Fortinet FortiGate-VM Reviews

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.

We are using an IPS and an IDS at the moment. 

Before using Fortinet, the company had an attack (DDoS) from the outside and had many points of failure, when they started to use Fortinet, I think the attacks stopped. The DDoS attacks were no more. This was from 2015.

It is very useful to make lists for rules and prepare firewall rules.

It is stable. We have not had a bad experience with the Fortinet firewall.

Not really, but it does have it limits.

The technical support will reply quickly and everything will be okay.

The customer care center of Fortinet is good. For all the requests that we have done, they work as fast as possible, so this is a good point for Fortinet.

I have previously used pfSense (open source) before joining this company.

However, the company has been using Fortinet for a long time.

The first setup is easy and very simple. After that, you may require assistance implementing the new rules.

The price: It is a bit higher than the other competitors. This is why I started to look at other brands. For example, I am looking at Sophos firewall and whether it can meet our requirements, since I am sure that their price would be cheaper than Fortinet.

I would recommend a company to use Fortinet, because it is an attractive solution. No bugs with a very easy installation guide, and also the support and the customer care, are very important. 

Fortinet is a nice solution with economic interfaces and a very useful installation guide. Very nice customer care, too, but the price, it is sometimes very expensive.

I work with a lot of small business companies in Austria. Small businesses in Austria are from one to 100 employees. The FortiGate 60E is a top product for these Austrian companies for all cases of Internet usage.

There is an interesting possibility of building a tunnel to a firewall from access points. We use this feature for small branch offices with one to two employees with access to central RDP servers.

One top feature is the ability to use the appliance as a WLAN controller for up to 10 access points with the new 5.6 firmware.

Another top feature is the really good web interface and the classic Fortinet features, such as IPS, IDS, AV scanner, and spam filter.

At this time, I can't say anything against the device. It has been doing a great job.

In the first two releases of FortiOS 5.6, we had some trouble with the SSL VPN service. Sometimes it stopped working, and the IPS daemon too. Since 5.6.2, it has been running without any issues.

There are no problems with the scalability.

There are only two times that I had to contact Fortinet support since I have used Fortinet devices (15 years). Here in Austria, the distributor is doing a great job. It is very good to have the ability to contact an NSE 8.

For somebody who does not have experience with Fortinet appliances, the initial setup is very easy, but basic networking knowledge is necessary. The Setup Assistant will guide you through the first steps, and you can config basic settings for basic security.

The basic pricing in Austria is OK, but asking for special offers, e.g., NPOs, NGOs, trade up, and/or trade in, is always useful.

No, I did not evaluate other products.

Look for the latest OS version, read the release notes and the technical documents for comparison.

The improvement was felt in the traffic use. Without the firewall, there is unauthorized traffic coming in from the Internet. We can’t be sure whether it is legit traffic or something malicious. With this solution, all unauthorized traffic is filtered out.

The most valuable features are the firewall and security. They filter out unwanted connections.

We are using a product from eight years ago. I am sure there have been improvements in the newer versions. Improvements on the following are needed:

1. Responsive UI
2. JIT and detailed traffic reporting.

There are no stability issues.

We did scaled up quite well. We moved our locations from 10 to 20 people accessing it to 100s of people. It could handle the traffic load well enough.

I have not requested tech support (all these years).

No.

Initial setup was quite straightforward, as we can simply head to the required sections to apply the planned network.

I have yet to research a hardware replacement. If anything, I am the one that needs some advice!

I can't remember.

This product surely will fit your basic needs at the very least. However, always match up the specifications of the products you will buy to your current and future needs.

We use it our network, not in the cloud.

It is a firewall. We use it to ensure that our network is properly protected from viruses and malware.

The best part of Fortinet is the license is bundled together, so it is easy to use and apply.

The management tools should be more user-friendly.

No issues.

No issues.

I would rate technical support as a seven out of 10.

We previously used Fortinet 620B.

The initial setup was quite straightforward. 

You The initial setup was quite straightforward. 

The price is expensive compared with other vendors, like Cisco and Huawei. However, the performance is good.

We evaluated Cisco, Huawei, and Palo Alto. 

If you have enough budget and care about performance, Fortinet is a good choice.

There have been no improvements. We would just use another device if this one did not exist.

None of them. It is a classic firewall, but better than the free versions.

Yes, we encountered stability issues in IPSec Module. The tunnels freeze sometimes.

Yes, we encountered scalability issues in IPSec Module. The tunnels freeze sometimes.

I would give technical support a rating of a nine out of 10. 

I used SonicWall, before they were sold to Dell. After Dell bought them, some issues came out.

I used Check Point, which was terrible for me. You can do almost nothing without software. The web interface does nothing. I do not like solutions with many components. In Check Point, you need to use over three interface to dig up anything.

I used Palo Alto 3020. It is a marvellous solution, but a bit expensive against its competitors. You can do everything in the web interface. There is no need for any installation (does not exist) and to manage it. It works quickly changing configuration and applying configuration. (Comparatively, FortiGate is fast in applying configuration.) You can easily rollback the previous configuration and backup configuration in Palo Alto. The firmware upgrade is like a baby's toy in Palo Alto.

İt is not fast to rollback config in SonicWall.

I used Untangle, pfSense, etc. However, there is no need to talk about them.

The pricing and licensing are not as expensive as its competitors. This applies to SonicWall, too.

Check Point and Palo Alto are very expensive solutions, because of the ownership and renewal costs.

I evaluated different options before choosing FortiGate. It has four separate modules which give fast reactions when it is analysing. It has an app ID and user ID option, which are the most important.

Be aware of your own requirements.

Use of this product does not require daily interactions, like our previous firewall service option.

Simplicity of daily operations would be my favorite facet of this gem.

No issues. Operations have been flawless, so far.

No issues noted.

Technical support has been super responsive and dedicated to getting any challenges resolved.

We had a previous solution and switched due to a corporate decision to eliminate some subscription fees.

This product was nearly plug and play. There are some tables and rules to make custom decisions based on our daily workloads and philosophy as an educational setting.

I was not involved in that aspect. Therefore, I cannot provide information along these lines.

I was not involved in the corporate decision-making.

Draw out a plan of what traffic to unconditionally allow (whitelist) and what traffic to restrict under what conditions, before you even unwrap the box.

It has taken me a little while to gain confidence in this product, but I am there now. There were challenges during setup, and many of them were self-inflicted.

High network throughput while providing leading edge network security technology for a competitive price.

Real-time sandboxing with the FortiGate UTM network.

The user interface (UI) and the performance of interface both need improvement.

No issues.

No issues.

I would rate technical support with a 10 out of 10 (perfect score).

Our previous solution simply did not live up to expectations.

Setup is straightforward. I am certified in the Fortinet line of solutions. Even without this knowledge, it is easy to adjust the product to your requirements.

It is on par with what you receive. It can be expensive upfront. 

It would be nice to have the ability to extend FortiGuard subscriptions at a reasonable yearly cost versus a bulk three year pricing.

We evaluated Cisco, Meraki, SonicWall, and Juniper.

Having support from your vendor is nice. Calling Fortinet directly with a support contract, they will help you take care of all your requirements. 

It has allowed us to centralize every network service into one appliance, administrating all traffic going in and out of my company. Its given us only one point of monitoring and auditing, getting us visibility of all network traffic in an easy way. 

The UTM. In particular, the IPS module is my favorite because of the security advantage reached with a few clicks and its automatic updates.

Yes, we have experience stability issues, when the product sizing is wrong or on configuration errors.

Yes, we have experience scalability issues, but only when the product sizing is wrong.

Technical support is good.

We previously used mostly Cisco products. We changed because of support and feature costs.

It is always complex when you migrate from a complex solution to another one.

It is an expensive solution if you are migrating from an open source solution. 

If you are in a licensed solution, like Cisco or Palo Alto, it is cheaper. I do recommend using it with a license, because it is a security solution and it needs updates.

Cisco, Sophos, and SonicWall.

I recommend it 100%. Go ahead and implement it.

We are implementers of Fortinet among other things (Cisco, Sophos, HPE Networking, VMware, EMC, Zimbra, etc.).