Fortinet FortiGate-VM Reviews

We primarily use the solution for the security so that our systems will not be penetrated externally.

The security the solution provides is its most valuable feature. All the basic security we need is found within this product.

The functionality provided is very good.

It integrates well with FortiMail and the two combined add a nice layer of security for our on-prem emails.

As we just began implementing the solution, I'm not sure if there are any features missing. We haven't come across any shortcomings in the product yet.

We purchased the product through a reseller, and we don't have any issues with them and therefore, so far, don't have any issues with the solution itself.

The product may not be as robust as Palo Alto. However, unless you are a big bank, you probably won't need it to be.

This is the first time we've acquired a firewall. It's pretty much a new experience on our end. We haven't been using it long at all. 

We haven't had any issues when it comes to stability. It's been very good.

The scalability of the solution is good. We haven't faced any issues with expansion.

We have yet to contact technical support, as we've just started to use the product and haven't had any issues to speak of so far.

This is our first firewall. We didn't previously have a different solution.

The solution's setup was pretty straightforward. It took the team about two to three weeks to deploy it.

We had a reseller assist us with the implementation.

Fortigate is cheaper if you compare it to Palo Alto, a main competitor.

Our team evaluated Palo Alto as well, although I did not evaluate it directly. I'm not sure what the main difference was between Palo Alto and Fortigate.

However, we have evaluated Fortinet for the last four or five months and now we're officially acquiring the licenses for it. 

I believe the pricing was a big part of the decision to choose Fortigate.

We've also recently acquired FortiMail as well.

This solution has the basic functionalities required for a firewall. In fact, in terms of our evaluation, it's basic functionalities are enough for us. If I were to compare it to Palo Alto, it does not necessarily have the full capability of that particular solution. We're not a bank. We don't belong to the banking industry so we don't really need such high caliber firewalls that provide multiple levels of security. It's not required with our industry, so a mid-range firewall like Fortigate is perfect.

If your business is small or even enterprise-level, if it doesn't necessarily need multiple or heavy firewalls, Fortigate will actually work just fine for you.

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten. It perfectly meets our requirements.

I am a design engineer and we are designing a security operation center for data censoring in Turkey.

We are using FortiGate to protect more than 3000 end users.

More than one gigabyte per second bandwidth is necessary. FortiGate was quite useful for this scenario, but we are just in the planning and analyzing phase. The tender should be in the near future.

The most valuable features are the web proxy for protection and web gateway for deployment.

Pricing should be more competitive, it's expensive.

In the next release, I would like to see integration capability with SIEM tools, such as QRadar, and LogRhythm.

I have been using this solution for more than five years.

This solution is stable.

From the datasheets that I have read, I can see from its specifications that it is scalable.

In this project, we have more than 3000 end users. Most of the users are security admins and security engineers.

I have not contacted technical support.

The price is similar to Symantec Endpoint, but it's more expensive than Forcepoint solutions. Fortinet is better than Forcepoint.

I don't see that it's a problem concerning the pricing, but it is expensive for Turkey.

We do not pay any additional costs for technical support or additional features.

I would recommend using Fortinet, especially its web security proxy and web security gate because it is quite useful for them.

I would suggest this solution.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

We primarily use the solution for LAN connections.

The solution has similar attributes to other competitors. 

The encryption detection is good.

In terms of administration, it's perfect.

The encryption detection could be improved. In my opinion, I think Sophos has better encryption detection than this solution.

The security of the solution could be better.

The interface needs to be updated and simplified.

The management could be more in-depth or clear. 

I've been using the solution for close to a year now. I've also been working with Fortigate's firewall solution for about two and a half years.

We haven't faced any issues with stability since I've been with the company. I haven't witnessed any bugs or glitches. Our organization is satisfied with the level of stability it has provided.

About 50% of our network users are currently on the solution. For the two companies that we have on the solution currently, there's probably 100 users in each company that use the solution.

I personally have never been in touch with technical support for Fortigate. I can't speak to any kind of experience. I have heard good reviews from other people, however.

I've used Sophos in the past.

There are some technical issues with Sophos, at least on the older version, but with XG they kind-of did an upgrade. The interface of Sophos is great. It makes it easy to manage. In terms of functionality, both Fortigate and Sophos are very good and have almost the same functionality. It does depend on the license you apply for, however.

If you subscribe to Sandstorm in Sophos, you should expect that you get the functionality of Sandstorm. 

They are both quite equal on the market for the most part.

In terms of the initial setup, a vendor did that for us. We just manage it. The solution was already in place before I started at the company. I don't have details in relation to its initial complexity or how long it took.

Our vendor set up the solution for us.

At this time, I'm unsure of what the costs related to the solution are. It's my understanding that support is part of the OEM fee and you do have to pay that yearly. However, it does depend on the arrangements with the OEM.

We did look at Barracuda, but we decided against them because it gets a bit too technical. Also, unlike Sophos, for example, you can't pick the license you want and instead have to buy a package that may include things you don't need. Barracuda's interface looks like something designed in the 90s as well, which was a turn-off.

We used to be on the cloud, but we phased it out more than a year ago.

I'd recommend the solution. It's one of the best on the market. It's great for financial services institutions. Security is important because of the type of companies that are typically dealing with it.

I'd advise that users use it within a firewall, to create a double layer of protection or something similar.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten, especially when comparing it to other solutions.

We are a solution provider and this is one of the products that we implement for our clients.

The most valuables features are the ease of use and deployment. 

It is easy to back up and easy to transport.

This is a flexible solution.

Our customers are happy with the performance and capacity.

The user interface is ok and we haven't had any problems with it.

The price of FortiGate-VM is high and should be more competitive.

In the next release, we would like to see full integration with VMware NSX virtualized networks.

We began working with this appliance about five years ago.

This is a reliable solution and we haven't had any issues with the virtual appliance.

This is a largely scalable and flexible solution.

We have not been in contact with technical support.

I have personal experience with Palo Alto, Check Point, pfSense, and SonicWall.

This solution is very expensive. There are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fees.

I have tested virtual appliances from almost every vendor and the only ones that I can recommend are those from Fortinet. Many do not have the maturity or a proper licensing model, whereas others lack performance optimization for the virtual scenarios, and some vendors lack field engineering experience.

Our customers for this virtual appliance are very happy with their deployments and I recommend it. This is not a perfect solution but we are not seeking one. Every product has room for improvement.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

Our primary use cases are using the solution as a configuring solution or data management. We use it for simple data center segmentation.

We got a PCL segmentation instance that has been replaced with a virtual instance. This has benefitted our organization by quite a bit.

The solution's most valuable aspects are IPS and the signature.

I don't see any specific features that are missing from the solution right now.

The user interface needs to be improved.

I've been using the solution for about six to seven months now.

The stability of the solution is good. We haven't faced any issues at all while using the product.

I haven't attempted to scale the solution, so I can't speak to how easy or hard it would be to expand it.

In our organization, we currently have 500 users on the solution. They're mostly end-users and admins.

We were previously using Palo Alto before we switched to Fortigate. We switched after seeing the solution on a commercial.

The initial setup was not complex. The implementation proved to be straightforward.

The project took about one week in total, including deployment and configuration.

There was only a single person needed to handle the deployment process.

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten. I only really use the solution for communication and ordering support.

We don't have a business relationship with Fortigate. We're just a customer.

FortiGate-VM is installed in our data centers and is used for site-to-site connections between offices. 

The most valuable features are site-to-site connections and UTM.

When new versions are deployed they tend to be a little buggy, so they should be more fully tested before release.

I have been using this solution for about a year.

We have had no issues with respect to stability, except that when new versions are released we do notice problems.

Scalability has not been a problem.

We have contacted technical support at times when the appliance was not working well and they were ok. We have no issues with support.

I also use Cisco equipment and the main difference is that Cisco is more expensive.

The initial setup is not very complex and involved only a few settings.

The deployment took us a couple of days.

We had assistance during our implementation and we were satisfied with the service.

The price of this product is great compared to others.

Overall, this is a good product with good features and priced well compared to others. It is GUI-based and I am happy with the interface. I would recommend it and cannot think of any changes that I would make. The only problem is that new releases tend to be a little buggy.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

We are primarily using the solution on the VPN box as a perimeter firewall. We use it to secure internal networks and a few servers. Our network is solely on Fortigate.

The standard features, including the filtering, are quite good. All the basic features are pretty useful for us. 

It's very simple for us to use. 

It's very similar to SonicWall.

There isn't anything in terms of features that we find are lacking. We don't see any places on the solution that don't cater to our requirements.

I would like to see VNX security and WildFire. Those features I would like to see on the solution in the future in order to be able to evaluate it further.

I've been using the solution for two years.

The solution is pretty stable. 

We haven't attempted to scale the solution just yet. If we want to scale this solution we may have to look at other models. With certain requirements, we probably wouldn't be able to scale it so well as it is right now.

We have about 2,000 people using the solution. Most of the people using it are software developers.

The technical support has been very helpful. We've been satisfied with the level of the support we get.

We didn't previously use a different solution.

The initial setup is straightforward. We didn't find it complex at all.

We had partners that assisted with the implementation.

I'm not aware of the specific costs involved in the licensing of the solution. I don't know that prices are competitive enough compared to other vendors.

We did evaluate other options, including Cisco.

We're using the latest version of the solution.

I'd recommend the solution. I'd rate it eight out of ten.

Their support is very good. Fortinet has a good support base here who has been working closely with us. Whenever there is an issue that needs to be addressed to our end clients, we have received very good support. 

The product is quite user-friendly so we didn't have a lot of issues that needed to be addressed. 

The pricing structure is also flexible. 

Customization needs improvement. A lot of people have very unique requirements that they ask for at times. Everybody wants to get more out of the solutions so that they have more with less. I would like a little more customization, especially now that everything is becoming a lot more flexible with cloud-based deployments. A little more flexibility in terms of the offering that we can do or the bundling of products would help acquire markets much faster or much better.

I have been using FortiGate-VM for just under a year. 

It is definitely stable. We have not had a lot of support calls so, so far it is good. We have been pushing our clients to see whether they need additional support.

We want to organize more training and have a lot more awareness-building seminars and workshops. That is something that I think we can or we would be wanting to look at moving ahead. We haven't been able to organize a lot of that yet, but that is something that I think can help in many aspects is awareness, to be able to draw in and attract local talent who would be able to help with support.

Our clients are mostly enterprise businesses. 

We are a value-added reseller. The technical support primarily is coming from Fortinet because we are in the process of building up to provide the right service. Once we are comfortable then we will be again discussing with Fortinet that we are able to assume a greater role in providing the services locally or on-site from here.

We are still getting help from Fortinet for the deployment. We have been able to push this to two clients after we onboarded this. In the next couple of months, we believe that we will be able to take over the implementation and they can take a little more of a backseat. We want to be more independent, locally, with the local support and local team to be able to deploy it. We want to ensure that the service is seamless.

POCs are definitely the way to go because cyber-security is still in many cases new for many clients. Cybersecurity is a very wide arena in today's day and age. There is no one single solution, every day someone else is innovating some specialization in some form or another. Clients would like to see a proof of concept before they go on a large full-scale deployment. 

In the next release, I would like to have the possibility of being able to offer cyber-insurance with this because this is something that I think is completely unavailable at the moment here. This would add a whole new dimension. 

I would rate it a seven out of ten. 

In terms of what features should be improved with Fortinet, I feel it should give better reports. They provide some basic reports in the entry-level and middleware products but I would love this product if they gave more reports, including more MIS from the traffic because they capture everything in the UTM. They don't produce a team value report. They don't produce a usable report where the IT manager, IT head or CTO can analyze where the attack happened or figure out where the bridge is down, etc. The reports are basic. There are engines which make everything on the GUI. All the user can potentially access for the risky function in the Fortinet but it should be on the GUI, it should not be behind the command line. They could definitely provide the FortiAnalyzer with the basic UTM in a bundle pack.

People should not have to ask for another FortiAnalyzer. It's an entry-level product. I understand that FortiAnalyzer is an expert level product but the functionality should be available at the entry-level as well. Fortinet should think about the entry-level and give it managing capabilities. That's why I selected Sophos because, for a small or medium office, all the reports are available there.

Secondly, Sophos is cost-effective. It is comparatively much cheaper. Sophos is available for a much cheaper price than Fortinet. Also, they have some other functions like sandboxing and others. FortiGate should be more customer-friendly and budgeted better. If I am a buyer, I do not want multiple appliances to manage. It should be one box, one appliance. One mobile should do everything. Multiple products require IT to create a workaround. You have to buy two products and then there is actually another one with that, one plus one, and then there is multiple management, so the product is definitely cumbersome. The beauty of the product is implementation and maintenance without it.

I have my own team to maintain this product. We are very happy as a Sophos user, as we get whatever we want from the reporting point of view. There are no glitches. There is no one issue in particular. When I ask, or my team asks, how the network is working and why there is network latency there are reports about where the traffic is going and I do not have the input after moving or switching to Sophos. I can get the support regarding which IP is working where and which IPs are making traffic, and more.

I have been personally using FortiGate-VM for two years.

We already procured Sophos. I already ordered two devices from our Indian partner.

We are now partners with Sophos. We were partners with FortiGate for the last year.

The first reason that we switched is because of our work use cases. We moved 80% of our infrastructure to AWS outsource. So we do not require a big firewall anymore. We are a 50 to 70 employee organization so a different firewall is required. We have a 310 exchange enterprise-level firewall. So we moved to 83210 Sophos. The reason why we are changing to different technologies is the comprehensive reports that Sophos provides at the very basic entry-level firewall. In the FortiGate, we have to also have another plan for data analyzer.

The second thing which I believe is that FortiGate has some special functions in the CLI (command-line interface) mode. Sophos does not support that and all its functions are on the UI. So it's easier management in Sophos compared to FortiGate. 

In terms of ease of use, if you implement FortiGate in your organization, you must have a FortiGate person who knows FortiGate and then three, four, or five years to learn to maintain the FortiGate device. Whereas Sophos doesn't require that much because all the things are on the UI. So anybody can understand it from the UI.

I can give you an example of the issue with UI. This is a basic thing. In the UI, you could go to the FortiGate console and work directly in the command. You can manage it from the command but you must have command line experience to manage the FortiGate device. If I want to see the traffic and where it goes and where it's from or any attack, in case of an attack, you need FortiAnalyzer to analyze, to track the packet, to protect the traffic. So that's easily available in other products like Sophos 83210. 

The cost of Sophos and other players is better compared to the FortiGate. FortiGate is a more important product in the industry. It is recommended, but the cost is also a major point in evaluating Fortinet's firewall solutions in our niche.

On a scale of 1 to 10, I'd give it a 9. 

FortiGate is a nice and very good product but the implementation and post-implementation of the product are cumbersome. You have to manage four devices instead of two devices if I go for FortiAnalyzer. For a small, entry-level business, Fortinet should give the entire reporting on the UI so that end to end engineers can manage efficiently. So as technology is concerned, I give eight out of 10, but because of reporting, I would give five out of 10. I am just giving an example: if I know everything or you know everything but if you can't explain it, how do other people come to know that you know everything? FortiGate clearly captures each and everything for the backup capture and everything but it doesn't show what it is acquiring. Analytical reports are missing from there.

In our office, primarily everything goes through FortiGate. We expand that for all the firewall rooms that we have. We have features that link to FortiGate and from FortiGate on the shelf we ran the core cells. There is primary access to each of the devices and then we also use it between our offices. We use VPN tunnels in between offices. There are all of the typical settings within a firewall device: Protection, application control, and quality tracking.

There's routing and then there is control. For routing, there is quality. The security site has anti-virus and web filter applications. I'm used to all of them, so I wouldn't pick one or the other.

I like the traffic shaping feature. I find it helpful to be able to control the traffic.

The GUI could be improved. Furthermore, the unit we have could be modified because it's not that high of a torrent. 

It is a very stable product.

It is a scalable product. We source our current load with ease and I think it can handle a bit more. It definitely can handle a lot more capacity than what we currently use.

We do not use the tech support. We have another source for tech support.

We also considered Sophos, Checkpoint, and Palo Alto. 

We do have Palo Alto at one of our smaller offices of about 60 people. We noticed that Palo Alto is a much more costly solution.