Fortinet FortiGate-VM Reviews

We use the solution as a firewall. 

Fortinet is user-friendly. 

We have lost some information and we do not know how that happened through the solution. That needs improvement. 

I have been using Fortinet FortiGate-VM for minimum five years. 

Once in a while there are stability issues otherwise the solution is stable. 

Presently, six thousand users are using the solution. 

The initial setup of Fortinet is easy. 

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

The tool is expensive. 

I have been working with the product for two years. 

I rate the tool's stability a ten out of ten. 

Fortinet FortiGate-VM is scalable. We have 15 users. 

Fortinet FortiGate-VM's deployment is easy. 

I rate Fortinet FortiGate-VM an eight out of ten. 

I am a network engineer. I deploy firewalls for customers. I also provide firewall installation and configuration services.

I mostly prefer Fortinet firewalls. The graphical user interface is user-friendly and easy to configure. I recommend it to my clients because it is very easy to deploy. 

Performance, scalability, and everything else are top-notch compared to others like Sophos or Cisco. I've used them all, and Fortinet is my go-to.

The main use case is for organizations that can't afford or procure hardware appliances. They can install the VM and license it as a cost-effective alternative.

The combination of SD-WAN and VPN capabilities is the most valuable feature.

If I could add one feature, it would be free security profiles.

I have experience with FortiGate VM. I've used it for practice and deployed it on customer sites.

I have been using it for four years. 

I haven't personally experienced any bugs, and none of my clients have reported any either.

I would rate the scalability a seven out of ten. 

The customer service and support are very knowledgeable and helpful.

I've deployed Cisco firewalls and hold certifications like CCNA and CCNP. But for security-level firewalls, I always go with FortiGate.

The initial configuration is very easy, even for non-technical users.

VMs can be affordable, but for high-demand scenarios, I'd still recommend the hardware. For the cost, it's a ten out of ten.

I would recommend the hardware firewall unless you have specific constraints. If you're installing on a server or desktop, and something happens like a cache issue, you won't have the same backup options as a physical appliance.

With hardware, you can claim a warranty, get a new unit, and easily restore from your existing backup. That wouldn't be as straightforward with a VM.

Over a hundred customers have deployed the physical Fortinet firewall based on my recommendations.

Overall, I would rate the solution a seven out of ten. 

In a recent scenario, a manufacturing company, was in need of migrating its services, specifically their ERP SAP application, to a cloud-native environment. They chose to migrate their servers to GCP for hosting. Since they required a firewall, they opted for cloud-native firewall solutions. They acquired two firewalls, one for internal usage and another from the GCP marketplace. Both firewall vendors provided yearly subscriptions. Following this, we proceeded with the configuration.

They established a VPN connection via the internal Forti firewall. Simultaneously, an external firewall from Palo Alto was set up. This external firewall, positioned at the perimeter, handled incoming traffic from Internet users. Our configuration focused on enabling ECPs for the Internet-based cloud network.

The ease of access and user-friendly setup is a valuable feature. Fortinet proves to be particularly straightforward to configure, offering simplicity without complexity. Moreover, visibility is easily attainable due to certain factors. Price, implementation, and budget considerations play a role. When it comes to Cisco implementation, the process tends to be more intricate, which many customers find unfavourable for their business needs.

Fortinet devices are acknowledged as highly potent and come with a notable cost. These devices offer extensive visibility, an array of configurations, and a range of security features. However, there's room for enhancement in their routing and switching security aspects, akin to Cisco's offerings.

A noteworthy aspect here is Meraki, which offers cloud controllers. If FortiGate were to introduce a similar cloud management solution, it could strongly compete with both Meraki and Cisco products. Cisco operates in two sectors: enterprise and SMB. Particularly in the SMB market, they hold sway due to their convenient cloud management features. For instance, Meraki's cameras and wireless access points can be easily controlled through their cloud management portal. If FortiGate were to provide cloud-based management solutions for SMB customers, it could cater to a significant portion of the market, considering that a substantial number of customers fall within the SMB and mid-level enterprise categories.

I have experience with Fortinet FortiGate-VM.

Hardware performance is a determining factor. A recent case made me notice that in comparison to the other vendors, Fortinet exhibited superior scalability. This was mainly due to their package-oriented approach, which involved scaling the VM version based on the number of customers. They offered various packages, and depending on the package, the VM version would be adjusted.I would rate it an eight out of ten.

I would rate scalability an eight out of ten.

The customer service and support is good. Within this domain, we have local support in place. They are primarily responsible for initial support. However, if a situation exceeds their capabilities, they escalate it to level two support. This setup is highly satisfactory.

Positive

FortiGate offers straightforward planning and a user-friendly interface. This simplicity is seen through graphical user interfaces (GUIs), enhanced visibility and effective troubleshooting. I would rate it eight out of ten. 

In the industry landscape, approximately seventy per cent of businesses predominantly rely on on-premise solutions. Specifically, our focus is directed towards banking clients, who are aligned with the guidelines of the Central Bank due to their emphasis on security, governance, and compliance protocols. However, the manufacturing sector and telecommunications companies are more inclined towards cloud adoption. This inclination is rooted in factors such as cost efficiency and power savings, internal infrastructure maintenance and resource allocation, including power and human resources.

In Sri Lanka, the banking and finance sector still prefers on-premise solutions. This choice is aligned with their security compliance needs and regulatory considerations.

In our proposals involving FortiGate, it's common practice to include FortiManager and FortiAnalyzer. Over the past two years, many clients have adopted FortiManager for cloud-based management. We've facilitated this by providing cloud subscriptions, allowing them to manage their FortiManager through the cloud. This approach is well-received, and it's worth noting that even in the banking sector, some customers prefer on-premise setups for their FortiManager.

It would be beneficial for Forti to expand its cybersecurity solutions even further. While solutions like FortiSolor exist, there's room to enhance feature sets in line with the increasing requirements of compliance and private security needs. These can effectively address client-side security needs. Comparing Forti's offerings to competitors, certain strengths stand out. There are notable visibility and flexible configuration options. The client-side experience benefits from robust management capabilities accessible through this solution and the troubleshooting becomes seamless because of good visibility and an effective controller. I would rate it an eight out of ten.

Our primary requirement is security. We are using it as part of our enterprise deployment with Fortinet. Currently, we are doing the firewalls using these appliances.

We are a services company that provides IT solutions for many other customers. As an IT service provider, we have different requirements from different customers and support them.

There is room for improvement in the pricing model. The pricing is expensive, but pricing should be competitive, and it should be unit-based pricing.

We have a decade of experience with Fortinet FortiGate-VM. We have different versions.

The stability is good. I would rate it a nine out of ten.

I rate scalability a ten out of ten because its mesh architecture allows consistent policies. Additionally, we can keep adding points and integrate them into the same dish, making it easy to scale up as needed.

The customer service and support team is of high quality. The reason is that we are a preferred partner and vendor for Fortinet. So, they are available whenever we call them, and we have no problems. We have a specialized team that is deployed only for our organization.

Positive

I would rate the initial setup a nine out of ten, where one is difficult, and ten is easy. You need to deploy it on a virtual appliance. Deploying the appliance itself is usually straightforward, but designing the architecture and arranging the solution can be challenging for many customers.

We deploy it on both on-prem and cloud, depending on the customer's preference. Our architecture is a mesh architecture. It depends on the customer's requirements. We choose the type of appliances and the capacity required to run. For instance, for a customer with a thousand workloads utilizing a Fortinet gateway, we would select the physical appliances that best suit their needs for on-prem deployment.

Conversely, we would use a mesh configuration with consistent policies across cloud engines for a data interface in the cloud. So, we've used both ways. We use a virtual version on-premises, physical appliances on-premises, and virtual appliances inside the cloud.

The whole deployment takes around four weeks to three months, depending on the architecture. It is quite a broad process, but if I summarize, we typically start with a high-level solution design and then move into the low-level details, such as port configuration and traffic flow. Finally, we move on to the actual deployment phase.

I would rate it a five, where one is low, and ten is high. We usually do monthly licensing costs as we don't invest capital and do more OpEx-based pricing.

My advice is if you have to go with the complete stack, go with the complete stack, not the replacement-only product. Don't look at it as a replacement. Choose a platform.

Overall, I would rate it a nine out of ten. The reason is that I have a next-generation firewall. Fortinet FortiGate-VM provides various deployment options, such as physical or virtual devices, and it can be easily integrated with public clouds. Additionally, I can integrate it with other Fortinet products like network access control or zero trust network access in a single step, which is very convenient. Their security stack portfolio works well with my hybrid mesh firewall, and I am satisfied with its integration capabilities.

We have had a very good experience with Fortinet FortiGate-VM. They are usually the first choice for us when it comes to designing. We have certain products for certain purposes, and this one is our preferred choice for firewall purposes.

Moreover, They have hardware appliances that can be deployed on-premise, virtual appliances deployed on the cloud, and a mesh that can form a cluster. It's very good.

We use Fortinet FortiGate-VM for managing inbound and outbound internet traffic through our environment. Sometimes, we also use it for managing the site's internet outbound and routing. We also use it for IPSec on Azure. We also have an on-premises environment, and we're using it for IPSec on that environment. 

All the routing happens through it because we're swinging all the traffic on the Azure side through a firewall which is basically the gateway. It acts as the gateway and manages outbound traffic in that environment. We have also set up the SSL VPN for users. We do have FortiGate on-premise, and we set up the SSL VPN connection for users.

It made the routing of traffic seamless and it helped us with SD-WAN as well as load balancing.

I like the visibility and monitoring features because they're easy to use to monitor traffic. Features like geo-blocking and more have AI, and we're currently using all of it. But for now, we're only using geo-blocking, and we're able to block traffic from different countries. I also like that it's highly responsive. VM04 is also very powerful.

It would be better if it could provide you with options before completely blocking anything through the web filter. If you are doing a deep SSL inspection on the site if it says it's expired, it doesn't give you the option to continue at your own risk. I can't say that it's bad, but SSL internally isn't really a requirement. However, its security features can help. Right now, we have people going out and spending on purchasing the SSL certificates for internal sites. 

I have been using this solution for three years.

Fortinet FortiGate-VM is a stable and very reliable solution.

Fortinet FortiGate-VM is a scalable solution. It's very powerful, and I've never seen that machine running out of resources. It always worked.

Tech support is okay, but we do a lot of management by ourselves. We have a third party that we use when we do implementations, and I haven't contacted Fortinet even though I have access to it. The local support that we use costs much less. 

I still remember using Check Point, and it took a long time to apply a policy. To install the policy, you had to wait for ten to 20 minutes or even 30 minutes. Fortinet FortiGate-VM instantly applies the policy on the FortiGate itself.

The initial setup was difficult because we were all new when it came to the Azure environment. It was a little difficult to create space and understand that you have to have more than one interface. But once you get used to it. It's pretty straightforward.

It's straightforward if you have all that is required when you're clearing your traffic. If you're clearing your traffic already into your internal length to communicate with the firewall range, and you have information and understand it before the implementation, it will be very seamless. It will be stress-free when you understand the environment where you're going to implement it.

Our license is yearly, but we're thinking of going monthly. I think it's somewhere around 100,000 for VM04. Nowadays, everyone wants to be a hacker, so we believe in security. That's why we also have third-party people that we involve to make sure that we're secure. 

I don't think the costs are too bad. You still want to get advice from people who worked in security for many years, so you add a third party. The third party also said they would give their share like 100K, or 200K or something like that, so I don't think it's too expensive for security. I think it just adds more trust. 

We have been using Check Point Firewall so it was easy to identity the difference.

I will recommend the solution. If it's a first-time deployment in Azure, they need to understand a couple of things, like the interfaces we need to create. The good thing about FortiGate is that they don't hide how their devices work. You can go to their website and get every instruction that you need at any time. It's straightforward and even has pictures showing you what you should expect. I've done a few changes for the first time, and I didn't have to stress. But you must know the infrastructure well.

On a scale from one to ten, I would five Fortinet FortiGate-VM a ten.

The use case was a bit more complex than other clients, however, the typical usage was for VPNs for end-users to get into the internal network. For a mid-size company, that's a pretty much typical use. 

The only thing out of the ordinary would be the SIEM for all the network information, all the metadata, that is cloud-based. We had to create a tunnel to it so that the collector, being in the cloud, would be able to access the internal information.

It performs the functions it needs to perform and it's been reliable. It didn't need to be modified and we didn't have problems where things would just crop up. After months configured it's been rock solid, which is good. That's why I haven't touched it in a year and a half.

I liked its general capabilities.

Its cloud management is very good.

I did like the ability to back up the configuration into the cloud, as opposed to having to store the configurations or just downloading them, the backups, to local devices.  When you want to back up the configuration you can download it as a local file and save it to the cloud.   

That flexibility was very useful. 

The product had a fairly good user interface. It was well thought out and the controls seem to be in a logical hierarchy. I was able to find stuff without having to configure things. There was just a logical breakdown of how to find things.

There were a few cases where I had to use the command line interface on it. Now they do have the ability to pop up a command line, which is nice, however, the fact that you can't do everything within the GUI is probably a problem. There's a thing I have for most products that have started out in the command line and have added GUI, and the GUI is always somewhat behind in capability.

If you have a product you should be able to control the entire product through your user interface. You shouldn't have to drop back into backend command line commands in order to tweak something. There's a couple of cases where we had to do that when we were trying to set up one of the tunnels in particular. We were talking to Check Point or some other company. You've got two different manufacturers with a sort of standard for tunneling with all kinds of encryption methods and stuff like that. You have all these options, and, in order to get the right one, we couldn't discern it from the logs that we were viewing with the user interface. We had to drop down to the command line in order to do that. I would have thought that there should be enough information options made visible in what you can just do from the user interface.

I have been dealing with the solution for three years or so. However, the last time I used it was within the last 12 months or so. The company was restructuring their office due to COVID, and so we had to go in and make changes and set up different connections, That's the last time I was actually in it.

The stability is rock solid. It's a very good solution. I haven't had to touch it for a year. The last thing I did was a firmware upgrade. That was a year ago, and they haven't requested any more work on that now. It's still operational and solid. There have been no complaints really on it.

The product was sized for what the client was doing. I can't really say one way, or the other, whether it's more or less scalable than other solutions. I know we could do things to it - that we didn't do - to increase its capability. However, it didn't need to be done and they didn't have the budget for adding anything to it. It's hard to say. I can't really speak to the scalability of it.

Technical support has been great. They really helped us when we had issues with some early problems during setup.

It ties to the device, so it's pretty easy to see whether or not you have support, however, it was not difficult to get in touch with them. You get someone with knowledge right away. You don't have to go through a filter of people asking you "Is it plugged in?"

I'm actually reselling a managed service of SonicWall. It's not completely hands-on. Now all I do is get reports from it and I can look at the dashboard, however, I don't actually have to configure it.

I've also resold Barracuda.

The initial setup was straightforward. It got complex when we started adding in requirements for tunneling et cetera. The implementation involved VPNs and the general configuration of the firewall. Then they added in these other requirements that it needed to connect to AWS. First, it was to their remote hosted environment. Then, subsequently, to the AWS environment as well. It grew over time. Over the course of a year, we spent a lot of time on it.

I'd rate the initial setup experience at a four out of five. Most of the stuff went pretty well. We had one issue and we had to drop down into it. However, their support was very good. We were able to contact support, and they were able to stay online and walk us through that problem, so without any issues. They didn't balk at it. We didn't have to beg them to help us. Some support you get in there and have to say, "I'm sorry, yes I've done all those things. Get me to the next level."

They had good quality support.

In terms of deployment, it was there when I got there. They had purchased it out of the box and they hadn't configured it. For six months it just sat there. We had it up and running within a month of me getting there. Then over time, we added more and more requirements to it. It didn't take very long to figure out what they wanted to do with it and get it set up. The actual configuration was very quick. It was just the planning beforehand that took time.

Besides myself, there were about four other people in the IT department working on the product. However, really, only one person is responsible for the gateways.

The ROI that they were looking for was an improvement in security for the whole company. It was one of those evolving things, that as new security deployments come up some of them get implemented within the firewall and others are implemented structurally or in other ways. It was able to help them meet their security goals. That was probably the biggest value that they were looking for. It also did not impede their normal operating procedure.

The licensing costs are in line with everyone else. It all seems expensive when you're talking about firewalls, however, they're all the same. It's likely in the middle of the pack.

There are costs involved with FortiTokens. Everyone has different ways of controlling VPN access, however, with the FortiTokens you get a certain amount with the device, and then you have to buy more as you add them on. They're not costly.

However, it's something you have to buy in batches, so if you've got 40 people you're going to buy a bunch of FortiTokens, and each token is an encryption key so that you can have your little app that's multifactor. They charge for that. Everyone else, in terms of competition, charges for that too.

I can't speak to if the client evaluated another solution prior to choosing this.

I primarily work as a consultant. 

The solution's deployment was on-premises, however, there were VPNs set up for remote access, VPNs set up for site-to-site, and VPNs set up for cloud-based SIEM.

As with any solution, you need to size it. You need to plan what you're going to do and what your expectations are with it before you choose the pure model. After that, proper planning is needed before you try to deploy it so you don't have to back stuff out.

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten.

Internally, I've been using this solution to front our servers.

I found the Antivirus and Anti-spam features most valuable in this solution. I'm happy with FortiGate-VM because it's good for our servers. It stopped many attacks, including spam, over our networks.

It's been a year since I started using FortiGate-VM.

I find this solution really stable.

The scalability of this solution is an eight or a nine to me. It's good.

I don't have experience with Fortinet's technical support. When I face any problem or issue, I call the company that came here to implement the device.

I hired a consultant to implement the solution. I had a good experience. It was good for my work and my networks.

FortiGate-VM is more expensive than Sophos. We have two appliances: a main appliance, then a backup, e.g. FortiGate-VM, and this make it so expensive, even more than the costs from Sophos.

We pay the standard three-year licensing fees.

I evaluated Sophos.

I spent many years using Cyber and Sophos. Mainly, I use Sophos, while I use FortiGate-VM in the network background.

I see that Fortinet is a big company. I can't compare the Sophos and Fortinet solutions I'm using, because I'm using Sophos at the front, and behind Sophos, I'm using FortiGate-VM, so I can't give a good comparison or opinion. I've only used FortiGate-VM for one year.

It took nearly one month to complete the FortiGate-VM deployment because the decision came from upper management.

No other users use FortiGate-VM in our organization, because it's a device or appliance that only stands in front of our servers.

We don't have a need for maintenance yet. We've only been using it for one year and it currently needs no maintenance.

I don't know if our organization has plans to increase the usage of FortiGate-VM because this decision will come from upper management.

I'm a good observer and I'm still learning some feature metrics of this solution.

What I'd like to advice people looking into implementing FortiGate-VM is to study the FAQs of other users. You should know the tricks and what exactly is needed in this appliance. This is a very good appliance, but I have less experience with it compared to Sophos which I've used for many years.

I'm rating FortiGate-VM an eight out of ten.

Maybe others rate the vendor a 10 out of 10, but I'm sticking with eight.

The solution is primarily used for security. When a company has a hybrid solution and the client is looking for a next-generation firewall with all the bells and whistles inside, we recommend FortiGate.

The intrusion prevention systems are great.  

The anti-spam capabilities are really great.

The solution has a lot of very useful security features. 

The solution is stable.

The scalability potential is there.

The previous version, which was 7.1 or 7.2, was a little bit easier to use. It's kind of a little bit tricky to find the options from the firewall configurations now, in the latest version. Previously, it was easier to deal with. The whole dashboard that you get can be improved. They could organize the whole dashboard a bit more to put stuff under each other in a way that makes sense and makes everything easy to reach.

The costs could be lowered.

I've used the solution for a while. I've used it over the last 12 months.

We have found the stability to be good. There aren't bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable. 

The product is scalable. It is a little bit expensive on Azure when you use it on the cloud, however. If a company plans to expand it, they need to keep this in mind. However, even those on-premises can be highly scalable. 

The initial setup needs to be handled by a person knowledgeable in Fortinet products. 

We are implementors. We can handle the setup process for our clients.

The product does have the capabilities of providing an ROI to companies. 

The product could be cheaper. When a company scales it, it can get pricey.

The pricing, in fact, is the one aspect that could potentially make clients change their minds. In terms of features, it has almost everything - whatever someone would need. However, the price sometimes is the obstacle. It could force the client to go with a cheaper product. Especially on the cloud, a solution such as this can get costly as you are paying for the cloud stuff on top of the license, and you have to pay per hour.

We are implementors. 

We have both virtual and physical servers.

I would advise new users first to ensure they have strong knowledge before attempting an implementation. It has everything a company might need and it is scalable. However, the person doing the implementation itself needs to be skilled. There might be a lot of things going on during implementation that need to be dealt with properly.

I'd rate the solution at a nine out of ten.