I’ve been tasked with setting up a FortiGate 60F for our small company after we outgrew our basic consumer router. We have a team of two handling all IT, and neither of us has formal Fortinet training or prior experience with enterprise firewalls. While I appreciate the depth of features, I’m finding the tuning process surprisingly difficult just to achieve stable, secure internet access without breaking everyday applications.
For example, setting up a simple web filtering policy to block malicious sites ended up blocking our accounting software’s updates because it uses an uncommon port. Diagnosing that took hours of sifting through logs and policy lists. The interface has so many sections—Security Profiles, Firewall Policies, VIPs, SSL inspection—that it’s hard to know where a change in one area will impact another. Even with FortiGuard categories, I feel like I’m constantly in a trial-and-error loop.
I’m curious how this compares to other security appliances aimed at smaller teams, like those from Cisco Meraki or Palo Alto Networks. Are they generally easier to configure with limited security training, or do they have a similar learning curve? I’m also wondering if there are specific best practices for small teams to avoid common pitfalls when tuning policies for the first time.
Thanks!