Fortinet FortiGate VM Next-Generation Firewall

What do you like best about the product?

Since it is a virtual appliance, it eliminates all the common issues associated with physical hardware. Backing up the VM is significantly easier, and the same applies to license management. Furthermore, scaling resources up or down as needed is highly flexible and straightforward.

What do you dislike about the product?

Occasionally, new firmware updates introduce stability issues and bugs. Additionally, the initial licensing and renewal costs are quite high, and the lack of flexible bundle licensing options makes cost management more difficult.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

It eliminates physical hardware dependency, allowing us to deploy fast and flexible security across our virtual and cloud environments. Additionally, its seamless backup capabilities simplify our disaster recovery processes, ensuring strong data and system security.

What do you like best about the product?

the ability to easily setup site to site VPN's. Ability to configure this on any cloud or virtual environment. FortiGate UI is probably one of the easiest to use and understand

What do you dislike about the product?

when it comes to licensing it is not the most straightforward. licensing activation can be tricky at some times. The cost to licensing is also high compared to others i have used.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

Site to Site VPN to connect different office buildings. Web Filtering certain content that is not allowed by company policies for end users. Assist with remote employees to connect directly. I must say the performance on VPN is good. Administration and integration to current network was easy

What do you like best about the product?

A single pane of glass for everything IPS, VPN, SD-WAN, and segmentation. It gives me consistent policies across both cloud and on-prem environments. There are no hardware hassles, the performance is solid, and everything runs through one management interface. Overall, it keeps my workload light and my networks tight.

What do you dislike about the product?

The license is quite pricey, especially with feature add-ons. Logging and monitoring could be more intuitive; going through CLI for certain features is a hassle sometimes. Occasional upgrade between versions. Great box, but not perfect.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

A virtual firewall that locks down multi-cloud workloads, removes the policy sprawl between AWS and Azure, handles IPS, VPN, and SD-WAN on the same box, scales up with a single click, costs is high but saves me from late night problem calls, and gives me a dashboard to keep all traffic in check so I can stop babysitting the network and focus on actually building things.

What do you like best about the product?

I use FortiGate-VM NGFW to secure enterprise networks by managing firewall policies, VPNs, IPS, web filtering, and traffic monitoring. I appreciate its ability to protect our network from cyber threats by enforcing security policies. What I like most about FortiGate-VM NGFW is its security and performance, which stand out the most for me. Additionally, the initial setup was easy and straightforward.

What do you dislike about the product?

I find the usability of FortiGate-VM NGFW to be an area that could be improved.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

I use FortiGate-VM NGFW to secure enterprise networks by managing firewall policies, VPNs, and traffic monitoring, protecting our network from cyber threats.

What do you like best about the product?

Its strong security features, easy management, and good performance. It provides effective protection while being flexible and scalable for different network environment.

What do you dislike about the product?

The main thing I dislike is that some advanced features can be complex to s configure, especially for new users. The licensing and costs can also be a little difficult to manage.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

It actually helps protect the network from cyber threats, control network traffic, and improve visibility. This benefits me by making security management easier, reducing risks, and helping maintain a more secure and reliable network.

What do you like best about the product?

The solution is easy to deploy and fast to spin up a test system.
A great community to get help from if you run into a problem.
The price is ok compared to other solutions.

What do you dislike about the product?

Getting help from support can be a bit bureaucratic. You have to be careful when upgrading to a new release, as it can sometimes affect the existing setup.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

One of the leaders in NGFW. The AI is being implemented more and more in the product, and that is, of course, important for staying safe in today's AI threats.

What do you like best about the product?

What I like most about FortiGate-VM NGFW is its strong combination of security features and ease of deployment in virtual environments. It provides reliable firewalling, IPS, VPN, application control, and web filtering through a centralized interface. The policy management is straightforward, performance is consistent, and integration with cloud platforms and the broader Fortinet ecosystem simplifies network security management. Overall, it is a scalable and dependable NGFW solution for securing enterprise and hybrid cloud environments.

What do you dislike about the product?

One drawback of FortiGate-VM NGFW is that the initial configuration and policy tuning can be complex, especially for organizations with large or segmented networks. Some advanced features require additional licensing, which can increase overall costs. The management interface, while functional, can feel overwhelming due to the number of available options, and troubleshooting complex policy or VPN issues may require a solid understanding of Fortinet-specific concepts.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

FortiGate-VM NGFW helps secure virtual and hybrid cloud environments by consolidating firewalling, intrusion prevention, VPN, application control, and web filtering into a single platform. This reduces the complexity of managing multiple security solutions while improving network visibility and policy enforcement. It has helped simplify security administration, strengthen threat protection, and provide consistent security across virtual workloads.

What do you like best about the product?

It supports multiple cloud platforms like Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and AWS and secure hybrid and multi-cloud environments as expected for a FortiGate

What do you dislike about the product?

I don't think I have anything to dislike about FortiGate. we haven't found any issues while using it, and none of our customers have complained about it either.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

FortiGate-VM NGFW has made it easy to consistently secure virtual environments. It has improved network visibility, and strengthened threat protection which has reduced the time required to deploy and manage security policies on all cloud environment.

What do you like best about the product?

The biggest advantage of FortiGate-VM is how easy it is to deploy in a virtualized cloud environment, without needing to purchase expensive physical hardware. The FortiOS GUI is very intuitive and feels much cleaner than older Cisco firewalls I’ve worked with. Creating standard IPv4 policies, managing NAT, and setting up SSL VPNs for remote workers can be done in just a few clicks, rather than having to wrestle with complex CLI commands. I also like that routing, SD-WAN features, and deep packet inspection are integrated into a single pane of glass, which makes it easier to monitor threats and investigate logs.

What do you dislike about the product?

The licensing model for the VM versions can be confusing and expensive, especially when you’re trying to scale CPU or RAM allocations in a virtualized cluster. Another pain point is that firmware upgrades can be buggy at times. It’s a common rule among network engineers to wait for more mature patch releases, since early firmware updates can sometimes break existing VPN or routing configurations.

Finally, while the GUI is excellent for day-to-day tasks, it doesn’t expose all of the advanced diagnostic logs. When you need to do deeper troubleshooting for dropped packets or complex IPSec VPN failures, you’re forced to switch to the CLI, which comes with a fairly steep learning curve.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

Before implementing FortiGate-VM, it was challenging to maintain consistent security policies across our on-premise servers and cloud environments. After deploying the virtual NGFW, we were able to integrate security controls smoothly throughout our hybrid network. The initial setup and onboarding were surprisingly straightforward, largely thanks to the strong Fortinet documentation and the helpful support forums. Now we can manage traffic inspection and SD-WAN routing from a single place, which saves us hours of configuration time each week. In addition, the FortiGuard AI-driven threat intelligence feed automatically blocks malicious IPs and zero-day signatures without manual intervention, which has significantly reduced the day-to-day workload for our SOC team.

What do you like best about the product?

The application control feature is the most useful for me. As a cybersecurity specialist I want to be able to set as much specific rules as possible. This allows me to filter traffic not only by IPs or port numbers, but also by software.

What do you dislike about the product?

It is not easy to get to know how to use this firewall. Newcomers might skip it because of that even though it is one of the most useful firewalls at the moment. Another thing is the high pricing. It is a little bit over the top in terms of expenses.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

As a cybersecurity specialist my goal is to defend organizations to the best of my abilities. FortiGate's NGFW allows me to be prepared for the current threats. As the name implies - it is next-generation.