Fortinet FortiGate Next-Generation Firewall

I have been using Fortinet FortiGate  for the past six years.

I have been using Fortinet FortiGate  to provide security for network and perimeter networks and gateways, and I rely on Fortinet FortiGate to protect my applications from various Layer 4 and Layer 7 attacks and traffic from malicious IPs while blocking traffic from unwanted IPs.

Fortinet FortiGate is also mainly used to establish IPsec tunnel connectivity with other networks, and users from outside the office network can connect to resources via IPsec VPN as well as site-to-site and client-to-site VPN, which leverages access and resource availability across various networks and simplifies resource accessibility worldwide.

One of the main features that I use in real time with Fortinet FortiGate is web filtering and App IDs based on application control. Previously, I allowed application access policies based on ports, but it could not prevent traffic based on the same application port with different use cases. For example, port 443 can be used for various purposes, but it could not restrict access for some specific applications. The App ID based control is useful for me to restrict traffic based on application usage and user access, which is the primary purpose of Fortinet FortiGate in real time.

Fortinet FortiGate offers next-generation firewall features and security features that restrict access for malicious traffic, URLs, and IPs, which is a major feature that Fortinet FortiGate offers.

The next-generation firewall capabilities including deep packet inspection and application controls via App IDs, Intrusion Prevention Systems, web filtering, URL filtering, and anti-malware protections are essential features that are present in Fortinet FortiGate to prevent various cyber attacks and threats in the network.

Fortinet FortiGate is also mainly used to establish IPsec tunnel connectivity with other networks, and users from outside the office network can connect to resources via IPsec VPN as well as site-to-site and client-to-site VPN, which leverages access and resource availability across various networks and simplifies resource accessibility worldwide.

The security features could have been more similar to those in the Palo Alto firewall with major data protections and WildFire, and deeper inspection capabilities, which Fortinet FortiGate lacks. Additionally, I notice that Fortinet FortiGate often experiences resource utilization problems where memory is heavily occupied regularly, necessitating cleanup tasks.

During firmware upgrades, the process is not smooth; one of the VMs often goes out of sync and exits the HA cluster. Therefore, I separate the HA between the firewalls and perform upgrade activities one by one manually. The graphical dashboard representation of the data is frequently inaccurate, leading me to rely on syslogs for more dependable information. The log retention period on the device seems too short despite having ample memory and disk capacity, which is a major issue.

I have been working in my current field for the past seven years.

The scalability experience indicates that if I need additional features or security capabilities, such as sandbox features, I can add them by opting for separate licenses, making it convenient for me.

Fortinet FortiGate customer support appears somewhat good, but for complex cases or major incidents, I often do not receive prompt support from the OEM, resulting in multiple follow-ups to get the necessary assistance.

Previously, I used to have a Cisco ASA  firewall, which had fewer security features for protecting the network from day-to-day attacks and threats. Fortinet FortiGate firewall has next-generation capabilities with various security features including deep inspections, filters, URL filters, URL categories, and IPS protections while controlling application access based on application IDs, along with anti-malware protections to safeguard applications from malicious threats and attacks. By using Fortinet FortiGate, I significantly reduced major attacks that could exploit my network.

I would advise others considering Fortinet FortiGate, particularly those concerned about budget and pricing with decent performance and support, to proceed with Fortinet FortiGate, as compared to other next-generation firewall products, Fortinet FortiGate has lower license support costs, which is a significant advantage. Moreover, from my experience, it performs its job effectively with no major issues related to performance or functionalities including policy control, VPN, and security features. I would rate this product a 7 out of 10.

I integrate service with Fortinet FortiGate . I integrate service, and some manage service, so the customer already has the firewall and we manage them, or we sell the hardware. But mostly for hardware, there are a lot of sellers, so mostly we do the services.

If the customer wants Fortinet FortiGate , I give Fortinet FortiGate. If the customer wants Sophos, I give Sophos. Both have a different market and different customer profile.

Whatever the customer asks, we provide. I'm running Fortinet FortiGate now because a customer wants that in my data center.

I find Fortinet FortiGate valuable due to Fortinet's ASIC, as I have known Fortinet FortiGate since a long time ago, from the first time they ran. They use ASIC. While Sophos also has a special hardware solution such as Xstream, they have all different purposes and different advantages, so I can utilize both. It depends on the customer.

I don't have any problem with Fortinet Unified SASE . Mostly in Indonesia, in our market, customers buy the brand without knowing the full capability of it. So actually with Fortinet FortiGate, you also have to implement FortiManager, FortiAnalyzer and for hardware control, FortiNAC  and so on. But because it's so modular, sometimes customers mistakenly just buy the firewall. The firewall doesn't work right. That's a problem. I understand that this product design philosophy of Fortinet FortiGate is meant to serve very big corporations which have established SOC teams. They put segmentation of who is the manager and who is the analyzer. That's why they put the separate server for that. But because the brand is so famous, even small customers want to buy it.

I think Fortinet FortiGate could learn from its competitors that there's nothing to change. Perhaps they could just launch a lightweight version of the SIEM  and SOAR  tool, which is cloud-based. This would be for small organizations who cannot afford to build the full scale SOC facility and team.

I have been working with Fortinet FortiGate for maybe five or six years, or maybe longer than that. It could be 10 years as well.

I have been working with Fortinet FortiGate for quite a long time, but I am not a partner yet. Last year I took partnership with Sophos, so we do both.

I don't have experience integrating SD-WAN capabilities with Fortinet FortiGate yet, as we had a case but the project didn't go. SD-WAN is not mostly firewall. Yesterday, I just had a discussion with a new customer that wants to buy ZTNA  and NAC.

I think the pricing of Fortinet FortiGate is affordable to some small customers, but they can only afford the firewall without the other components. Mostly firewall, so it's just selling products, not selling a security system.

In my opinion, Fortinet FortiGate doesn't need to be improved. It's because it has a different market. I had a case maybe five or six years ago. There was a tender of SD-WAN implementation for 10,000 mini marts. A company that has 10,000 outlets of mini marts needs security. In the data center at their headquarters, they need a very big firewall, up to 500 Gbps. But in the outlet, which is a small store or mini mart, they need a very small firewall that's capable to do SD-WAN, authentication, security, VPN and so on. Fortinet FortiGate has it all. Fortinet FortiGate is suitable for that kind of organization. They have a special SOC, so they buy FortiManager, FortiAnalyzer and so on. I rate this review an 8.

There are many main use cases for Fortinet FortiGate  for my clients, including network firewall, VPN, ZTNA , and SD-WAN. The firewall is basically the primary function and one of the best features in Fortinet FortiGate .

The AI aspect has helped to protect data centers at scale by improving the reduction of false positive errors and handling unknown threats.

I have hands-on experience with demos and implementation of Fortinet FortiGate. The AI and ML enhanced FortiGuard services are quite new, and I have some experience but not much since they are a new feature.

The stability and performance of Fortinet FortiGate are mixed, as some features are quite good and very stable while others are quite new and very buggy.

There are quite a lot of bugs in Fortinet FortiGate, and they introduce new features every day that come with problems. I think they introduce them too fast.

Fortinet brings in new products every year and acquires new companies while inventing new products, which is good but also bad because they introduce a lot of workload and problems or bugs onto the table.

I have been using Fortinet FortiGate for almost three years.

The stability and performance of Fortinet FortiGate are mixed, as some features are quite good and very stable while others are quite new and very buggy.

Scalability highly depends on the purchase decision. If the user bought the appliance, then it is not scalable, but for the VM on the software side, it can expand.

I have some experience with Fortinet's customer service and technical support. I would rate the technical support of Fortinet on a scale of 1 to 10 around a 7 or 8, primarily because they have local operations in Thailand, so they have at least some people who can speak Thai.

I do have experience in working with technologies other than email security solutions.

If talking about the general product, the initial setup of Fortinet FortiGate is quite straightforward, simple, and easy. However, it depends on the DNA of the product. If the Fortinet product was acquired from another company, that is a different story.

My role is usually on the pre-sales and the POC role in integrating SD-WAN capabilities with Fortinet FortiGate. I am not involved in the implementation side and cannot tell much about it.

In Thailand, the concept of unified SASE  is not very popular because the traffic has to go through the cloud, and they are not very afraid of the cloud or highly adopting it at this time.

I know about dynamic segmentation in Fortinet FortiGate from the book and theory side, but on the implementation side, there are not many projects that implement it that way. It is probably never done.

There are several benefits that Fortinet FortiGate brings to the table, and I cannot speak of only one or two as it is too extensive. It highly depends on the use case, and the only word I can tell is that it is very multi-purpose or all-purpose and highly usable in many use cases.

Fortinet FortiGate is quite a mix for organizations considering it, as some products are very easy and straightforward to start, making it easy to sell, and then they can expand to other more complex and advanced products.

As a customer, we work with Fortinet FortiGate. Our major use case for Fortinet FortiGate is our Internet, serving as the main device for routing, firewall features, and everything.

Fortinet FortiGate is one of the best firewalls in the market currently, with a lot of next generation firewall features embedded into it, including SD WAN, which is one of the best services for traffic steering, managing packet log jitter and latency for any applications, making it unbeatable in terms of pricing compared to other firewalls.

It has a significant impact on our network performance as we are a health care company where users access health care business website URLs, and any latency is managed by SD WAN without manual intervention, benefiting the operation as we have more than a thousand users across different locations.

Fortinet FortiGate Unified SASE is effective in providing security policies across multiple locations, incorporating zero touch provisioning that is very impactful and beneficial in managing network problems.

In terms of hardware-assisted DDoS protection with Fortinet FortiGate, it is performance-based, depending on the number of concurrent sessions, users, and the specifications of the hardware product.

The one concern I have with Fortinet FortiGate is the firmware versions, which often have many bugs when upgraded, leading us to revert back to older versions multiple times in my lifecycle.

For example, when upgrading the firmware version, we noticed that one of the services was not working, resulting in no packet flow for a VLAN until we reverted back.

The main area for improvement in Fortinet FortiGate is the firmware versions, as we face uncertainties regarding upgrades and frequent bugs that require self-fixing of problems.

We have been using Fortinet FortiGate since two thousand three.

Fortinet FortiGate is very much scalable, with all models from Fortinet being impactful.

Technical support from Fortinet is generally good, though there are times when it could be better.

We have used other firewalls, including Palo Alto, which we find to be very pricey compared to Fortinet FortiGate.

The deployment process for Fortinet FortiGate is straightforward.

We conducted the deployment ourselves without the help of an integrator or consultant.

The return on investment with Fortinet FortiGate is very good, as it is one of the best products available in the market.

In terms of price for Fortinet FortiGate, it is not considered that expensive when compared to other products; it is medium priced for SMB businesses.

Palo Alto is a premier product, but both solutions have their unique advantages, making it difficult to declare one superior to the other.

We have Fortinet FortiGate in different locations, where every location serves as a data center using hub and spoke technology, connecting all spokes to a primary hub and a secondary hub for reliability.

We use segmentation in core switches; however, the segmentation features are primarily managed by Cisco switches and not by Fortinet FortiGate firewall.

The effects of SD WAN integration on remote users and application performance are very positive, as we integrate all traffic through Fortinet FortiGate SD WAN and aim for configurations that enhance efficiency across locations.

We have been using SD WAN with Fortinet FortiGate for more than five or six years.

Fortinet FortiGate Unified SASE is effective in providing security policies across multiple locations, incorporating zero touch provisioning that is very impactful and beneficial in managing network problems.

The effects of SD WAN integration on remote users and application performance are very positive, as we integrate all traffic through Fortinet FortiGate SD WAN and aim for configurations that enhance efficiency across locations.

With Fortinet FortiGate, the SD WAN feature is included with no additional costs, which stands in contrast to other products like Cisco and Palo Alto, which charge extra for similar features.

I would rate this review an eight out of ten.