Fortinet FortiGate Reviews

We use FortiGate as a firewall. We have a FortiGate 201 model.

It's good that we didn't get hacked or attacked, indicating strong threat prevention.

The reporting on employee behavior and the prevention of new viruses are essential features. Additionally, we have found it convenient for monitoring if users download documents from unknown websites.

The AI part needs improvement to enhance its functionality.

We have been using Fortinet FortiGate IPS for almost three years.

Fortinet FortiGate is very stable. We have not faced any delays or issues.

The scalability is good. We haven't faced any issues, and it supports our organization well.

The technical support is very good.

We use FortiGate for our data center firewall and Sophos for our internet firewall. We find FortiGate to be more stable than Sophos.

The initial setup was straightforward and did not present any issues.

The installation was performed by a product's partner. I supervised the process.

Overall, the stability of FortiGate IPS is impressive, and I would recommend it to others because of its stability.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

The majority of use cases have been around UTM. Initially, they were famous for their UTM solution because nobody was offering what Fortinet was offering. 

We most probably use the latest version.

Fortinet has a very strong OS. They have a single OS through which they integrate all the networks and security operations. Our experience has been very good. Fortinet gives us a single fabric for the security and network teams. This unification has helped us a lot in providing Secure SD-WAN and other solutions, such as network switches, wireless controllers, FortiNAC, FortiAuthenticator, etc. They have a single pane of glass for all these from the monitoring and visibility aspect.

The integrated application protection provided by Secure SD-WAN is very good. Fortinet is a security-focused company. The features related to application recognition and how to enhance the performance and security of applications are pretty good.

The customers for whom we deployed FortiGate have become long-term customers of Fortinet. Even when they compare the solution with some of the other vendors, they're more comfortable with going with Fortinet and upgrading and refreshing the hardware and the software. It's a very good product, and the customer satisfaction is pretty good.

It impacts operational efficiency because we can quickly make the changes. For example, Cisco has some limitations in terms of the time it takes for any change to take effect, which impacts the operational efficiency, whereas in the case of Fortinet, they've got a very quick way of doing the changes and reverting them, which eliminates any downtimes because of the configurations. Their method for configuring and applying policies is very simple and easy. Because of that, it's very easy to do complex changes, and in the case of misconfiguration, revert those changes without much of an impact. Overall, Fortinet FortiGate brings a lot of operational improvements because of the strength of FortiOS.

Secure SD-WAN has helped us remediate threats more quickly. Normally, with the WAN solutions or the simple SD-WAN solutions, security is done on the hub side. With the Secure SD-WAN solution, we can apply security at the branch level, so unnecessary or malicious traffic doesn't reach the data centers or the hub site, which helps in improving the overall security posture. Also, we can tighten and apply a single security policy across all the branches or different segments of the WAN, which improves overall security. Fortinet offers different security measures for blocking malicious traffic and having a uniform policy across the entire organization. 

Secure SD-WAN has helped reduce our mean time to detect (MTTD) and mean time to resolve (MTTR). Applying a central security policy at the branch level immediately helps us to detect any malicious traffic and block it there, so the chances of anything reaching the hub or the data center side are less. It improves MTTD and MTTR because it has a very good interface where we can easily respond to all the attacks and manipulate things. Applying security with the help of Secure SD-WAN helps to mitigate attacks from where they are originating, which improves MTTD and MTTR.

Secure SD-WAN has helped reduce help desk tickets. Because of the operational efficiency and security, there are not many issues that impact the number of tickets.

With the help of Secure SD-WAN, we can provide operational efficiency because we can apply policies on an application-level basis. With Secure SD-WAN, we can apply a security policy per application. The central security application structure helps to apply all the measures from one central place and from the cloud. Because it's connected to many intelligence centers, it future-proofs a business and improves it overall. 

Fortinet has a very good solution for Secure SD-WAN. One very good feature is that they have robust and simple FortiOS through which they provide all solutions. That's their strength. There's not much complexity involved with the Secure SD-WAN solution of Fortinet as compared to Cisco's solution, which has a lot of flexibility but complexity also comes with that flexibility.

From a reporting perspective, there's room for improvement. They provide FortiAnalyzer through which one can get some enhancements, but the visibility and reporting still need slight improvement. Recently, a customer had a requirement of getting some reports on their internet usage. Palo Alto has a bit better reporting than the Cisco and Fortinet firewalls, but we cannot get granular details about the user-level security, usage, etc.

Their support also needs improvement.

I've been working with this solution for around ten years.

It's very stable.

For small and mid-level enterprises, it has been a very good solution, and that's why they captured that market. Our experience with it has been very good. It's easy to configure and deploy. In our country, their main market is small and big enterprises, but they are gradually focusing on the performance aspect. It's being used in large enterprises as well as a firewall solution.

It's scalable. There were some performance issues a few years ago, but they've fixed them for better performance, optimization, and high throughput. Performance-wise, it's very good.

Support is one of the areas that they need to look into because as compared to some of the other companies, Fortinet's support is not that responsive. The product is very stable, but their support needs to be improved. I'd rate their support a six out of ten.

Neutral

We used Cisco and Juniper. We switched to FortiGate because it offers a lot of features at a very good price point. Unlike some of the other vendors, you don't have many license restrictions. For large and medium enterprises, they provide a wireless controller, authenticator, and mail features. There are so many features integrated within FortiOS, whereas, with many vendors, you have to work with different products. It's very helpful for small organizations with tighter budgets. There's also the ease of configuration that helps to bring things online as quickly as possible as compared to some of the other solutions that have a learning curve and that take some time.

I mostly work on the pre-sales side. I discuss all the features, and then I work with the deployment team. They do the installation.

Its installation is easy. Normally, we get the scope and have the high-level design. After that, we go to the low-level design where we manage all the configuration templates. We have discussions with the customer and finalize all the policies that need to be applied at the site. We segment sites by size, traffic, application usage, etc. We apply the policies on a group basis, and then we apply the configurations on the controllers or the sites.

In our area, people are mostly interested in on-prem setup instead of cloud because not many controllers are located within the country, so the traffic has to be traversed outside the country. For banks and financial sectors, on-prem is more suitable, but small organizations can have it on the cloud.

We implement it ourselves. For small projects, one or two people are good enough because we majorly find all the things at the LLD stage. We have a team that works on the LLD and configurations, and then we've got an on-field team that takes those configurations and applies the changes. Normally, if the implementation isn't distributed across the country, not many resources are required. Two or three resources are good enough, but if it's distributed across different regions, then a larger team is required. Once we have the templates, things are posted automatically, so not much to be done at the sites. We just have to do connectivity and configure the policies. As compared to other deployments, we require much less staff for the deployment tasks.

It requires maintenance, but generally, the product is very stable and doesn't require much maintenance. Normally, there aren't many changes. If there are any issues, we definitely need to monitor and check. Most of the issues aren't related to the solution itself if you have implemented it in the right manner, so planning needs to be done in the right manner.

There's definitely an ROI. Having a centralized way of managing and applying policies across the entire organization always helps. The time to manage, operate, and resolve issues is much lower. When you have a central place to manage and do the changes, you get efficiency and time savings.

A year or two years back, its price was competitive and reasonable. That was one of the reasons that people easily switched to Fortinet. Over the last two years, the prices have increased drastically. However, the prices of others have also increased. An advantage is there from the price point but not as much as it was previously.

It's a very good product. It has all the features required for operations. We strongly recommend using Fortinet for your edge or data center security or for your SD-WAN. FortiGate is doing very well. Fortinet has been capturing the security market, and now they're capturing the market for SD-WAN as well. They're a leader in Gartner's Quadrant. Their FortiMail and FortiWeb solutions are also very good. They provide all these solutions, and we have deployed all these solutions in the market. They're working perfectly, and customers have minor complaints about them.

Currently, no SD-WAN solution is interoperable with other vendors. Every SD-WAN vendor has its own solution. There's no standardization, so there isn't much interoperability. For example, we need a controller and branch-level software or hardware. Hardware is agnostic for some vendors, but normally, vendors also have their hardware. There are a few vendors that provide hardware-agnostic SD-WAN solutions, but Fortinet has its own hardware on which the complete SD-WAN solution runs.

Overall, I'd rate Fortinet FortiGate an eight out of ten.

In our current data center, we use eight Fortinet firewalls. These firewalls serve multiple tiers of the network, including internet users, server farms, and DMZ ports. This gives us multiple approaches to our system and network. As a result, we are able to receive all reports before the analyzer.

In 2011, we were using a Cisco ASA 5540 fixed firewall. We moved to Fortinet because their UTM appliance was a next-generation firewall that offered more than one solution in a single box. This meant that we could handle the network, server, and client parts of our infrastructure with a single device. We also chose Fortinet because of the ease of its GUI and its ease of implementation in multiple locations. Currently, I have three data centers. We are using a consolidated console with a broader view of the network traffic. This is why we moved to Fortinet. We had previously used Juniper and Cisco, but we found that Fortinet offered a better solution for our needs.

We deployed the solution on-premises because, while the private sector in Kuwait has begun to move to the cloud, government entities are not permitted to do so.

I started with the firewall module, and we were using multiple boxes for multiple functions. I was using a Juniper SSL VPN. They came to us with a single-box solution that included SSL VPN, so we moved to that. Then they came up with client endpoint security, and we moved to that as well. They also introduced web filtering in Fortinet, so we moved to that as well. All of the technology that we were using previously on separate consoles is now consolidated into a single console. I can see the beauty of this product in that it has a single console that manages all of the facilities on one web page.

The firewall is top-notch. We are using SSL VPN.

When we first started, Fortinet was using a single appliance with a firewall module in the region. They later came up with many different solutions. I have also used FortiDB, but it has been discontinued. We have since removed it. We are looking forward to Fortinet considering a sandboxing solution. This would allow us to secure our database at that layer. I see the database area as being weaker. I would suggest that Fortinet add sandboxing to their solution.

I have been using Fortinet FortiGate for 12 years.

Fortinet FortiGate is stable which is why we have stuck with it for almost 12 years.

The scalability is good. In 2016, we scaled our system to ensure that we would have enough capacity for the next five to seven years. We are currently only utilizing 25 percent of the hardware processing.

We have around 900 users on our networks per second with a total active directory of 7,000.

The technical support in our region is excellent. There are three levels of support. I remember one time when my problem was not resolved by level one or level two, so it was escalated to level three which was awesome. The level three technician was able to understand the issue quickly by reviewing the chain of email logs and the available information.

Positive

We previously used Juniper and Cisco firewalls before switching to Fortinet FortiGate. We were drawn to Fortinet because of its superior control and visibility, as well as its high availability, throughput, and durability. Fortinet's FortiGate firewalls are ASIC-based, which makes them more reliable and efficient than other solutions. As a result, we were able to handle more traffic with Fortinet than with any other vendor.

The initial deployment was complex. We started with a low-level design, discussing with the vendor that we had a certain number of firewalls and concurrent sessions available on the network, and that we had remote sites. We began by implementing the boxes in the data center, then the main data center headquarters, and then the campus network, which has its own data center with a firewall module. We later installed it in one of our accessory branches in their data center. The installation was done in phases.

When the high-level design was in place, we began migrating the configuration. We used a migration tool from Cisco and Juniper, which was very smooth because it was intelligent enough to take all the network IDs, policies, and source destinations, forward based. This meant that we had fewer challenges when we started the migration.

However, we did encounter some challenges during the migration. These were not due to Fortinet, but rather to the configuration that had been migrated from the other vendor. We resolved these challenges by manually checking each policy one by one, and the issue was rectified within a couple of days.

A total of four people were involved in the deployment. Two people from our organization, one from the vendor, and one from the partner. We have to go through our partner to access the vendor.

The implementation was completed by the vendor.

Fortinet FortiGate's features and price have provided a return on investment for our organization.

The pricing is a bit more expensive than the others but Fortinet is the best in the region. They have a good hold on the market because they are everywhere.

We pay for support and licensing fees.

I give the pricing a nine out of ten.

We evaluated Palo Alto Networks, but they did not have a presence in our region, so we did not move forward with them. We also evaluated Check Point, but it is not a government-approved solution in our region.

I give Fortinet FortiGate a nine out of ten. 

Fortinet FortiGate has good regional support. One of the best things about this solution is that Fortinet doesn't disappear after the sale. They keep engaging us with new technologies. For example, they recently engaged us with a SIEM and SOAR solution that allows me to have a single console for all of my security needs. I have a plan to move to this solution and consolidate all of my firewalls into a single FortiManager. This will allow me to have a more secure and efficient network.

Fortinet is not as focused on cybersecurity as some other companies, but they are very strong in network security. They are constantly coming up with new and innovative solutions that help us to protect our networks. I am very happy with Fortinet FortiGate and I would recommend it to anyone looking for a reliable and secure network solution.

We have deployed the solution in multiple locations.

Our partner is involved in maintenance, especially when a new FortiOS is released. We engage the vendor to understand the maintenance requirements, such as stability and any potential risks. We follow the vendor's recommendations and perform maintenance accordingly. We also use FortiAnalyzer to manage our logs. We delete old logs in accordance with government policy, which requires six months of data to be kept. We take care to ensure that maintenance does not affect these logs.

Fortinet FortiGate is one of the best and most affordable solutions with top-notch technology on the market. We get something that is both cheaper and of good quality with Fortinet FortiGate. Fortinet submitted the lowest-priced bid and met all of our technical requirements.

The main work for Fortinet FortiGate is the SD WAN solution. They have a good SD WAN solution with the FortiAnalyzer and FortiManager. The company has more than one site, forty-five sites, so we need to connect it altogether.

The main feature in Fortinet FortiGate is the SD WAN functionality. Based on my experience, it was very easy to integrate Fortinet FortiGate with SD WAN. The benefits Fortinet FortiGate provides include easy connectivity, user-friendliness, scalability, and easy configuration management.

I believe Fortinet can make Fortinet FortiGate better with reduced costs, free certification, and improved security.

My experience with Fortinet FortiGate is approximately five to six months.

I would rate the stability of Fortinet FortiGate as eight because there are other solutions that are more secure and more capable.

When talking about scalability for Fortinet FortiGate, I would rate it as nine or higher.

We have not needed technical support from Fortinet until now.

We moved to another vendor. We first moved to Cisco firewall, and then about six months ago, we moved to Fortinet FortiGate.

The initial setup for Fortinet FortiGate was simple. We worked with another vendor, and it was easy to configure and migrate with our current infrastructure.

We implemented through a vendor, through a third party.

There is a feature inside Fortinet FortiGate for AI and ML.

The Sophos XG was only for one branch. We mainly have a HQ Cisco Firepower FMC. I believe Fortinet FortiGate is easier.

There is a feature inside Fortinet FortiGate for AI and ML.

It is acceptable for my feedback about Fortinet FortiGate on PeerSpot to be with my personal name as a personal opinion without contact details or company name.

I am interested in being a reference for the vendor for Fortinet FortiGate, and it would be fine if the vendor contacts me with questions about my review.

In the future, I might have colleagues who can provide reviews about Fortinet FortiGate.

We plan to work with Fortinet Unified Sassy. I can recommend Fortinet FortiGate to other users.

I rate Fortinet FortiGate a nine out of ten overall.

The main use case for Fortinet FortiGate is to monitor different systems of our customers. The solution handles the security of the company, manages VPNs, handles inside security, and integrates with NAC solutions while integrating every security device inside the company to ensure data protection. We are utilizing Fortinet FortiGate's SD-WAN capabilities. The network performance is handled effectively by the Fortinet FortiGate solution, and depending on the capacity of the solution, it can manage all traffic inside the company.

The main benefits of Fortinet FortiGate are security and the ability to manage all information throughout the company. This includes managing all data inside the company to prevent intrusions from outside.

There is always room for improvement. They could enhance their support in different ways, such as having technical support available during night hours.

I have used the Fortinet FortiGate solution for about seven to eight years.

Fortinet FortiGate is very stable. We have experienced no problems with the hardware, updated software, or management of the solution, with stability over 99%, making it a very good solution for us.

The solution is scalable.

The Fortinet FortiGate service is very good in Chile, making it difficult to improve upon.

Positive

We use both Fortinet solutions and Cisco solutions, depending on customer needs. The primary difference between Fortinet FortiGate and Cisco's firewall is pricing, with Cisco being more expensive.

It is a medium-sized deployment.

The pricing is competitive at this moment, and customers recognize that Fortinet solutions offer good pricing while providing a very good product. The stability is excellent for customers, and the capacity to integrate different solutions of the same brand is also very good.

They use other products to integrate information with different brands, including the NAC solution, which can be used for every brand in the market since it's based on the SNMP protocol.

We are not currently using the Fortinet FortiGate's data center solution. We are not using any AI or machine learning enhanced services at this moment as it's very new in Chile. Overall, I would rate Fortinet FortiGate a nine out of ten.

The main use cases for Fortinet FortiGate are mostly for an industrial company firewall, focusing on firewall, web server, and new-gen, next-gen firewall.

What I appreciate about Fortinet FortiGate is that the UI is easier than what I've previously known from Sophos. Compared to Sophos, I prefer Fortinet, and the system and configuration settings are easier.

The main benefits I have seen from using Fortinet FortiGate for the organization are due to the other branch in another country, as the connection is smoother than the previous firewall.

For Fortinet FortiGate, I am not sure yet what can be improved or enhanced because currently, I am comfortable with this solution.

I have been working with Fortinet FortiGate for less than six months.

I think Fortinet FortiGate is stable because previously it had a hiccup around a bug within the authentication VPN due to the firmware, but after updating, it's easier to control.

In terms of scalability, I find Fortinet FortiGate scalable. There are no issues yet with scalability in Fortinet FortiGate.

Regarding the technical support of Fortinet FortiGate, I have already tried to contact them previously for a problem. I would evaluate the technical support of Fortinet FortiGate as friendly and easily understandable for our problem, as they have a high understanding of the Fortinet FortiGate system.

Positive

I prefer Fortinet FortiGate over Sophos because of the connection system, the web GUI, and I think Fortinet is much more secure than Sophos.

The initial setup of Fortinet FortiGate was easy. The setup needs around a few days to test before deploying to the customer, and while deploying, it's easy to contact customer service to help us with it.

We are utilizing SD-WAN capabilities in Fortinet FortiGate, but not extensively, just a few times. I have not yet seen any impact on the network performance with the SD-WAN, as we're just monitoring it.

My experience with integrating SD-WAN capabilities within Fortinet FortiGate is that the project for SD-WAN is not very long, approximately one month of testing, so for now, the connection is clear with a bit of misconnection. 

I would personally recommend Fortinet FortiGate.

On a scale of one to ten, I rate this solution an eight.

My customers use Fortinet FortiGate for various purposes. The security services provided by Fortinet FortiGate are quite strong. 

I have had use cases where FortiGate helped to protect the mission-critical data for my customers. 

FortiGate is effective at protecting the data at the edge.

What I appreciate about Fortinet FortiGate is its effectiveness. The feature that I find the most effective is threat prevention. 

The mean time to respond and the remediation process is sped up. FortiGate has also helped to consolidate tools and applications for my customers.

The firewall has indeed helped customers to consolidate tools and applications. Once everything is set and done, maintaining FortiGate can have its challenges.

Fortinet FortiGate brings numerous benefits to my company.

The good things aside, there are improvements needed in the Fortinet FortiGate. My customers requested specific features to be included in the Fortinet FortiGate.

My experience with the Fortinet FortiGate is recent, as I worked with it less than a year ago.

My impression of the stability of FortiGate is that it is quite stable.

When it comes to scalability, I find it scalable.

I have escalated questions to Fortinet's tech support.

Positive

We need to compare different firewalls, including Fortinet FortiGate and Hillstone, and then suggest the better one to our clients.

The initial implementation part is straightforward, but it has some complexities. My implementation strategy involves several steps that I take when deploying it.

I do have hands-on experience working with the products, and I do the POCs and implementation part.

When it comes to the ROI, the return on investment of FortiGate can be a bit hard to estimate, but based on my experience, I find it to be quite favorable. Overall, Fortinet FortiGate has indeed helped to reduce the total cost of ownership for my customers.

My impression of the firewall's ability to provide network and security coverage is positive. 

When it comes to sustainability, my impressions of the firewall are favorable.

The size of the environment with Fortinet FortiGate was significant, including many endpoints and users, and it involved enterprise-level business.

Based on my experience, I would say to someone considering purchasing Fortinet FortiGate's data center firewall is that it's a good choice. I would give Fortinet a solid score.

I see several benefits of using Fortinet FortiGate. When it comes to deploying the solution, it is easy. It allows customers to quickly get up to speed with their day-to-day tasks, minimizing mundane requests. Additionally, the support regarding upgrades and hardware failures has been above par.

Fortinet FortiGate helps to remediate threats more quickly. 

Fortinet FortiGate helps to reduce the mean time to respond when it is properly integrated with proper tools. For example, with email and other automation capabilities, it has reduced to under an hour for me. 

Fortinet FortiGate helps to consolidate tools and applications by offering web control, email protection, routing, firewalling, and extending to switching and wireless on the same management platform.

Fortinet FortiGate is good for helping you secure and protect mission-critical data. It is also good for protecting your edge.

When it comes to security, Fortinet is excellent in terms of how updates are done when there is an incident globally or there's a new variant of any IOCs. It is quite up-to-date.

I find application control, logging and reporting, and ease of use valuable. I find the ease of configuring specific policies to be the most valuable feature of the Fortinet FortiGate firewall.

The solution could be improved by addressing limited local reporting. It requires obtaining the FortiAnalyzer for proper visibility because you can't do much from a reporting perspective with just the firewall alone.

In terms of convergence, it is a good solution, but it can be better. FortiGate has the capability to support their switching and wireless platforms. They are quite excellent on their wireless side, but I found a couple of gaps in terms of how FortiGate integrates with their own switching platform. There are some gaps there.

My experience of working with Fortinet FortiGate is approximately 10 years.

It caters to all with different units, such as from five users to a model that supports telcos or huge enterprises. Depending on the size of your organization, you end up getting the correct fit of the model, and they have the same capabilities. The variation comes in terms of the interfaces and throughputs, but from a security perspective, you get the same benefit, irrespective of whether you have an entry-level unit or an enterprise.

Their support is quite effective. I would rate technical support from Fortinet a nine out of ten.

Positive

I've had a chance to do a couple of deployments on the cloud. I've done deployments on private and public clouds. I've deployed it on-prem as an edge firewall or as a data center firewall. 

In terms of maintenance, like all firewalls, there is an aspect of upgrading based on new features and getting the latest updates from the signatures and IPS uploads that come along with it. That happens effectively in an automated way. Software upgrades are catered to during the support window.

The FortiGate firewall has helped to reduce the total cost of ownership.

It provides value for money and is quite competitive compared to other vendors, allowing you to achieve the proper ROI from investments.

The pricing or licensing of Fortinet FortiGate is quite effective as it offers different bundles that aggregate most required features, while also allowing clients the option to select specific components alone.

The typical use case for Fortinet FortiGate as a firewall is because of the commercial aspects. It is competitive from a pricing perspective. There is ease of use compared to other vendors and effective vendor support for any issues.

Anyone considering purchasing FortiGate's data center firewall should go for it because data centers require stability and proper performance, which the platform provides. I would recommend getting the latest unit for a longer shelf life as clients often buy nearly end-of-sale products, limiting their usability.

Overall, I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.