Enterprise Firewalls in South Africa: Cisco Firepower vs Fortinet FortiGate

South Africa is the most targeted country in Africa for ransomware, accounting for 40 percent of the continent’s attacks. The median ransom demand is R17 million. Average recovery costs reach R24 million. Yet many South African businesses still run end-of-life Cisco ASA firewalls that stopped receiving new features in 2021 and will lose all support within the next few years. The two leading replacement paths are Cisco Firepower (now branded Cisco Secure Firewall) and Fortinet FortiGate. TFI supplies both, new and refurbished, from Johannesburg. Here is how to choose between them.

The Cisco ASA Problem

The Cisco ASA 5506, 5508 and 5516 reached end of sale in February 2021. They remain widely deployed across South African networks because they work and because replacing them costs money. But they are no longer receiving new features, their threat intelligence is aging, and Cisco’s published EOL timeline means full support ends within the next few years. In a country experiencing 1,922 cyber attacks per organisation per week, according to Check Point Research, running an end-of-life firewall is not a budget decision. It is a risk decision.

Cisco Firepower: The Enterprise Standard, Modernised

Cisco’s replacement for the ASA is the Firepower series (Cisco Secure Firewall). The Firepower 1010 replaces the ASA 5506 at 650 Mbps throughput for small offices. The 1120 replaces the ASA 5508 at 1.5 Gbps. The 1140 replaces the ASA 5516 at 2.2 Gbps. Larger deployments use the Firepower 2100 (mid-range) and 4100 (data centre) series.

Firepower adds next-generation capabilities that ASA lacked: application-aware deep packet inspection, integrated IPS, SSL/TLS decryption, URL filtering and malware sandboxing. Management moves from ASDM to Firepower Management Center (FMC), which provides centralised policy, logging and reporting across all appliances. For organisations already running Cisco switches and routers, the ecosystem integration is the strongest argument for staying with Cisco.

Fortinet FortiGate: Performance Leader with Simpler Licensing

Fortinet FortiGate holds over 50 percent of the global next-generation firewall market. The reason is straightforward: more throughput per Rand than any competitor. Fortinet’s custom FortiASIC processors deliver hardware-accelerated security processing that exceeds what CPU-based platforms can achieve at the same price point.

The FortiGate 60F handles small offices at 5 Gbps firewall throughput. The 200F handles mid-range enterprise at 27 Gbps. The new G-series (FortiGate 70G) delivers 11 times faster IPsec VPN than the industry average with 88 percent lower power consumption. Licensing is simpler than Cisco’s: one or two licence types cover the full feature set including IPS, which Cisco charges separately for.

FortiGate integrates with the broader Fortinet Security Fabric: FortiAnalyzer for logging, FortiSwitch for switching, FortiAP for wireless. Organisations that standardise on Fortinet get a single management pane across security and networking.

Head to Head: Which Fits Your Business

Choose Cisco Firepower if: you run a Cisco-centric network and want deep ecosystem integration, you need advanced threat detection with Talos intelligence, or your team already knows Cisco’s management tools. Choose Fortinet FortiGate if: throughput per Rand matters, you want simpler licensing without per-feature add-ons, your team prefers an intuitive management interface, or you are building a converged security-plus-networking stack.

For organisations running end-of-life ASA firewalls without a strong preference for either vendor, FortiGate typically delivers more capability per Rand spent. For Cisco-centric enterprises with existing FMC infrastructure and Cisco-trained engineers, Firepower is the natural path.

New vs Refurbished: Enterprise Security Within Budget

TFI carries both Cisco Firepower and Fortinet FortiGate appliances, new and refurbished, from local stock. Refurbished enterprise firewalls save significantly off list price while delivering identical hardware and feature sets. For organisations replacing end-of-life ASA units across multiple sites, refurbished Firepower 1010s or FortiGate 60Fs can bring the entire estate up to current-generation security at a fraction of what new units from official channels would cost.

TFI is vendor-neutral. The recommendation is based on the use case, the existing environment and the budget, not on which vendor pays a higher margin. Both brands ship from Johannesburg with testing, warranty and optional SLA support.

Request a quote from TFI. Cisco Firepower and Fortinet FortiGate, new and refurbished, from local stock.