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FortiGuard Web Filtering Service

Score9 out of 10

28 Reviews and Ratings

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What is FortiGuard Web Filtering Service?

Fortinet headquartered in Sunnyvale, California offers the FortiGuard Web Filtering Service, a web content filter.

Categories & Use Cases

FortiGuard Web Filtering Service Reviews

What users are saying about FortiGuard Web Filtering Service.
View all FortiGuard Web Filtering Service reviews

Reliable web filtering with a lot of flexibility

Incentivized
David WilliamsView profile
IT Manager in Information Technology at BMT Tax Depreciation Quantity Surveyors (51-200 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We used FortiGuard Web Filtering Service as part of our Fortinet gateway to manage all our network connections between the world and our office. FortiGuard Web Filtering Service in particular helped us filter our harmful and damaging websites, as well as minimise data leakage, while still allowing people to perform their jobs without being impeded.

Pros

  • Rule-based web filtering
  • Categorised web filtering

Cons

  • Web sites are often miscategorised. I was regularly having to submit websites to the Fortinet review service to have them re-categorised correctly. So, users would report websites were blocked when they should not be. It happened a lot.

Most Important Features

  • Rule-based filtering
  • Role-based filtering, i.e. can have different rules for different groups
  • Categorised web-based filtering

Return on Investment

  • We can be confident staff cannot inadvertantly or deliberately access websites that contain porn, or other non-safe for work content
  • We can be confident staff cannot inadvertantly or deliberately access harmful and malicious websites
  • We can be confident data leakage is minimised

Alternatives Considered

Sophos Web Content Filtering

Other Software Used

Snowflake, Microsoft SQL Server, Logi Composer (Zoomdata)

Accurate web filtering for corporate and EDU environments

Incentivized
Verified User
Engineer in Information Technology (201-500 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We need an easy way to filter malicious and unwanted websites from our corporate network. Manually maintaining a web filtering list would be too cumbersome to handle, so we subscribed to FortiGuard Web Filtering Service web filtering service.

Pros

  • Quick turnaround for reclassifying websites
  • Effective web filtering
  • Easy to implement with a GUI

Cons

  • Some websites are classified as Meaningless content, especially links used in emails to unsubscribe from lists. Luckily FortiGuard Web Filtering Service is responsive about reclassifying those quickly.

Most Important Features

  • Accurate web filtering to reduce the amount of trouble tickets
  • Easy to manually whitelist individual sites
  • Quick turnaround for incorrectly categorized sites
  • Easy to manage block/unblock categories

Return on Investment

  • We have always used FortiGuard Web Filtering Service, and their web filter has been immeasurably helpful in keeping our network safe from phishing websites, viruses and malware

Other Software Used

FortiManager, FortiClient

Easy to setup!!

Incentivized
Tony Ortiz
Database Administrator in Information Technology at Northside ISD (501-1000 employees employees)

Pros

  • Easy Implementation.
  • Worked well with most of the apps we use.
  • GUI was easy to use.

Cons

  • Interface was not easy for some other users, but after they got it down, it worked well.
  • Took a little while to get help from support. Had to call the project manager to get help. But they took care of the issue after the fact.

Return on Investment

  • It cost us almost little time to set up and pilot, so we didn't spend a lot of man-hours working on it. Implementation was easy.

Other Software Used

RSA Web Threat Detection (WTD), DNSFilter

Great protection for your environment

Incentivized
Verified User
Team Lead in Information Technology (501-1000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

FortiGuard Web Filtering Service is providing us power to block unwanted access from our devices on our environment. It can block and prevent from malicious and harmful contents. Also it supports many platforms all around operating systems both laptops and mobile devices.

Pros

  • Good web filtering
  • Supports many platforms

Cons

  • Needs working on more tools

Most Important Features

  • Easy to use
  • Strong protection
  • Supports many platforms

Return on Investment

  • Pricing
  • Sometimes dashboard working slow

FortiGuard Web Filtering - Best for School and SMB

Incentivized
Verified User
Manager in Information Technology (501-1000 employees employees)

Pros

  • FortiGuard Web Filtering Service effectively protects websites. There is no need to install the root certificate on all PCs inside the network.
  • The database signature updates every hour, so we don't need to spend time updating the website to blacklist or whitelist.
  • It can protect very well. Whereas, some traditional proxies can not do that. For example, others can not block Youtube or Facebook.
  • It can also protect the search keyword, like in Youtube or other social media, Google, etc.

Cons

  • The functionality of FortiGuard is simple and easy to use but not advance.
  • The command line is difficult to use and understand.

Most Important Features

  • It can block bad websites and categories so students and staff can not go to them.
  • It can block viruses or spam that come from the internet. It also blocks bad advertising on websites, so when browsing it looks clean with no alerts or ads.

Return on Investment

  • The subscription is a bit expensive. However, taking its value into consideration makes it worthwhile.