environment. Fortigate has such a product line.
The Fortigate GUI is intuitive and provides easy visibility into multiple network activities. When we are trouble-shooting for our customers, this interface has often proven invaluable in quickly getting to the heart of network or security issues.
The Fortigate GUI is intuitive and provides easy visibility into multiple network activities. When we are trouble-shooting for our customers, this interface has often proven invaluable in quickly getting to the heart of network or security issues.
- Forigate's FortiOS is feature rich, giving good value for the money spent. The GUI is intuitive and makes configuration easy and fast.
- Documentation is well written and easy to read. Diagrams and illustrations clearly illustrate principles and concepts, making it easier to make configuration decisions
- The consistency of features and GUI across the product line has made Fortigate implementation very easy.
- The form factor on the industrial units such as the 60D is not idea for DIN Rails, taking up more space than is needed. There needs to be an option for 24V power in the industrial units.
- Configuration ease has allowed us to rapidly deploy installations, reducing implementation hours, and increasing project profitability
- Customer service has been enhanced through the ability to rapidly troubleshoot through detailed information provided through the GUI
- Pricepoint of the Fortigate product line has made it a high value product for us. We are able to deliver more features to our customers at lower prices, and with improved service levels.
- Cisco ASA and Dell SonicWALL Aventail
Fortigate provides a more robust feature set than Sonicwall, and at a better price point than either Cisco or Sonicwall. Both Moxa and Cisco provide industrial DIN mounts, but Moxa lacked a data center product. Cisco has both industrial and data center products, but at a much higher price. Fortigate won out by providing good pricing, a consistent, feature rich OS across the product line, and by having offerings in both industrial and traditional IT.
Yes
We replaced Dell Sonicwall with Fortigate. For a long while, the Sonicwall was the security appliance of choice for our customers, but the pricepoint, enhanced security and additional features of Fortigate gave it a clear edge. In addition, because Fortigate offered an industrial hardened unit, it made it a superior choice for our customer base.
- Price
- Product Features
- Product Usability
- Third-party Reviews
Of any of the listed factors, Usability was probably the most important factor. We needed a manufacturer that had a product line sufficient for our needs, that was easy to use and implement, and could survive the rigors of an industrial environment as well as conventional IT. Price was vey important too, but a low price without the usability that we needed wouldn't have worked.
I wouldn't change it. The switch to Fortigate was the result of a new evaluation and selection process. We listed our needs, the needs of our customers, and tried to list out what might be important over the next five years.
- Implemented in-house
No
Change management was minimal
As always, clear communication of what changes are taking place, what the impact will be, and expected outage windows played a key role in successful deployment for our customers.
- Most significant encountered issue was a few of the Fortigates had older versions of FortiOS. This version had some incompatibility issues that caused us to burn several hours until the version issue was discovered.
No
To this point, we have not needed premium support. The basic level of support has met all of our needs to date.
No
We have had to ask Fortinet for custom modifications to one of their industrial models. Foritnet went above and beyond in understanding our needs, and working on a satisfactory resolution that allowed us to deploy almost 100 fortigates for a customer.
- Implementing redundant internet connections and a high availability gateway was astoundingly easy. Got it right the first time with only about 20 minutes of research and effort.
- Firmware upgrades are almost effortless. Very easy to perform through the GUI.
No