Cisco Secure Firewall vs. Fortinet FortiGate

Cisco Secure Firewall

Fortinet FortiGate

Overview
Product	Rating	Most Used By	Product Summary	Starting Price
Cisco Secure Firewall	Score8 out of 10	N/A	Cisco Secure Firewall delivers comprehensive threat protection for modern, distributed networks. Built to support hybrid workforces and multicloud environments, it enables Zero Trust access, application visibility, and secure remote connectivity. With integration across the Cisco Secure portfolio, including SecureX and Talos threat intelligence, the firewall powers organizations to detect and stop more sophisticated threats. Centralized management simplifies policy enforcement, orchestration,…	N/A
FortiGate	Score8.2 out of 10	N/A	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.	N/A

Pricing

Cisco Secure Firewall

FortiGate

No answers on this topic

Pricing Offerings
Cisco Secure Firewall	FortiGate
Free Trial
Yes	Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No	No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No	No

No setup fee

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FortiGate pricing starts at $250 for home office use, up to $300,000 for large enterprise appliances. Must contact sales team for pricing.

Community Pulse
Key User Insights
	Cisco Secure Firewall	FortiGate
Considered Both Products	Cisco Verified User Chose Cisco Secure Firewall Cisco is more secure than FortiGate. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Cisco Secure Firewall Gui of FortiGate is more user friendly Incentivized Helpful? Edwin Sandys Manager Enterprise Systems & Networks Infrastructure in Information Technology at The University of the South Pacific (Higher Education, 1001-5000 employees) Chose Cisco Secure Firewall I believe Cisco firewalls are definitely on par with Palo Alto but the latest AI feature releasing in 2024 will certainly surpass all expectations. Fortinet is going to struggle after this and I can say that with certainty given we have removed all our FortiGate firewalls. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Cisco Secure Firewall Having worked in the Fortinet and Sonicwall space, I have found that the Cisco Secure Firewall platform is the easiest to work with. The platform is easily customizable and overall very clean. Cisco has kept the platform feeling fresh with regular updates. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Cisco Secure Firewall Cisco Secure Firewall works better with the Cisco ecosystem when we can utilize it and feels beefy enough when we utilize it in the data center. The Fortinet we have found are great, small cost boxes for remote offices with a better UI then Cisco Secure Firewalls. The feature … Incentivized Helpful? Kyle Westphal Network Engineer in Information Technology at MBMI (Government Administration, 1001-5000 employees) Chose Cisco Secure Firewall Simply object modification Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Cisco Secure Firewall The other products do well with simplifying some of the tasks such as rule creation where it would create rules based on a zone. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Cisco Secure Firewall Good Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Cisco Secure Firewall We had a lot of bugs with CheckPoint, Cisco Secure Firewalls are much more reliable over time. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Cisco Secure Firewall result better in the use of policies and for the segregation of the customer infrastructure. Incentivized Helpful? Jon Woloshyn Consultant in Information Technology at CDW (Information Technology & Services, 1001-5000 employees) Chose Cisco Secure Firewall Environment is heavily Cisco so the ecosystem made sense Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Cisco Secure Firewall Because reputation of the brand, but fortinet its easier to operate Incentivized Helpful? Leon Bijelic Security Consultant in Information Technology at K-Businesscom (Computer Networking, 1001-5000 employees) Chose Cisco Secure Firewall Palo Alto has better architecture with their multi cpu concept that increases throughoutput. Cisco has better features and mostly better integrations outside of their eco system. Overall the products and features of cisco are slightly better but if cisco would implement the … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Cisco Secure Firewall Cisco FTD poc was more successful on our case Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Cisco Secure Firewall Cisco FTD ofers GUI management and overall if feature richer Incentivized Helpful? Victor Lau Network Architect in Professional Services at BSS (Telecommunications, 10,001+ employees) Chose Cisco Secure Firewall Cisco Firepower is a costlier solution but you get what you pay for, with the added costs Cisco provides a full feature solution to be configured in any scenario. The setup can be complex but sometimes this is needed for challenging setups. This is the full featured standard … Incentivized Helpful?	Fortinet No answer on this topic
	Would buy again
	No answers on this topic	No answers on this topic
	Delivers good value for the price
	No answers on this topic	No answers on this topic
	Happy with the feature set
	No answers on this topic	No answers on this topic
	Lived up to sales and marketing promises
	No answers on this topic	No answers on this topic
	Implementation went as expected
No answers on this topic	No answers on this topic

Features

Cisco Secure Firewall

FortiGate

Comparison of Firewall features of Cisco Secure Firewall and Fortinet FortiGate
Feature	Cisco Secure Firewall 7.9 79 Ratings	Fortinet FortiGate 8.9 40 Ratings
Identification Technologies	8.168 Ratings	8.638 Ratings
Visualization Tools	7.072 Ratings	8.538 Ratings
Content Inspection	8.371 Ratings	9.439 Ratings
Policy-based Controls	8.876 Ratings	9.040 Ratings
Active Directory and LDAP	8.865 Ratings	9.039 Ratings
Firewall Management Console	8.274 Ratings	8.640 Ratings
Reporting and Logging	7.275 Ratings	7.440 Ratings
VPN	7.765 Ratings	8.640 Ratings
High Availability	8.571 Ratings	9.535 Ratings
Stateful Inspection	7.870 Ratings	9.538 Ratings
Proxy Server	6.741 Ratings	10.028 Ratings

User Ratings
	Cisco Secure Firewall	FortiGate
Likelihood to Recommend	8.1 (84 ratings)	9.0 (67 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew	7.2 (2 ratings)	9.9 (4 ratings)
Usability	9.0 (2 ratings)	9.0 (8 ratings)
Availability	9.1 (2 ratings)	10.0 (2 ratings)
Performance	5.0 (1 ratings)	10.0 (1 ratings)
Support Rating	7.6 (35 ratings)	8.6 (26 ratings)
In-Person Training	- (0 ratings)	10.0 (1 ratings)
Implementation Rating	8.0 (1 ratings)	8.0 (4 ratings)
Configurability	- (0 ratings)	9.0 (1 ratings)
Ease of integration	- (0 ratings)	7.0 (1 ratings)
Product Scalability	5.0 (1 ratings)	9.8 (2 ratings)
Vendor post-sale	- (0 ratings)	10.0 (1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale	- (0 ratings)	9.0 (1 ratings)

Cisco Secure Firewall vs. Fortinet FortiGate

Cisco Secure Firewall

Fortinet FortiGate

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