Cato Networks vs. Fortinet SASE SD-WAN Comparison

Your company is in the market for a SASE SD-WAN solution, and two solutions you’ve heard about are Cato Networks and Fortinet. But how do these two solutions compare?

In this video, I compare Cato Networks and Fortinet architecture, security, and other things you need to know.

Want my recommendations on Cato Networks, Fortinet and their top competitors? Ask me today.

About Me

Mike Smith has been helping companies select the best telecom, WAN, security, and cloud services since 1999. He founded AeroCom in 2003, and has been the recipient of numerous business telecommunications industry awards, including being recognized as one of the top 40 business people in tech-heavy Orange County, CA. Follow Mike on YouTube, LinkedIn, Reddit and SpiceWorks.

Transcript

Your company is in the market for a new SASE SD SASE solution. And two vendors you’ve heard of out there are Cato Networks and Fortinet. But how do those two vendors compare? My name is Mike Smith. I’m the president of Eircom. Let’s put our heads together on this.

My Recommendations

But first, if you’d like my recommendation on the best SASE SD SASE vendors, your company should be quoting. reach out, send me an email or give me a call (714.593.0011). I will help your company make a lot better decision in a fraction of the time. I’m a broker for all the major southeast SASE vendors out there, and I’ve been doing this for over 20 years, so I can tell you which ones you should be quoting, which ones you should avoid based on your company’s requirement So send me an email, give me a call. I’d love to help you. It won’t cost you anything to reach out and ask for my recommendations. More information on that at the end of the video. Also, don’t forget to subscribe to the YouTube channel so you don’t miss any of my future weekly videos that I put out. And go check out our website. Aerocominc.com. You can read reviews on providers, You can write reviews on providers. You can watch videos on providers, read all types of information. You can filter providers by features like SASE. Go check it out. Cato Networks versus Fortinet when it comes to SASE SD when solutions.

1. Architecture

Here’s what you need to know about the different things when you’re comparing those two solutions.  In my opinion. Number one is architecture. Cato Networks is what I call a cloud enabled SD SASE solution, meaning that they have gateways in the cloud and those gateways are connected by a private fiber optic backbone network. Fortinet, on the other hand, is what I would call an on prem only solution. It’s not connecting to cloud gateways. They don’t have a private backbone that your data is going to hop on once they connect to the gateways. So very different than Cato when it comes to architecture. What does that mean to you? Well, number one, fortinet’s going to be less expensive because, frankly, they’re offering less. But because Cato is a cloud enabled solution and they have a private backbone kid who’s going to be better at things like reducing wide area network packet loss and latency. And because Cato has cloud enabled gateways, Cato is going to be good at doing things like incoming or inbound or ingress traffic shaping, load balancing failover, that type of stuff. Because they have a gateway in the cloud, they’re able to not only control that for outbound traffic, they can also do that for incoming ingress traffic. So that’s architecture.

2. Security

But the next thing that you should compare them based on is security. Both solutions are actually considered SASE. SD WAN solutions, well, what does that mean? Well, that means both offer a managed next generation firewall solution as part of the Sd-Wan solution. So next gen firewall means they do content filtering, spam filtering, intrusion detection, intrusion, intrusion prevention, all the next generation firewall functions they do with a managed firewall solution included with the SD. One solution that’s essentially what SASE means. also when it comes to security, both Cato networks and Fortinet are zero trust. That’s ZT and a solutions

3. Other

and lastly, both Cato networks and Fortinet are CASB solutions. So what that means is that they can manage, monitor, detect and block cloud applications on the network. Now, when it comes to Kasab, when it comes to Zatanna, when it comes to SASE, obviously there’s going to be slight differences in their offering. And you as a company have to compare the slight differences to your unique requirements. So even though they both on paper look the same, they both offer all those security features, they’re both a little different when it comes to each one. And obviously we could talk for hours and hours and hours on the differences. But the important thing is for you to check out those differences yourself and how they compare to your organization. Okay, So those are the big ones, architecture and security. There’s a couple other things I want to mention on here, too. Number one, K2 has a cool thing called digital experience monitoring. If you want to know more about what that is, to look at my video on review SASE K2 networks, go check that one out. I explain that one in more detail, but really cool. Extra added feature that K2 offers. As I mentioned earlier, K2 Networks is going to be a little bit more expensive than Fortinet. And something else to note recently, this is shot in 2025. Fortinet has had some issues with hackers finding some vulnerabilities and hacking in with ransomware, too, some of the bugs in the Fortinet system. So just, you know, so you know that in advance. That is something that has happened recently with Fortinet. So definitely something you want to consider. You know, taking a look at that and see if they’ve gotten those issues resolved.

Want a demo or quote from Cato or Fortinet, and their competitors?

Well, that’s my analysis on Cato Networks versus Fortinet Solutions. Definitely a little bit different solutions, advantages, disadvantages. Either way, there’s also a lot of other SASE sd-wan solutions out there. And if you’d like my recommendation on the best SAS SD SASE solutions for your company, reach out, send me an email or give me a call (714.593.0011). I’d love to help you with it and it won’t cost you anything. So based on your company’s requirements, I’ll introduce you to the best SD SASE vendors that your company should be quoting. I’ll introduce you to the best people at their company to work with. I’ll make sure you get a great demo and presentation on their product. I’ll also oversee the coding process to make sure you get the absolute best pricing available from that vendor. And I’ll give you a lot of good background information on which vendors you shouldn’t be coding, which ones you should and why, which ones are the best fit and all that good stuff. I’ve been a broker for all the major vendors out there for over 20 years in this industry, so I know the industry inside and out. I’m definitely someone you can trust when it comes to trying to find out more information, trying to figure out who your companies should quote in.

Reach out and contact me

Overall, I’m just going to help your company make a lot better decision in a fraction of the time. And I’m not going to charge your company anything for my recommendations because the service providers actually pay me my broker fees so your company doesn’t have to pay me anything. So there’s no excuse not to at least reach out and get my opinion on this stuff. So give me a call. Send me an email. I’d love to help you. And as always, don’t forget to subscribe to the YouTube channel so you don’t miss any of my weekly videos that I put out. And go check out our website, economy.com. You can check out, see when vendors filter them by features like SASE or CASB. Today, you can read reviews on them. You can write reviews on them, you can watch videos on them. All kinds of cool stuff. Go check it out. Thanks for watching and I’ll catch you on the next one.