F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) vs. Fortinet FortiGate

In the current digital world we are moving into, I would recommend F5 for all SMB to enterprise organizations. There are various models to pick from. This helps secure the environment and make the network robust to any sort of attacks. I am not able to think of any reason why one should not deploy or this device is less appropriate because nowadays every small company has application / ERPs. It is also worthwhile to note in case if all your apps are being deployed in the cloud by another service provider who provides you SAAS access, in that case, you can be at ease as securing these app falls on to the provider. However, should the budget be available I would recommend deploy this and enhancing your security.

Incentivized

We reviewed many different vendors product offerings, we found the Fortinet FortiGate to best fit our needs. We upgraded from a previous firewall, the migration was a fairly easy process. We were also able to consolidate multiple firewalls into one unit using vdoms. It's been helpful to have one pain of glass, one support contract and easy to work with support. These firewalls are feature rich which is great, but the support contracts are expensive.

Incentivized

• Source and destination IP Base policy
• Source and application base policy
• Ssl VPN with load balancing and fail over policy working fine.

Incentivized

• It is the most reliable NGFW that we have ever been touch with it.
• You can easily upgrade the firewall cluster firmware without user attention!!!
• User IDentity based feature is fantastic and intrusion prevention just works with least false-positive possible.
• Very reachfull and intuitive GUI, just love it

Incentivized

• CCU Licenses are limited by device and are not shared between APM devices
• User sessions are not stored globally, so persistence can be an issue with users all over the world
• Configuration can get complicated when split up between multiple sites

Incentivized

• When we switched to Fortinet Fortigate, it took some time getting used to and become familiar with the new interface. Being used to strictly command-line interfaces, a full GUI-based firewall was something brand new. Careful planning had to be done when creating rules to ensure we didn't miss anything. However, once we got used to the new GUI interface, going from one Fortinet product to another was simple, as Fortinet used the same interface for all of its devices.

Incentivized

Integration with F5 BIG-IP systems that we plan to keep using for a while.

Incentivized

Fortinet's products have kept improving with new software releases and they continue to deliver great value. Their support is also very good. I believe that as a small enterprise, their products have given us competitive advantage delivering features and functionality that enable us to innovate and do things better. They also continue to be a leader in the markets they serve.

Incentivized

If F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager usability is fine it's not hard to use if you read the documentation but it does feel dated and could use a responsive design update to modernize user interface to current standards.

Incentivized

The user interface shared among many simultaneous users is very easy to get around. With shared favorites among users, most tasks are easily bookmarked and can quickly be found and edited. Their strategy for web filter integration is easy to understand and manage as well. With some general direction, setup and maintenance were easy to do and easy to teach others in the organization to do as well.

Incentivized

We had didn't any hardware failures at our two main office locations and upgraded our units last year after using them for about 5-6 years

Incentivized

Good performance and really good integration. We have integration with Microsoft AD.

Incentivized

We live in Turkey. Fortinet's Turkey office [dealt] constantly with us in our every problem or our experience. In addition, global support teams also supported every ticket we opened in every problem we encountered. They support innovative approaches and evaluate and offer solutions. In this context, they were very supportive of the problems we encountered in previous versions.

I received it a couple years afters use it and it was just to confirm my knowledge about the tool.

Incentivized

Make sure that you have the most current version of FortiOS. Make sure all Fortigates are on the same version

Incentivized

F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager integrates extremely well with the rest of our F5 infrastructure which is a big plus and provides us with a familiar user interface, but it isn't as scalable in its current iteration as something like Zscaler Private Access.

Incentivized

One of the biggest advantages over competitors that Fortinet FortiGate leverages well is its remote virtual private networks options. Licensing is included with Fortinet FortiGate units at no extra cost. We find that the telemetry is easier to compile and most importantly communicate with non technical members of staff. The Fortinet FortiGate unit is also extremely stable for long periods of time without showing signs of needing a reboot.

Incentivized

My environments are pretty small (less than 100 users per location) so no issues here.

Incentivized

• Positive is that due to how much F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager can do, the F5 is the landing spot in our environment for MFA authentication.
• It has allowed a technology the company originally bought for load balancing to be used for multiple purposes.
• F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager has made the environment more trusting of F5 as a MFA.

Incentivized

• SD-WAN : Can't stress it further that we are very happy with this functionality and outcomes in the org. We have multiple WAN and MPLS links and traffic switching becomes an important in order to utilize the best performing line.
• QoS : We use QoS for almost all internet traffic, be it Web browsing by users, IOT segment, Application based traffic policy and VIP and normal user based bandwidth allocation.
• SSL and IPSec VPN, both features are fully used to it absolute capacity. IPSec tunnels with multiple sister companies across globe.