Overall Satisfaction with WatchGuard Network Security
We used WatchGuard firewall hardware solution as the first line of defense for incoming and outgoing data traffic on our network in order to protect the entire organization. WatchGuard provided us with protection against intrusion and attacks from malicious endpoints, or hack attempts, and allowed us to add applications to the appliance in order to enhance security.
- Easy to deploy. One does not have to have knowledge of their CLI structure to deploy it which makes it easier for a wider range of people.
- Traffic analysis
- Very easy branch to branch VPN setup
- Powerful reporting
- Expensive. Adding apps to the appliance can get quite costly. As well, discontinuing an application can cause disruption of service without warning.
- LOTS of configurations that you can tweak to get the job done. Yes this is a CON too. There are so many things you can change that it can be a bit cumbersome at times.
- Often required a reboot as traffic would stop for no (known) reason.
- We found WatchGuard to be overall too pricey for our IT budget. ROI was not there.
- We found the appliance we had to be too quirky and required regular reboots, which was a time-waster.
- We found that the appliance was actually limiting our Internet bandwidth to 100mbps up/down and when we replaced it with pfSense we noted it actually has 1000mbps up/down.
We did not work with a WatchGuard Network Security partner as we have an in-house Network Security Administrator who knows his stuff quite well. He was able to set up and keep the appliance working, add domains, open ports as required, etc. The only issue we had was with the actual performance of the appliance itself.
The basic coverage of the WatchGuard appliance was good, but if you really wanted to harness the power of it, you would need to add on apps and this again was costly and also problematic when we decided to remove certain features in order to save money. It sounds like it would be a great deal all in, but like most companies these days, they all work towards that constant money flow of the subscription models.
We now use pfSense as it is open source and can be installed on any computer as long as you have the hardware you need to support it.
As far as ease of use, WatchGuard is definitely easier to use, but pfSense is more powerful with more options included with it. This is why it is more complicated to set up because there are so many things you can do with it. If you have a decent network admin I would recommend pfSense. If you need something easier to manage that will still offer the protection you need, I would recommend WatchGuard.
As far as ease of use, WatchGuard is definitely easier to use, but pfSense is more powerful with more options included with it. This is why it is more complicated to set up because there are so many things you can do with it. If you have a decent network admin I would recommend pfSense. If you need something easier to manage that will still offer the protection you need, I would recommend WatchGuard.