Our standard practice involves tailoring deployments to meet specific customer needs. Typically implemented at the network edge, FortiGate SWG addresses diverse security requirements. Use cases include securing online services, protecting internal servers in a DMZ for LAN user access, and employing a segmented approach where different firewalls safeguard distinct zones, collaborating to manage and pass traffic for unique security needs. One of the firewalls also serves as the primary filter for internet traffic.
Fortinet FortiGate Next-Generation Firewall
Fortinet Inc.External reviews
External reviews are not included in the AWS star rating for the product.
A comprehensive solution for web filtering, malware protection, and application control that offers robust security features and user-friendly interface
What is our primary use case?
What is most valuable?
Web filters, particularly web application controls, grant us the ability to regulate user access effectively. Among the various features, I find web application control and IPS to be the most valuable.
What needs improvement?
There's room for improvement in the interface, especially following their upgrade to version nineteen. The issue arises from the increased complexity, where tasks like defining the NAS require navigating a separate window, and regular policy configurations are done in a different window.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using it for seven years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I would rate its stability capabilities nine out of ten.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Regarding scalability, I would rate Fortinet highly, giving them eight out of ten due to the effectiveness of their new hardware, which greatly enhances scalability. We've carried out installations for a variety of setups, spanning from small to medium-sized deployments.
How are customer service and support?
I would rate its technical support services seven out of ten.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Neutral
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
WatchGuard deserves credit for offering multiple options, including a client base and a comprehensive reporting feature, all within a unified license and toolset.
How was the initial setup?
I would rate the initial setup six out of ten in terms of complexity.
What about the implementation team?
The deployment can take up to a week but typically can be done in a couple of days.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
We essentially customize implementations based on the customer's chosen appliance. The cost varies depending on the specific appliance they purchase. We provide coverage for whatever they acquire, and throughout the year, we pay different amounts to various vendors. The cost has increased since the update so I would rate it eight out of ten.
What other advice do I have?
In terms of reliability and security, FortiGate stands out. WatchGuard excels in additional features, offering the best reporting and various configuration options. While Sophos is also strong in security, I would rate it slightly lower than FortiGate. Overall, I would rate it nine out of ten.
A comprehensive and user-friendly solution for securing networks against web-based threats
What is our primary use case?
We use it to secure our environment, ensuring no vulnerabilities or potential risks in our network configuration. Our goal is to enhance cybersecurity measures, safeguard our network, and ensure the integrity of our systems against potential threats and intrusions.
What is most valuable?
I am content with its user interface and functionalities.
What needs improvement?
There is a potential for enhanced protection. It is essential to leverage its capabilities more professionally to achieve an even higher level of security. I believe that if the cost were lower, it would be highly beneficial. While the gateway serves as a primary solution for the entire network, attention should also be given to endpoint devices.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using it for approximately five years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It is incredibly reliable. I would rate it eight out of ten.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It provides excellent scalability abilities and I would rate it eight out of ten. There are around fifty individuals actively using it.
How are customer service and support?
They provide exceptional support. I would rate it eight out of ten.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
When comparing Fortinet to Cisco, Fortinet stands out as a more user-friendly and practical solution. It seems especially well-suited for smaller network environments, making it the preferred choice for our small work network. The switch was prompted by the wealth of features Fortinet offers, coupled with its ease of management and deployment. The diverse interfaces and comprehensive reporting, including statistics and other relevant information, further contribute to its appeal.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup was straightforward.
What about the implementation team?
The deployment duration is variable and relies on the development level and installation complexity. Initially, it may take only a few hours. However, to enhance security and stability, the process might extend to a few days or even a week. For a simple network, a single individual should be sufficient to manage it effectively.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
While slightly more affordable than competitors, it remains relatively expensive due to its inclusive subscription. It operates on a subscription basis. You pay solely for this subscription, without any additional custom costs for support or other services. The subscription encompasses support, updates, and all associated features.
What other advice do I have?
Overall, I would rate it nine out of ten.
A tool that offers security along with great technical support
What is our primary use case?
I use Fortinet FortiGate SWG in my company for security purposes and the SD-WAN in our networks.
What is most valuable?
The network load balancing is one of the best features of Fortinet FortiGate SWG. Fortinet FortiGate SWG's SD-WAN compatibility with any of the providers is also one of its good features. The security devices work well with the solution, and it works well for anything pertaining to security, including the HTML files and VPN, which is beneficial for our company.
What needs improvement?
The graphical user interface of Fortinet FortiGate SWG is an area of concern where improvements are required.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Fortinet FortiGate SWG for three years. I use the solution's latest version, which is Fortinet FortiGate 100F Series. I am an end user of the solution.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Stability-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Scalability-wise, I rate the solution an eight and a half out of ten.
My company uses Fortinet FortiGate SWG in around 350 locations spread across India, and we have a user base of over 5,000 users.
How are customer service and support?
The response from the technical support team has always been excellent. I rate the technical support a nine out of ten.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
How was the initial setup?
There were no issues with the product's installation phase. In our company, there were some initial things like checking the networks and managing the area of whitelisting in the firewall.
The solution's installation process doesn't take longer than an hour.
The solution is deployed on an on-premises model since my company has security gateway appliances across the company for 350 locations.
There was a team of six engineers in my company to take care of the implementation part of the product.
What about the implementation team?
I was a part of the design and implementation team of the solution in my company.
What was our ROI?
Earlier, in my company, we had constraints in regard to the link load balancer and the site getting isolated because of the internet. Now, the good part is that the failovers and integration have become entirely seamless, and the site remains connected, meaning, in our company, we don't see the site getting isolated.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I rate the price of Fortinet FortiGate SWG a seven and a half out of ten since it is not a cheap solution, though I feel it is a good product for the money one pays.
There were no additional costs apart from the licensing charges of the product, and the extra payments were related to the shipping charges so that it could be shipped to multiple cities.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
My company plans to use FortiAnalyzer and FortiManager.
What other advice do I have?
I rate the overall tool an eight out of ten.
Robust and secure product with a valuable SD-WAN feature
What is most valuable?
Fortinet FortiGate SWG is a robust and secure product compared to Sophos. It has a valuable SD-WAN feature and provides good performance. Along with that, it has efficient bandwidth and policy management features as well.
What needs improvement?
They could provide bandwidth concentrators and traffic filtering features. They should make the product user-friendly and enhance the security features.
For how long have I used the solution?
We have been using Fortinet FortiGate SWG for ten years. At present, we use the latest version.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I rate the product's stability an eight out of ten.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I rate the product's scalability an eight out of ten. It is suitable for small to large enterprises.
How was the initial setup?
I rate the product's initial setup process a seven out of ten. It takes a few hours or a few days to complete.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I rate the product's pricing a seven out of ten. Its one-year license cost is competitive with three and five-year licenses offered by other products.
What other advice do I have?
I recommend the product to others and rate it a nine out of ten.
A robust web security gateway that offers advanced web filtering, application control, and excellent support
What is our primary use case?
We use it for our security needs. It enables us to effectively manage and monitor all the websites our employees access.
What is most valuable?
One of the features I appreciate the most is application control which offers great flexibility.
What needs improvement?
They should consider making some improvements regarding the pricing. It could be more competitive and cost-effective. I would also like to know more about Fortinet's XDR offering, understand how it operates, and how we can effectively implement it in our network.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been working with for one year.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It offers reliable and stable performance.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I would rate its scalability capabilities ten out of ten. In my previous job, I worked with it, and the company was substantial in size. They used Fortinet's FortiGate in a Solaris environment, which was quite extensive. Now, I'm with a different company, which falls somewhere in the mid-range in terms of size.
How are customer service and support?
I have had excellent experiences with its support team and they have been proactive in responding to my inquiries. I rate their support services a solid ten. It is robust and efficient, and I currently have no difficulties in this regard.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Previously, we relied on Cisco WAFSA and Cisco AC, but with FortiGate, we have completely revamped our infrastructure and gained full control over security policies.
How was the initial setup?
I set up a lab using Fortinet's FortiGate (FGT) within VMware on my laptop. Creating the lab environment was a challenge, but not overly difficult, so I would say it fell somewhere in between, not too hard and not too easy. I would rate it five out of ten.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
When comparing it to other vendors such as Palo Alto and Check Point, it is on the the expensive side. I would rate it four out of ten.
What other advice do I have?
Overall, I would rate it nine out of ten.
Is highly stable and provides a good user experience
What is most valuable?
The product provides a good user experience.
What needs improvement?
Fortinet FortiGate SWG's costs need improvement. Also, there could be an efficient feature for solution consulting to answer queries related to architecture design.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The product is highly stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The product is suitable for enterprise customers. The solution architecture takes a bit of time to scale as it is a new product in the market. The customers need more experience working with it. I rate its scalability a five out of ten.
How are customer service and support?
FortiGate provides the technical support services. However, customers have an SLA agreement with us, and we have an SLA agreement with FortiGate. Thus, it takes longer to establish efficient communication between them.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Neutral
How was the initial setup?
The platform requires a few months to design the architecture.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The product is expensive compared to Cisco.
What other advice do I have?
I recommend Fortinet FortiGate SWG and rate it an eight out of ten.
Offers proxy and web filtering, assists in meeting compliance requirements by facilitating log reports and highly scalable solution
What is our primary use case?
My clients use it as a proxy. The second use case is to try a kind of web filtering. So that's the reason why they're buying. We have customers to whom we have sold an appliance, and we also have a customer to whom we have sold on a virtual machine. So, it's placed on their private cloud.
How has it helped my organization?
We've been able to try and secure our perimeter better because of the proxy and the gateway. Moreover, traffic from all our compliance actually passes through this.
We have compliances also, so we get log reports from that, which goes into our log management software. And it actually helps us to try and analyze any security threats to our environment.
What is most valuable?
DNS security is something that is actually a good service that comes along with the FortiProXY or a Forti secure web gateway.
Fortinet FortiGate SWG is already a good solution, especially with its IP reputation and anti-botnet security features.
What needs improvement?
The UI/UX experience can be a little better.
For how long have I used the solution?
My company has the skill set assets.
We've been in the business for more than eight years. We have implemented FortiGate SWG in the last twelve months.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I would rate the stability a nine out of ten. It's very highly stable. Even if the appliance on-premise solutions have been working fine, Fortinet has a good RMA policy in case of failure as well.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I would rate the scalability of this product a nine out of ten because it is highly scalable. We have not had problems with customers in terms of scalability.
For medium and enterprise businesses, we would be looking at a web gateway. Small businesses normally don't get into buying a web gateway as such.
How are customer service and support?
We expect a little skillset from the partner as well. However, if we raise the ticket, it becomes much easier, and we get the necessary technical support.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
How was the initial setup?
I would rate my experience with the initial setup an eight out of ten, where one is difficult, and ten is easy.
Usually, the deployment model is in a private cloud. It can be deployed as an on-prem solution also. The customers have proxy gateways, and so it comes as an appliance as well or as hardware.
The deployment takes days. It doesn't take weeks. But it depends on the customer environment, like the number of users and what policies need to be configured for that.
So, it depends on the complexity as far as configurations are concerned. But it definitely can be done in days, and it doesn't take more than ten odd days or so, depending upon the scope.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
From a price standpoint, Fortinet is willing to work with partners to get good deals, and Forti will not lose on a price.
So, we'll be able to try and have a good price versus performance metrics that Fortinet provides.
I would rate the pricing a six out of ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive.
What other advice do I have?
Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten. I would definitely recommend using the solution.
Filled with excellent content and is a very competitive option
What is our primary use case?
We use it as a security solution.
What is most valuable?
Fortinet FortiGate SWG's content is its most valuable feature.
What needs improvement?
Fortinet's licensing is high compared to other products.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Fortinet FortiGate SWG for ten years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The product is stable, and I rate the solution's stability a nine out of ten.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
A few private and government companies use Fortinet FortiGate SWGs. It is popular among enterprise customers.
How are customer service and support?
The customer service team is helpful. They have good technicians.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is easy.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Fortinet FortiGate SWG can be expensive for some customers. We recently had a project for a customer where we could not protect the cost, so we had to look elsewhere.
What other advice do I have?
I recommend this solution. Fortinet FortiGate SWG is better than the market alternatives. It's easy to install and manage, and I rate the solution an eight out of ten.
A flexible and stable solution that helped limit user traffic and secured data
What is our primary use case?
We use the solution to secure our entire data, limiting user traffic from within the system, which needs to be assessed to be secure. That is the main motive behind choosing the solution.
How has it helped my organization?
Suppose I don't want to pay for the users. We would have done some whitelisting and content filtering on the FortiGate web gate. Based on the policies, any user traffic is filtered through the secure gateway.
What is most valuable?
It's a flexible solution.
What needs improvement?
What happens in FortiGate is that a lot of bugs come on a system-by-system basis, like when Fortinet launches new firmware in FortiGate. Most software launches with known or unknown bugs. When we go for upgradation, even after running a bug scoping exam, we don't know whether the BIOS for which we are upgrading would affect the end user. We don't know how the FortiGate firmware will behave in your environment. Whatever the known bug, FortiGate lists it in their documents, but you never know how the problem will impact your environment. That's a major disadvantage of FortiGate because, somewhere, it's very unstable.
Another issue is how deduplication services don't work reliably after enabling deduplication on Fortinet. When they launch any new firmware in the future, they have to ensure firmware functions.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've worked with Fortinet FortiGate SWG for more than ten years now.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I rate the solution's stability a seven out of ten.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I rate the solution's scalability a seven out of ten. We have around 700 users on the platform.
How are customer service and support?
If any issues arise, we have to log a ticket with Fortinet. By default, they log all the tickets in P3 or P4 priorities. For P1 or P2, they ask to call us on their phone numbers and lines. Whenever we try to call on the phone for any P1 or P2 issues, the next time, the number gets busy, or the email is unavailable. That's why
I feel the support is not up to the mark, and they must work on it.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Neutral
How was the initial setup?
I rate the solution's initial setup a seven out of ten. The deployment time depends on the scenario, such as your infrastructure size. To deploy the solution on a cloud, you have to buy it from the marketplace and deploy it on the cloud. But after that, you have to do a lot of configurations. That depends on the size of the operation.
One person is more than enough to implement the smaller version of the solution. But if the organization is bigger, with more than 500 or 600 users, we would need three to four people.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Fortinet is priced low.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We are exploring Netskope and evaluating it for the future.
What other advice do I have?
I recommend Fortinet FortiGate SWG because it is flexible and cost-effective. I rate it an eight out of ten.
A highly scalable security solution that is easy to deploy and provides good technical support
What is our primary use case?
We use the product for our customers. We use it for security.
How has it helped my organization?
We can use the URL filtering and antivirus features. We can also configure rules and protocols from source to destination.
What is most valuable?
The technical support is good.
What needs improvement?
The solution is expensive.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have used the solution in the past twelve months.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The stability is not the same as WatchGuard. If we have a power problem, we can lose configurations, VPN, SSL, and other things. Other products do not have these issues. The tool is stable when there are no power outages. I rate the stability a nine out of ten.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I rate the tool’s scalability a nine out of ten. It has high scalability. We integrate the solution for our customers. Some customers have 15 to 50 users, while others have 300 to 1000 users. Our customers are small and medium enterprises.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is easy. It was not complex.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I rate the pricing an eight out of ten on a scale where one is cheap and ten is expensive. We need to pay for additional features.
What other advice do I have?
The product could provide SD-WAN and VPN features. People can use the tool. Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.