TrustRadius Insights for FortiManager are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.
Pros
Efficient Multicloud Management: Several users have found FortiManager to be most helpful in managing Multicloud, considering it a critical feature in today's environment. They appreciate the ability of FortiManager to effectively handle multiple cloud environments, simplifying the management process and ensuring consistent security across different platforms.
Automated Network Security Policies: Many reviewers appreciate the automation of network security policies provided by FortiManager. This feature allows them to streamline their security operations and reduce manual effort in configuring and enforcing policies. The automated nature of these policies ensures that they are consistently applied throughout the network, enhancing overall security posture.
Centralized Policy Management: The centralized policy management feature of FortiManager is highly praised by users. It enables them to manage all their network security policies from a single interface, reducing complexity and improving efficiency. With this centralized approach, users can easily view, modify, and enforce policies across their entire network infrastructure, resulting in better control and visibility over their security measures.
We use FortiManager to quickly manage 10 fortigates at our company. Previously we were manually managing fortigates by directly logging into them. FortiManager has helped us save time in upgrading firmware, and pushing new configs to our firewalls. We also wanted centralized log collection and parsing, which the inbuilt version of FortiAnalyzer provides.
Pros
Centralized management of fortigates
Dynamic objects and per device mapping of objects
Scheduled and centralized firmware updating system for Fortigates
Simple log collection and browsing
Cons
Various bugs: The software is buggy, and if you don't have a good understanding of it's underlaying operation, you can get confused or stuck when pushing a configuration. There are lots of little quirks you will have to learn, which are not described in any documentation.
Conflict resolution: Occasionally, during larger changes, bringing new devices in, pushing a config will fail due to dependencies, conflicts, or other software bugs. This is somewhat time consuming because the error messages provided aren't descriptive
CLI Options: Some configuration changes require creating scripts that execute on each device, and can't be done via the GUI
Likelihood to Recommend
FortiManager is well suited for larger organizations which require unified configurations and IT departments that need quick turn around on firewall related tickets. I believe MSPs can also benefit with the use of the VDOM feature, if strict separation between clients is needed. FortiManager wouldn't be ideal for 1-3 site operations, unless their configurations are extremely complex or have a high number of active users.
VU
Verified User
Engineer in Information Technology (201-500 employees)
FortiManager is utilized by Security Engineering, Security Operations, Network Engineering and Network Operations as a single console to manage FortiGate firewalls in the Corporate, Datacenter, and Cloud grouped into several Administration Domains. FortiManager controls role-based access and user capabilities integrated with our backend Authentication, Authorization, and Accounting (AAA) platform. FortiManager provides deep visibility and centralized control to firewalls deployed in our defense-in-depth global enterprise security fabric.
Pros
Centralized FortiGate FW Management in a single console
Available physical, virtual, or cloud deployment
Single console for next-generation FW features
Multiple Administrative Domains
Cons
Support contracts are difficult to manage or make changes to
Next Generation subscriptions are managed individually, i.e. pegged to specific firewalls
Cumbersome to bring existing firewalls to be covered under a single contract
Likelihood to Recommend
FortiManager is well suited for any environment with multiple and dispersed FortiGate firewalls. It will not manage other firewall platforms. Therefore, you either have to use multiple centralized management software, one for each firewall vendor, or invest in alternative tools such as Tufin, Algosec, FireMon, SolarWinds, etc. However, you will not get a more inclusive tool for your FortiGate firewalls other than FortiManager.